100 Watt Walrus : Today, you could, say, buy and old house and stumble upon a forgotten trunk full of 50-year-old photographs, and that would be fascinating.

you know, some of us still print our pictures

heck, it is easier now than ever

I used to hate having to take film out of my camera and go somewhere to get prints

now I just upload photos to adorama's site, do the cropping with their tool for the size print I want, add them to my cart, and 2-3 days later, I have prints in the mail.

I use the phone book about once a year when my internets conks out. If the book didn't exist, worst case I would have to call a friend to look up a phone number.

Phone books are VERY useful.

Booster seats for the grandkids. Of course, you only need one or two, and they don't need to be replaced every few months.

/can't remember the last time I cracked one open to actually use

Fano: I make this point repeatedly in Kindle threads only to be called a Luddite.

I hear there are tons of data lost from the space program because it's on punchcards or on other otherwise inaccessible data formats.

Paper materials may crumble, but exist in a format that requires no machine to read.

even heard of printers?

Lots of people still print text and images.

And just about any files I had 20some years ago, I can still open due to the fact that I transferred what was worth keeping onto the newer media (aka from 5 1/4 to 3 1/2 to hard drive/CD to jump drive etc.) Heck even though I haven't really used my 3 1/2 diskettes in years, I still have the hardware in my machine for a just in case situation, and turns out that it has been handy a couple of time when I received something from someone that still uses them.

Celester: They're great for my rabbits to chew on.

But oh, the mess they make tearing up that paper...

LOL That's what my wife and I use them for as well. Phone books make an excellent chew and play toy for rabbits, even though it does end up an a massive mess, as you noted.

Re: the cessation of phone books... Stop wasting the paper, I say. I haven't used a white pages in, probably, 8 years, yet I get at least 3 phone books a year (a metro-wide white pages, a metro-wide yellow pages, and a community combined white-yellow pages).

I would gladly like to go greener and have none of these white or yelllow pages sent to me. They gather dust. I don't need to know everyone's phone number & address.