Save the phonebook!
Greenies, e-hipsters, phone companies, and especially the online directory services would love to kill the old-fashioned White Pages. Here's why we might want to think again.
In mid-2011 the Seattle-based Sightline Institute launched its Making Sustainability Legal project, dedicated to overturning laws that ban or hinder environmentally and socially beneficial practices. It’s a worthy effort. But even worthy efforts can overshoot. Earlier this month, Sightline founder Alan Durning took stock of the first year’s progress on legalizing 16 measures the project had targeted.
Which issue did he lead the list with? Clotheslines, graywater recycling, car sharing, or pay-as-you-drive insurance — valuable, underappreciated eco-gems also targeted by Sightline?
Nope, phonebooks.
That is, saving the world from unwanted phonebooks, but not the duplicative Yellow Pages that multiple publishers foist on consumers in order to up their numbers and sell more ads. Seattle has already addressed that, in a 2010 law that lets consumers choose which, if any, Yellow Page books they want to receive, and other jurisdictions will doubtless follow suit.
Sightline is crusading against the White Pages.
Unlike the ad-filled Yellow Pages, the White Pages aren’t a profit center. But regulations in this and many other states make the phone companies (landline, not cell, of course) provide them to all phone subscribers, to enhance communication, consumer access, and community cohesion. (Italy used to go farther. It required that everyone, including politicians and other bigwigs, have listed phone numbers. It being Italy, those who really wanted to found their way around the rule.)
The phone companies would love to be able to forget that rule, since it just costs them money. They've succeeded in getting similar requirements reversed in Canada and a number of U.S. states. I wonder if our local provider, CenturyLink (formerly Qwest) has already forgotten it here, at least as far as one consumer is concerned. For a couple years now, I’ve received no White Pages at a phone number I’ve held for many years — despite opting in to receive the companion Dex Yellow Pages — until I wade through the phone tree to order them.
Sightline and other anti-phonebook crusaders would like to make everyone who wants the White Pages jump through a similar hoop — to go out of their way to opt in, even though the opposite default prevails with the Yellow Pages. (You must opt out to avoid them.) No big deal, writes Sightline’s usually insightful Eric de Place: "For the vast majority of us... the White Pages are wasteful, costly, and unpopular — but required by law." Only a “small number [of] people on the 'other' side of the digital divide, including some seniors and low-income families, who may have land lines but no cell phones and limited access to computers and the Internet” would ever think of using a phonebook anymore. Let them eat opt-ins.
That ignores the fact that those cohorts, and disabled consumers who also may depend on print directories, are the least likely to be aware of the option and able to act on it. What are they going to do, go online to search out the opt-in page? Some will languish with out-of-date books or none at all, potentially losing touch with friends and emergency services.
Phonebook-bashers make another presumption: that paper directories are unquestionably inferior, “obsolete” modes of information retrieval. In fact, they have several advantages over online directories:
• They work when your battery dies or the power shuts off. Like old-fashioned landlines, phonebooks operate when the grid goes down. (Remember that scene in The Day After, in which a working pay phone proves a lifesaver while the rest of civilization tumbles down?) Of course, that couldn’t happen again here; it’s been four years since large parts of Seattle and environs got blacked out for up to a week.
• They won’t withhold information and try to upsell you into buying it (or paying to see whether there’s any there), as some online directories do. Nor, worse yet, surreptitiously bill you for ongoing "post-transaction services" after you order a single seach, as the Bellevue-based Intelius and others have done.
• They’re browsable, enabling users to scan for alternate spellings and vaguely remembered names — or even to compare the relative numbers of Andersens, Nguyens, and Muhamads over the years, a handy snapshot of demographic change.
• Old phonebooks preserve numbers that have since been unlisted or cancelled — useful for investigators and journalists, if unappealing from a privacy view.
• You can often find numbers faster in the phonebook than online, especially, but not only, if you have to go to your computer or wait out a pokey smartphone. Don’t believe me? Neither did the young coworker who sneered at phonebooks till I challenged him to a race.
