The address book used to be the quintessential way of keeping in touch with everyone in your past and present. For the player, there was the little black book. He with the most numbers in it was king. For couples there was the shared book. In my family it was a pink, hard cover three ring address book that was falling apart at every seam. But back then, every family had one
Enter Outlook, Friendster, My Space and Facebook and the death knell of traditional address books has been rung. The address book has fallen by the wayside for all but the die hard hobbyists and arts and crafts crowd. The upside is that the digital address book is becoming a thing of art.
Let’s start with the early stuff. Outlook is nice but it’s an individual thing. It doesn’t have the community or family feel that the old pink book used to have. Besides, everyone with a cell phone carries their address book around with them these days.
The social network was a leap in sharing and communicating. Don’t think anybody really saw this coming but it makes sense that it was the next logical step of the address book, except these address books updated themselves. Not too shabby. Whether you are using Myspace or Facebook the problem with the social network is that there is a fair amount of pressure to participate. That was never an issue with the old address book.
It’s hard not to miss the ease of the old days when things were on paper. You had your address book, your birthday book and baby book. There is no doubt that things have become more convenient and connected but its hard not to get nostalgic when going back home for the holidays and pulling out that old pink piece of junk still lying in the junk drawer.
