Wednesday, September 1, 2010

For Retiring Guy, it's this soul classic



Link to September 1 San Jose Mercury News article, "Dumbed-down dialing: Cellphones do the remembering for us".

Excerpt: After a day by the surf in Daytona Beach, Fla., last year, Travis Erickson, 21, discovered that his cell phone had been either stolen or lost in the sand. He also discovered that he was stranded.

Though there were plenty of pay phones and beach-goers willing to lend their cell phones, he couldn't call his girlfriend of more than a year — with whom he lived and who was on her way to pick him up. He didn't know her phone number.

"I didn't even think about trying to know it, because we lived together," said Erickson, a model.

Like many of the 91 percent of Americans who are cell phone users, according to CTIA-The Wireless Association, an industry trade group, he programs all his numbers into the phone and dials by calling up names — not numbers — on the screen.

"I never had to know it," Erickson said, "because it was always in my pocket on my phone."

With our increased reliance on these dialing shortcuts, it may be that the only phone number many of us will remember in the future is the one in the 1982 Tommy Tutone song with the catchy chorus, "867-5309."


Nevertheless.....

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