Earlier this year when I was in Athens, Ga., I went looking for this cool payphone I saw the last time I was in town, which was back in 2008. This particular payphone near the University of Georgia campus had all sorts of funky grafitti and bumper stickers around it. But, low and behold, the thing had vanished like a rare elephant breed in Tanzania.
A similar experience happened to me when I was a rest stop near Kannapolis, NC, on I-85. Every single payphone in the place had been removed though tehir booths still remained, and all that was left were these Yellowbook pages for phones which no longer existed.
Today, it is safe to say that Clark Kent will now need to find other ways to become Superman. Though Wikipedia states that payphones are still popular in developing countries, such as Uganda where one can find bicycle payphones, the same is not true here in the United States.
According to Wikipedia, there were over two million payphone here is les etats unis in the year 2000. Today, that number has dwindled to 700,000 as both Verizon and AT & T have ceased payphone services.
Hence, the payphone, which first became popular circa 1925, is our first 'Casualty of Modern Technology,' and with ever-expanding communication methods, a person traveling down a highway without a cellphone may just have to resort to using smoke signals.
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