What’s Your Number?

Do you remember phone numbers? Has your memory of phone numbers changed with technology that stores those numbers?

I used to have a knack for remembering phone numbers. I knew my home number, of course, back when the whole family had just one number. In college, however, I remembered lots of numbers: school, work, a gas station that did repairs, the radio station request line, my girlfriend’s number. I also knew numbers of aunts, grandma, the record store and most of my friends. All of that information was stored in my head.

Later in life, as I needed to recall more phone numbers, I began the habit of writing them on the back on a business card stashed in my wallet. I used a Rolodex at work and carried a pocket-sized address book.

These days I still know my home number, although I rarely call it. But I don’t know the switchboard number at work or any co-worker’s direct dial desk number or cell phone number. I know the radio station’s request line number because I work there and have spoken it on the air thousands of times, but I do not know the special insider number employees use to call the DJ.

I was thinking about this today as I tried to remember my wife’s cell phone number.

I actually don’t know it, even though I call her several times a day. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to remember any phone number because every number I need to know is programmed on my cell phone. Several hundred numbers.

This is a huge technological shift, isn’t it?

Here is another change: in the Rolodex days, you looked up a number then punched the digits on the phone. Now you highlight a name on the cell phone screen and press Send.

As the number of numbers we need to know has grown … multiple home land lines, a separate cell number for each family member, friend and business contact … so has the number of numbers in a number, from six in the 1950s to seven for many decades to ten in regions like mine that require the area code for every call.

But we have another techno-change that offsets the additional digits: speed dial.

To reach my sister, press 5. Hit 6 for the boss, 7 for work voice mail; 2 will get me that DJ. My wife? 4.

This could be especially good as aging Boomers experience gradually diminishing memories. Instead of ten numbers per person, we just have to remember the speed dial number. Forget that? Search for a name on the screen. Forget a name? I don’t even want to think about that yet; my number will be up soon enough.