A new copy of The Phone Book (for Newport and South East Wales) arrived here last month. At a mere 152 pages it’s a thin shadow of the telephone directories of yore. No-one would choose to rip this one in half as a feat of strength. I was going to include a scan of its cover in this post, but it’s unlovely enough that I’ll just link to it instead.
Not just another new copy, this is the very last one. The grim words “FINAL EDITION / Hold on to it forever” make that plain. I don’t imagine many will obey that instruction. Very few folk will have any practical use for it, and such utility as it holds will further fade with time. Even from the standpoint of historical interest, any Yellow Pages from the tail end of the last century will contain much more of value than this vestigial thing.
I recall in the later ’90s feeling vaguely perturbed that each new phone-book seemed thicker than the last, wondering where the ever-bulkier unwieldiness of each new edition could be leading. But then there came a point where new phone-books arrived alongside those AOL CDs offering free trials of dial-up internet access, which proved to be, alongside the simultaneous explosion in mobile phone use, the beginning of the end for them.
