Before Facebook, There Was the Phone Book

OK, I know, comparing Facebook to the ol’ phone book is a little odd, but I’ll try.

First, a funny image – that of Steve Martin in The Jerk, running through the neighborhood, shouting, ‘The new phone books are here!”

Well, I wasn’t THAT over the moon about them, but let me tell you, few things were a reporter’s best friend as much as those always-growing (til now) collections of pulp with shiny covers. We learned to keep the old ones, because sometimes, people paid the EXTRA fee to get themselves unlisted (see some parallels there to the world of headaches of ‘opting out’ of having your name all over the Web?)

I even wrote stories, honestly, where I tracked the growth of a community – this one – by comparing the previous year’s phone book pages to the new one’s. Twenty more pages, etc. Or look for new Yellow Pages categories, like ‘Internet Service Providers.’ Sometimes they’d throw me off by changing the font size or columns, but tallying the pages was just another simple way to see how fast we are – whoops, make that – were  – growing.

I bring this up in a not-totally-random fashion. Last week, trying to help someone with a potential news story, I used Google to find a name, then someone local related to them. Twice, I thought I hit pay dirt – turning to the phone book, they were listed!

But alas, both were disconnected.

Why? Odds are, because they now live their lives on cell phones, so who needs an old ‘land line’ phone to pay for? The terms ‘boat anchor’ (or even ‘buggy whip’) come to mind.

I do understand. We switched to the cheaper cable-modem version of a land line, but I just can’t quite bring myself to cut the cord, one that’s fed me like an umbilical cord so much news over the years.

But you watch – phone books will start to shrink, unless there’s some societal revolution that tells people they want their cell number to be found in one, communal place, rather than catch as catch can in Internet phone number search sites.

This, I highly doubt will happen.

So is the rise of the cell phone a triumph of privacy, in a way? Spam and junk calls still find their way to them – usually by ‘robo-calls,’ where an automated dialer hits EVERY number. (I have to explain that to folks who call about a scam and wonder, ‘How did they get my number?’ They didn’t – they call EVERY number, in a row.)

But in a way, the future dimunition, even possible demise of the lowly phone book as a place everyone turned to as a place to find your and just about everyone’s name, address and phone number is sad, and perhaps another piece of the loss of community – as we all go our separate ways, for better and/or worse.

And that’s a shame. Not just for reporters, but for those young rascals who used to flip through it, eyes closed, randomly point at a number to call and say, ‘Pardon me, but do you have Prince Albert in a can?” (Rimshot.)

It’s not the kind of societal change many will have heartburn over (unless you work for what used to be THE Phone Co.) But it’s sad, nonetheless. To me, anyway.

I mean, not everyone in the phone book was your ‘friend,’ Facebook style. But somehow, connecting only to ‘friends’ seems a bit … insular. (Especially when people ‘friend’ you on Facebook and you have NO clue who they are, then you are stuck on that dilemma of accepting, rejecting or ignoring.)

(Another phone book plus – no profile photo required. Leaves more to the imagination, which is something we need to cultivate in these days of amazing movie special effects that can outshine our wildest dreams. Besides, if you have a ‘face for radio’ like yours truly, who needs everyone knowing what you look like?;-)

I remember reading of a reporter who used to randomly point at names in the phone book, call them and turn their lives into wonderful features. I know that’s possible, because everyone has at least one story to tell – the story of their lives, which can be as fascinating as any novel or movie.

Yes, you can probably do the same thing online. But it’s not the same – and these days, I daresay, the percentage who would agree to share some intimate details with a stranger over the phone are probably dropping even faster than those old-fogey landline phones.

No, now we share more such details of our lives than ever before – the crises, the joys, the random day-to-day thoughts (such as this!) with people who are our online “friends.” More open, in a way, than ever before, but more closed as well.

Such is the paradox of modern life, I suppose.