The phone book in the drawer

In a kitchen drawer in a house in Riyadh, under the spare batteries, there is a printed telephone directory. Nobody has opened it in years. Nobody has thrown it out either.

It used to be how the family found a plumber, a cousin's new number, the shop across town that might have the part. It sat beside the telephone in the hall, which hardly rings now.

Most households keep a drawer like this. A road atlas with soft corners. A fax machine boxed in a cupboard for a reason nobody remembers. A camera that needed film. Each one, in its year, was the clever new thing people grumbled about having to learn.

It is tempting to look into that drawer fondly and decide the old tools were sturdier, more honest, somehow more ours. A few were. Plenty were not. What they share is that they were left behind quietly, without anyone deciding.

The tools I fuss over now are heading the same way. The feed that decides which of a small seller's posts anyone sees. The checkout page that loses a sale if it loads a second too slowly. The settings that take an afternoon to understand and then change again next month. One day someone will mention them with the same mild affection the directory gets now, and a child will not quite believe anyone put up with them.

Some of what replaced the directory is worse than what it replaced. Change makes no promise about improvement.

It only promises that nothing stays where it is, and the drawer keeps filling.