Printed Phone Books? Whatever.

Is it just that I disdain printed books, or is it that I'm a product of a generation that increasingly prefers to get information online?

When our Office Manager came around passing out the new Phone Books this week, I politely said "no thanks". I honestly can't tell you the last time I used a Phone Book to find a number. I go to Google and type in what I need, and without fail, get the number I'm looking for, usually quicker than I'd find it in a big yellow book, and without having that big 1000-page monstrosity on my shelf. And its always up-to-date; we were looking for places to get some photos blown-up from old negatives, and my boss once called three places that she found in a phone book. She couldn't get ahold of them; when I heard who she was calling, I had to laugh because all three had been out of business for at least a year.

But I'm strange for preferring to go online.

Last week, when we were working on a map, I used Google Maps to get the dots in the right places. She tried to use that, and became frustrated quickly and exclaimed that the online maps were hard to use and unreliable. Preferred a trusty oversized Road Atlas.

I love big maps as much as the next guy, especially those big ones that you can hang on your wall to exclaim to all the world that you're a Geography Stud. Nothing cooler than a big ol' map of the U.S. of A. on your wall, with fold marks intact and push pins in the corners. Oh, you bet.

But if at all possible, I prefer to go online for my maps. One, I don't have to do rudimentary geometry to find things -- looking in an Index for the quadrant a particular city is in, then locating that elusive B-6 quadrant, and the city within said quadrant -- and two, its quicker.

Call me strange (or an idiot), but I don't foresee a need for either an Atlas or a Phone Book in my life, nor on my desk. I'm guessing most people my age feel similarly, and most people my parent's age prefer the printed versions. Nothing wrong with either one. Just a difference. And a divide in the Generation Gap, I suppose.