Virtual obsolescence.

• Author: Rundles, Jeff
• Position: The use of virtual technology

A CURIOUS THING HAPPENED WHEN I WENT TO pick up my son from daycare the other week. Our provider, licensed in her own home, handed me a business card.

Now, I have known this woman for years, and I know her address and telephone number by heart, so getting her business card was a surprise. She explained that the phone number on the card was her cell-phone number, and that she wanted people to get used to that number because she was going to get rid of her regular telephone altogether.

To someone my age, this is nearly blasphemous. What, no telephone in your house? But of course, people in their 20s think nothing of this; they are tethered to their cell phones and would not--thank you very much--like to be tethered to their apartments.

I think my parents had the same phone number for more than 50 years, but now, with the myriad of new area codes being introduced and the notion of 10-digit dialing becoming universal, no one cares anymore.

My wife and I still have a home phone, but we gave up using it for long-distance service because our cell phones come with free long distance. We are seriously considering just dropping the home phone and putting the money into cellular technology.

I mean, we don't use the phone line at home for the Internet anymore--we went with a high-speed cable modem--and the whole idea of long distance is obsolete. Now, in a very real way, the home-wired telephone is all but obsolete as well. I have heard many people say the only reason they have a phone line into their house is for the Internet, but soon wireless technology for our computers will do away with that reason as well.

I gotta tell you, when the phone company and the long-distance providers become archaic and anachronistic, the world has become a very strange place indeed.

But there is even more strangeness out there. The other day one of my daughters asked me why the car I was driving had a cassette player. What with her iPod digital music recorder and her compact disc collection, the audio-cassette is quickly going the way of the eight-track (she has no idea what an eight-track was). Also, if you have checked the news recently, in about January of this year, DVD sales and...