Boston Globe's Alex Beam Muses on a Series of Exaggerated Pronouncements

"Say it with me."  (Although it focuses on reading, Paul Saffo's quote still serves as a useful antidote.)

Long gone?. From landlines to e-mail to movies to print, their demise has been greatly exaggerated. (Boston Globe, 3/4/2011)

Snippets from Alex Beam's column.

Everything is obsolete. Or is it?

“We consistently find that states in the Northeast are more likely to retain their landlines,’’ the CDC’s Dr. Stephen Blumberg told me, making me feel better about being un-young and un-restless.

Maybe you didn’t get the memo, but voice mail is no more.

Scenester extraordinaire Choire Sicha — he was one of the first editors at Gawker.com, worked at the New York Observer when that still meant something, and cofounded TheAwl.com — recently declared that “e-mail is over."

Aren’t movies obsolete?

Books? No one has read a “p-book’’ — that’s industry jargon for “print books’’.

Wait — aren’t libraries obsolete? The subject of my next column, perhaps.