I don’t even know if online searching is always more resource-efficient than well-used phonebooks (which are made from recycled paper), and I suspect the phonebook-bashers don't know either. Online searches and the hardware that performs it aren't an environmental free lunch. Google's and others' server farms are enormous energy hogs. It takes loads of power and water to manufacture silicon chips, and tantalum from Congolese rainforests and other high-impact metals to make laptops and cellphones. Certainly today's skinny White Page books contribute much less to the scrap-paper load than the multiple door-stopping Yellow Pages.
Of course, online directories have important advantages, too: They can be corrected and updated (though obsolete listings still seem to show up). You can find numbers around the world without dealing with operators and paying for their services. They’re as close as your smart phone, if you’re on that side of the digital divide.
Which medium’s better? Depends on the circumstances (local or long distance, etc.). Use the right tool for the job. But that sort of versatile variety is vanishing in a commercial culture built on superficial brand diversity and substantive homogenenization. Take pencils. A few years ago each little stationery store stocked just a few brands but a full hardness range, from soft, smeary #1 (for drawing and scribbling) to superhard #4 (for technical precision). Now we have just three big-box stationery chains; they stock many more pencil brands, but only “standard” #2s. (You can still order others online.)
As with pencils, so with newspapers and phonebooks. The phone companies would love to do away with the unremunerative White Pages, to save the cost of producing them and perhaps to switch users over to fee-based operator and ad-based online searches. Someday they’ll find a way to charge for the latter.
Sightline has a strange bedfellow in this cause: Seattle-based Whitepages.com, the leading online phone directory. It’s campaigning to end mandatory white-page laws under the battlecry “Ban the Phone Book.” Translation: “Kill our competition.”
Unwanted phone books are a nuisance and a waste, but that’s no reason to make the White Pages less accessible to those who need them, pushing everyone across another digital divide. Better to at least treat them like the Yellow Pages: We should be able to opt out if we don’t want them, not forced to seek them out if we do.
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Comments:
Posted Mon, Jan 16, 8:25 a.m. Inappropriate
Wow; banning plastic bags, banning phone books, red light and speed cameras, $4.02 total cigarette taxes per pack, etc. Founding Fathers must be proud!!
Posted Mon, Jan 16, 9:22 a.m. Inappropriate
I've encountered every problem this writer names in trying to find telephone or address information online. While I was glad for a way to opt out of the multiple yellow pages that I never looked at, I kept the Qwest yellow pages and use them. I still use the white pages, too. It's impossible to find the white pages info one needs online without paying, and pretty hard to find yellow pages info for businesses that don't have web pages. Since I like to deal with smaller local businesses for nearly everything, the two phone books put out by the phone company remain important resources for me. I think there likely are many like me who straddle the digital divide and don't want our choices reduced further. Keep the white pages, please. I still want and use them.
Posted Mon, Jan 16, 9:43 a.m. Inappropriate
I've found printed phone books to be far more reliable than the web-based equivalent. Probably because, just like with the Yellow Pages, there is no revenue stream associated with web-based white pages, so updates are sporadic at best. Eliminate phone books? "Not all change is progress."
Posted Mon, Jan 16, 11:52 a.m. Inappropriate
Before I deleted it, the Qwest iPhone app kept giving me results in *Kansas City*, no matter what city I specified...
Posted Mon, Jan 16, 11:58 a.m. Inappropriate
Animalal: I understand you're being hyperbolic but no, phone books are not being "banned". Consumers are just finally being allowed to opt out of receiving them: something I did immediately.
I'm not everyone, obviously, but I haven't used a phone book nor had a land line in almost 12 years. The Yellow Pages were worthless anyway: who knows how something was categorized. Was the company reputable? Were they highly recommended by past customers?
The web is fantastic for that information, thankyouverymuch.
Posted Mon, Jan 16, 12:15 p.m. Inappropriate
I may be reading this online, but I used my phone book this morning.
Posted Mon, Jan 16, 12:24 p.m. Inappropriate
I agree; white pages do need to be saved. Readers who disagree might need to ponder that not everyone has convenient internet access. Disability law regarding equal access to information might be involved here--a lawsuit could get nasty AND expensive. Also, sometimes, paper is just more convenient and accessible.
