Evolution of animate nouns

In Czech when you use words that originally referred only to people, like průvodce (guide), but have evolved to refer to inanimate nouns, to signify a guidebook, you have to treat as animate nouns that they once exclusively were, thus: Ten průvodce, kterého (!) jsem si koupil, není moc dobrý (that guidebook that I bought isn't very good) and Musím si koupit dobrého (!) průvodce (I have to buy a good guidebook). It's funny how languages are sometimes slow in changing to a new world. An analogous example exists in English, where one still says to dial a number on a telephone, even though telephones have long not had dials, but buttons.