Even US plans mobile book

Terling Wilson cannot find his old friends. Wilson, 25, who grew up in Southern California and now lives in the state capital of Sacramento,...

Terling Wilson cannot find his old friends. Wilson, 25, who grew up in Southern California and now lives in the state capital of Sacramento, has been trying to make contact with childhood chums. He figures that the ones he has not tracked down must have cellphones, but he has no idea where to look up their numbers.

8216;8216;They8217;re not listed in the 411 directory,8217;8217; Wilson complained. Some people would like to change that. In October, most major cellphone carriers plan to start compiling a publicly accessible listing of wireless phone numbers. Being listed in the new cellphone directory will be strictly voluntary, reflecting an increasing tension in today8217;s digital world. New technologies make people easily accessible any time, in the remotest of locations. At the same time, users of the new gadgets are becoming far more guarded about who gets to reach out and touch them. In surveys, Americans, fearing lost privacy and telemarketers, overwhelmingly say they do not want their cellphone number to be publicly available. But there is a price to pay for keeping the circle closed. 8216;8216;People would love to be able to contact each other,8217;8217; said James E. Katz, a professor of communications at Rutgers University. 8216;8216;But they are very reluctant to be reached.8217;8217;

The advent of new technology has has also broken up the once-monolithic world of telecommunications. At one time, the phone book served as the central clearinghouse of contact information. Just about everybody had a number listed in the white pages. Today, only 65 percent of American households are listed in a telephone directory, a decrease from the 72 per cent who were listed two years ago, according to Survey Sampling International, SSI, a company in Fairfield, Conn., that keeps a nationwide database of white pages listings.

The unlisted numbers continues to grow, but the decrease in listings is also a result of the move, particularly among younger people, to abandon home phones in favor of relying entirely on a cellphone, according to SSI.

The emerging telecommunications technologies, like e-mail, instant messaging, text messaging and paging, do not publish directories. Experts in the field see that absence of information as a paradox of the information age. 8216;8216;People have never been harder to find,8217;8217; said Kathleen Pierz, a partner at the Pierz Group, which researches phone directories and people8217;s attitudes toward them. A survey of mobile phone users that Pierz plans to publish indicates that only about 26 per cent would participate in a directory if it were available.

Those who lament the absence of a mobile phone directory will have to wait until next year, at the earliest, to get access to the one soon to be compiled. That is when its developers hope to make the database available to people seeking contact information, said John Walls, a spokesman for the Cellular Telephone Industry Association, a trade group that is spearheading development of the directory.

8212;NYT