Blog Journeys of a Lifelong Learner

While digital resources are generally far more effective than analog tools for maintaining lists of contacts and locating businesses, they are sometimes unavailable. Emergency situations can render computer resources unusable, and there are numerous times when the ability to locate contact and business information must be maintained during an electrical outage. Does this mean that telephone books should still be used? Of course not! Every crisis brings new business opportunities.

Emergency contact resources should be streamlined, so as to minimize the amount of distraction and confusion caused by information overload. Analog resources do not need to be comprehensive; they must simply be sufficient for meeting the occasional needs of users who have been temporarily separated from their much loved connectivity.

A web service could enable users to give their contact list, location, and general demographic information to an automated application for generating contact and service directories. Users could subscribe to periodically receive updated books.

The power of generating customized books would be readily apparent in that the information contained in the books would be more relevant than the general information found in all-purpose telephone books.

Customers would spend more to receive personalized service and would thereby be more motivated to be prepared for disasters. The knowledge that much information would be unavailable in the event of a catastrophe would encourage increased efforts to avert such an event.

A personal emergency resource company would, in addition to regularly updated books, offer personalized telephone assistance (since analog land lines function even in electrical outages) to troubled clients. Chatting with a robot would be much more productive than thumbing through a bloated and wasteful directory of individuals and businesses.

The absence of telephone books could prove to be beneficial in another way, in that the loss of digital resources and connectivity would seem more painful in the absence of analog media. Driven to desperate circumstances, people might learn to form relationships with neighbors rather than to rely on inanimate objects (digital or otherwise) to provide assistance in trying circumstances.