Scott McLemee wants to know the zeitgeist of the 00s as a decade.

The 00s were the decade when it stopped being okay to call me on the phone and ask me stuff you could find on the Internets in about fifteen seconds. And no, this is not some fit of pique, a row with an imaginary maître d’ culminating in the shriek, “Do you know who I am?” The premise there is that you should; my premise here is that you don’t and you shouldn’t—but the Internet does, and it would tell you, and that would save us both a deal of time and money.

People have actually called me to ask my email address. I honestly don’t know how it is possible for this to occur.

And of course this doesn’t apply to you if you are living in the Third World, or perhaps if you are quite old, or poor, or poorly educated, or somehow cannot use the Internet very well for medical reasons I can’t now imagine. But for Heaven’s sake, that is not the class of people who do the calling.

Mainly, in fact, they are journalists. You can always tell the really quality journalists, because they will call and say, “I saw in this article I found that you think x. Is that right?” Instead of, “My editor said I should call you to ask about x. Can you tell me why?”

I never, ever, give out this link to people, because I am too polite. But seriously.