Our love affairs with phone numbers

Yesterday’s New York Times had an article about cell phone users and their attachment to their area code.

 

“Like a rear-windshield decal or an old college T-shirt, a cellphone number has become as much a part of an identity as a Social Security number. It represents a hometown, a college or a first job, and such memories are not casually thrown aside for a few good years with a 202 romance. For these area-code clingers, those 10 little digits provide a constant in the face of changing locations and uncertain futures.”

 

And all this time, I thought I was the only one who has grown an emotional attachment to the same phone number all these years. One time in January I was talking to fellow alum at a UVA happy hour, she asked me to call her cell phone, and when it rang, she made a point of noticing that I still had a Virginia phone number.

 

The day will soon come when being able to tell where a person lives from his area code will be a thing of the past. The former President of AT&T, David W. Dorman, spoke at Kenan-Flagler in December. He said in the previous nine months, 87% of first household starts (defined as someone starting a new household such as a college student graduating and starting out for the first time) were wireless only and did not have a landline.