Monday, August 1, 2016

Yellow Pages in an Internet age

I went for a walk around my neighborhood today and found one of these in just about every yard of my subdivision.


I hadn’t noticed until I got home but I had one too! It was a paper book in a plastic bag. The book had list after list of phone numbers. Not phone numbers to people you might know, just businesses in our city. They are all there in alphabetical order for your convenience.

But is that what this really is? It didn’t seem convenient that they were just thrown onto my lawn. It wasn’t convenient that I had to pick it up and open it just to realize that the bag it was in was trash.


When I opened the book, I thought, “Are these people not aware of the phenomenon called Google or Bing?”

Is it possible that hundreds – maybe thousands – of these books were thrown onto lawns around the city only to be thrown away because all of the information it contained is accessible at your fingertips? Certainly the company who distributed them paid someone to throw it on my lawn.

My only question is why? Do you or anyone you know still use a phonebook?

— Sandra de Arrigunaga

Four Crossed Logs intern
professional communication major

1 comment:

  1. This article really made me think about how many times I've just stepped over one of these. Or how many times I've just picked it up and left it laying on my counter for months till I finally throw it away!! maybe one day we will all see how useless this is and find a better use for the money it takes to print and hand out these thousands of books that are useless.

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