The move from storing data on paper in a filing cabinet or paper file is almost a thing of the past and now everything is stored digitally. This includes the storage of all your personal contact details. There was time when everyone had their family and friends’ names stored in address books – alphabetically.
When correspondence was harder and involved picking up an ink pen and connecting it to paper in order to pass a message between yourself and whomsoever you wanted you could guarantee being able to find, in someone’s house, an address book. Of course this was also at a time when the information stretched to their postal address and landline phone number. Now, you have two dozen ways of contacting your friends and family – and indeed you connect with more people.
Some people do still store paper copies of all of the important contacts they hold, largely because let’s be honest digital storage is known to have its flaws and can give up the ghost in the blink of an eye. So, the progression in technology that has lead to everyone having a mobile phone and various social networking handles, email addresses, landlines, fax machines and postal addresses also dictates that the storage system must develop and have the capacity to take all of these contact details.
Smart phones are the prime source of storage as they allow you to not only store the information but also contact anyone, via any handle at the touch of a button. Speaking as someone who has a very up to date smart phone and uses it daily for all sorts of reasons – business and social – it must be acknowledged that however brilliant this ability is, there are, as ever, flaws in the system.
Let’s take the contact ‘dad’ for instance. Everyone’s got one; he’s a busy man, an international business man, living overseas no less so his contact details are vast. Once you’ve got two mobile phone numbers, two work phone numbers, a home landline number, an email address, two online phone calling service numbers, four social network handles and a postal address the space on the page is lacking somewhat, digital is the way forward. However, due to the nature of smart phones these accounts and details are all linked and therefore data, like names, are shared. Most people save their dads in their phones under the name ‘dad’ but social networking handles will be their name, obviously. This confuses the ironically titled smart phones and you often end up with a strange hybrid version of the name that is less than satisfactory.