I recently visited my parents this past holiday season. I was aware of several obvious differences between our generations, but I picked up on one more thing about our very different ways of life that I had never noticed before: they still use the phone book to look up the numbers of local businesses.
The phone book is a big, clunky waste of paper we all get in the mail every year and leave out on our porch step for weeks before we figure out what to do with it. It’s a product of the previous century that continues to plague our current Internet generation. While I’m certain that some people still use it, like my parents, the printing and distribution of this material to each and every home and apartment seems frivolous. Local phone companies seem to think they are helping people by providing them with free access to a wide base of information, but it seems that what they need to be doing instead is figuring out a way to eliminate the waste that occurs as a consequence of this delivery. The phone book, while once a necessary household object, is now a burden to most citizens. And while I’ll admit that the coupons in the back are a nice afterthought, how many of us actually cut them out and use them?
Now, I’m not making a claim about what medium (Google vs. phone book) is better or faster as a general resource, but I am merely making a cultural and, in fact, generational observation regarding present-day fact-finding. The way that Generations X and Y search and find information is poles apart from the way that the Baby Boomers are accustomed to obtaining local statistics. I guarantee you that, if you put a 60-year-old man in the same room with a 25-year-old man and ask them both to find the number to a local grocery store, the 60-year-old man will immediately search for a phone book, while the 25-year-old man would jump on the computer to Google the information. I observed this trend firsthand while at my parents’ house.
