I noticed that there is a big stack of Yellow Pages books outside of my building and it reminded me that the YP are still relevant [?], with the majority of people using 'smart' phones, any information that is located in the yellow pages can easily be obtained from most smart phones. The White Pages book which contain people's phone numbers can also be accessed via Internet (if there isn't an ap for that). Having said that:
Do you use the Yellow Pages?
Do you think these books should be eliminated (at least for big cities)?
Do you know how much does it cost to produce YP book? or where the money comes from?
Please answer these questions (living in US). I know that at least for my building they are ignored and eventually thrown away.
In Italy same story. Yellow and White Pages (and plus a lot of throwaways on the car and) near to the doors of the buildings. And almost nobody is using home phone, but in the YP or WP you find just home phone numbers! In Italy money to produce YP comes from advertisement.
ReplyDeleteA YP or WP book has a cost, but they print a lot so they can make them with a low-budget. And more low-quality paper and low-quality printing. But making books has ecological "costs" too...
Anyway, it is just a matter of time, the economic system cannot delete in a few months professional people working in the printing houses (printmaker, layout artist, book designer, color expert...), cause of a lot of people would lose job. Even if old printing house and offset printing are going to go out of business cause of digital revolution, the process have to be "human" and slow (early retirement, redundancy payment, layoff).
In about two-three years old concept of printing will completely disappear, as well old concepts of publishing companies, reading and consulting books.
I agree partially with your comment because I think it will actually take more than 3 years for printing businessess to go disapear, but its a possibility for the most industrialized countries (though I still think it will take much longer than that).
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