Today's teenagers with cellphones will never know the importance of a telephone area code. Once upon a time, the area code helped pinpoint a person's location. Classic codes like 212 for New York, 202 for DC, 305 for Miami helped place a family's home in your memory - "that's right, the Brown's live in Chicago".

But now, with the rapid growth of cell phones, and the replacement of landlines in the US, it's harder to track someone you met to their homespot, and that lost memory trigger means we also lose just a bit of the filled-in knowledge of our friends and acquaintances.

Recently Vonage, the voice over Internet phone service provider, asked the FCC for permission to use the database of unused phone numbers, allowing it to assign area codes and numbers outside of their geographic locations. A limited trial has been granted.

With the reassigning of area codes, we lose a some of our social and location placement of people. Those cellphone-bearing teenagers on the East coast will never know it's not okay to call a 213 (formerly) LA number at 9am.  Just one tradeoff of a more globally-connected society.