Memorizing Telephone Numbers
March 11th, 2005 | by Mike G |http://news.com.com/Think…ml?tag=nefd.top
About a year ago I realized I don’t memorize telephone numbers. Every time that one of my co-workers who, like me work from their home offices, wants to talk on the phone I need to ask them via instant messenger for their number.
When I realized this, it made me uncomfortable, and I traced it back to getting my first cell phone about 10 years ago. Ever since, I never put phone numbers into my memory, I just rely on the address book in the phones I have.
About the only number I have committed to memory, that is still active, is my parents’ phone number– only because I had that number memorized pre-cell.
I was reminded of this when I saw that C|Net has an article about this very phenomenon. One of their examples is Jeff Gillis who dropped and broke his phone, and with it all of his friends’ phone numbers. The only number he had in his head? His parents’– he had memorized it before ever having a cell of his own.
But, there is hope for us:
In the short run, the number of numbers to remember seems destined to grow, according to Bob Atkinson, chairman of the North American Numbering Council and director of policy research at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information at Columbia University. There are also fears that North America could run out of assignable 10-digit numbers by about 2030, Atkinson said.
But by then, he said, there may be just one omnibus address for each person to use for e-mail messages, instant messages and phone contact.
“By the year 2030, I could imagine most people wouldn’t even have phone numbers,” he said.