As an aside--this URL (www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pyjRj3UMRM) links to a medieval helpdesk parody. However: it shows that you can easily see that a quantity of gathered information can be seen when it's on paper, whereas when you're researching online such an amalgamation within visual purview is much less accessible. (Translated into English: you can see a whole bunch of information in one glance with paper. Online, you often have to skip from screen to screen.)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pyjRj3UMRM
Posted Mon, Jan 16, 12:25 p.m. Inappropriate
Another nice thing about living in a condo or apartment...there might be a stack of these in the mail room occasionally but I don't have to deal with them.
As for usefulness, Eric makes some good points. But I'll do without anyway. Better to have less crap to deal with.
Posted Mon, Jan 16, 3:11 p.m. Inappropriate
Full agreement with Eric and commenters; the trend with online search is to hide every bit of information behind layers of advertising and (I suspect)
data-gathering functions. The web is not to serve us; it's to provide focused information to marketers; they're smarter than we are and we've probably just seen the beginning.
Posted Mon, Jan 16, 3:30 p.m. Inappropriate
I would love to be able to opt out of Whitepages and Yellow Pages. It has been more than a decade since I actually used either. I don't even bring them inside anymore. They go drectly from my porch to my recycling bin. I never have any difficulty finding the "white page" info I need online at no charge. I'm 60+ and crossed the digital divide a long time ago.
Posted Mon, Jan 16, 6:15 p.m. Inappropriate
Maybe it's because my mom is in her 80s and relies on me to get her any info on the Internet, but you must realize this: The digital divide is real. Plenty of people do not have Internet access.
Posted Mon, Jan 16, 7:54 p.m. Inappropriate
Eric,
Thanks for covering this issue. Protecting folks on the analog side of the digital divide is a real concern, so kudos for spelling it out here. That said, there are plenty of ways for an "opt-in" program to look out for those who lack ready access to the web.
Libraries, senior centers, and neighborhood service centers should continue to receive and stock white pages directories. But the simplest way is probably some version of this: instead of mailing each and every customer an 5+ pound brick of paper once a year, phone companies could periodically send out pre-stamped postcards instead. Check a box to "opt in," drop it in the mail, and your phone book will arrive shortly. Do nothing, and you won't be saddled with another wasteful phone book.
Finally, I hope it's clear to readers that I don't want to "ban" phone books. I just want to make them optional, rather than mandatory.
Eric de Place
Sightline Institute
Posted Tue, Jan 17, 7:12 a.m. Inappropriate
I have no problem if the phone companies want to keep making phone books. I just don't want them dropped off at my house unless I ask for them.
Posted Tue, Jan 17, 10:22 a.m. Inappropriate
I'm glad to hear that other people have better luck finding telephone numbers on the web than I do but consider this: after I look up "wallpaper" in the yellow pages I don't get a dose of spam promoting interior finishes. There is a secure sense of anonymity in those paper listings. What you look for is reassuringly private. That may or may not be the case with web lookup.
Posted Tue, Jan 17, 1:48 p.m. Inappropriate
Well gee I may be on my lap top commenting but I have no idea how to find your phone number except look in a phone book. I suppose if I google and poke around I will find some sort of list but it is already in my phone book, so why?
Posted Tue, Jan 17, 4:18 p.m. Inappropriate
I hope people get as excited about solving climate change, stormwater pollution and issues other than phone books.
Posted Wed, Jan 18, 9:02 a.m. Inappropriate
Three quick responses...
keith,
If you prefer print phone directories, then by all means keep getting them. I certainly won't stand in your way! All I'm trying to do is to make it legal for phone companies to stop delivering the white pages to my house. Right now, state law says they've got to plop one on my doorstep once a year whether I want it or not. That's nuts.
davidrsmithdvm,
Keep in mind that cell phone numbers are not listed in the white pages, so there's already a huge (and growing) swath of numbers that are unavailable in conventional print directories.
SallyD,
I agree! Making phone book delivery optional is not exactly the defining challenge of our generation. That said, it's also an exceptionally easy and bipartisan fix. It would literally require the legislature to revise just a sentence or two of their direction to the Utilities & Trade Commission. And doing so would save the weight, in paper, of 3 fully-loaded 747s.
Posted Fri, Jan 20, 12:27 p.m. Inappropriate
Fine, allow those who do not want the white pages to opt out, but please make the automatic delivery to the masses continue. I can't tell you how many times I've used the Qwest white, and yellow, pages at my own home, and at the homes of others.
They are a reliable tool, 24/7, power on or power off.
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