With more and more households ditching landlines, the concept of a phone number attached to an address is also being abandoned. Swedish operator “3” is trying to preserve the past by giving up to 9 people the option to be contacted in one of three ways with their new service dubbed “3Hemnummer Familj”. The first is simple enough, call one number and everyone who is registered under that particular family will have their mobile ring. The second is a little bit more complicated, it’s a waterfall effect whereby you select the order in which people’s phones ring. Dad gets the first alert, then mom, then the older brother, and finally the little sister. The third, which is the most practical, is a voice menu that says something along the lines of “Push 1 for Daddy”, “Push 2 for Mommy”, “Push 3 for Billy”, you get the idea.
So now your 10 year old daughter not only has her own mobile number that she can use to talk about castles, kings, queens, boys, and whatever it is girls that age talk about, but also a family number that you as a parent can put on all her school forms. This ancient concept of a number representing an address though, that’s now being replaced by a number representing an individual, does is deserve to die or should it live on? It’s not a question of price, well for most of us at least, since mobile phones cost less than a day’s wages and depending on how heavy you use it, it’s barely half a day’s wages per month. But just the thought of a child, barely double digits old, having her own little toy to fiddle with constantly instead of being outside playing in the mud and getting her knees scrapped because she fell off her bike … something just doesn’t sit right with me.
I’m going to be a parent in 5 years, so these are the things I think about. Constantly.