Charlie Maffitt

I saw a news story online recently that said watchmakers are scrambling because so many people use their mobile phones as their primary timepiece. I'll admit, I'm far less likely to wear a watch these days with the knowledge that my phone will pick up the slack.

So phones are taking over territory from watches. At the same time I think we are recovering territory from our phones, in the form of available memory.

In 1995, how many phone numbers did you have memorized? I'll bet that number has been cut in half, if not more by now. I've come so far as to get my list of memorized numbers down to a handful. At present I know exactly four phone numbers off the top of my head: my cell phone, the landline to my parents' house in North Carolina, the number of my cousin's house when we were kids, and 911. I can also remember a couple of prior iterations of my own cell phone number, but those are no longer valid, so I'm not counting them. Every other number I "have" is stored on a microchip.

What now lives in my memory in place of all those phone numbers? Hopefully something useful, like good memories, not more numbers.