What's My Beef!

Back then, San Diego county had one area code; now we have 760, 858, and 619, and plans for two more to eventually take place sooner or later. Los Angeles county has so many area codes that the once-big 213 area code is confined to a small parcel downtown since that area has so many phone devices in use.

What could be done with this problem before we run out of three-digit area codes? Plenty!

For instance, why not go to an eight-digit phone number instead of seven? The last digit could represent a fax line, a celluar or PCS, a modem line, voice line, and whatever other phone devices are out there. The eighth digit could be from 1-6 for voice, 0 for fax, 7-9 for cellular or PCS, and for modems such as those you connect to ISPs, you could get away with making one of the letters of the alphabet as a digit. To connect to AOL, for instance, you could see something like 555-1234A or 555-1234Z. For regular phones, be sure you use only the digits 0-9 for now, but for modems, letters can appear anywhere else in the phone number as long as the last digit is from A-Z.

Another solution is to create new digits. Why be content with 0-9 when you can invent numbers based on the hexadecimal system. Many computers use binary, and groups of four make a hex digit. Computers use the letters A-F to represent 10-15 in base 16, which is the base for the hexadecimal system. You could create new digits like the ones I saw on the old Schoolhouse Rock shorts such as "dec" for 10, "el" for 11, and "doe" for 12. You can also add "tre" for 13, "quad" for 14, and "quin" for 15. Of course, you would need new hieroglyphics to represent them. And, of course, computers would have to be reprogrammed to accept the new digits, keyboards would have to be six keys longer or wider, programs would have to be rewritten to accetp the new six digits, etc. It would be even worse than the Y2K crisis from 1999!

Some people would rather have longer numbering systems like base 20 since we got 10 fingers and toes. Base 24 since it can be evenly divided by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 12. Base 12 can be divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6. Base 10 has just 2 and 5.

Is the world ready for some new digits to suppant the well-known decimal system? Who knows in 1000 years. The numbering system we're all using could be obsolete in the next millenium.

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