I found out today that a private equity firm has purchased the majority of the Yellow Pages from AT& T. Which prompts me to ask: when was the last time you used the yellow pages? A pay phone? In a similar vein, Google And The Death Of Getting Lost. In 10 years (2001 to 2011) wireless penetration in the USA went from ~40 percent to ~100 percent.* This is the difference between arranging a rendezvous ahead of time in precise detail, and being confident that you can just end it with "I'll call you."
Image credit: Wikipedia
* This is actually calculated by comparing the number of phones to people. Since some people have multiple phones, and businesses purchase them for their employees, "real" penetration is somewhat less than this. I suspect that it is a larger underestimate for 2001, as a larger proportion of phones were probably business-related.
