Maybe AT&T Has The

Why is no one crying for the loss of pay phones?

They are a thing of the past because cell phones provide personal, continuous access to the voice world. The economic no longer works to support a system of public phones.

At the same time, if a voice had informed us in 1976 that just over a generation into the future we would stop dropping dimes for calls home, but would willingly pay ten times ten times (yeah, that's no typo -- that's two orders of magnitude for you stat geeks, and when you think about it, many of us add another with that $100 iPhone data, unlimited texting, 1000-minute deal) that amount each month to have a personal communicator on our hip.

Journalism isn’t going away tomorrow. The key is convincing us to pay its real cost. The next Warren Buffett really is the William Randolph Hearst who figures out how to make palatable that same transition; from putting two quarters into a newspaper rack each day into electronic debiting two Euros a week for our local information.

I know I've said that before, notably in reviewing some of Rupert Murdoch said the in the Boyer Lectures. But the pay phone analogy smacks me right between the eyes with a V-8 moment.