As technology churns out its never-ending array of new gadgets, we stumbling humans, as usual, are always a diode or two short of a transistor. Most of us, not wanting to be labelled resistant to change, welcome the new machines with open arms, if not open minds. In 1992, though moderately more advanced in our approach, we are not that much different from some of the people in the early days of the automobile who used to hitch their horses up to the front of their cars in order to save on gas.
Today’s FAX machines are the equivalent in many ways of those early autos. And while I’m sure that some day they will have found their right and proper place in the office and the home, as it is, they are having a few growing pains. At least, their users are.
[the_ad_placement id=”top-of-page”]
Someone across town or in another city, takes a page with three paragraphs typed on it, slides it into his new FAX machine, punches a few numbers and presto, it’s on it’s way to me. What could be simpler? A problem arises, however, when the sender gets an uneasy feeling that the important document he has just relayed to me might not, in fact, have made it into my hands. Maybe it arrived in some other office, by mistake. Or maybe it just never made it out of the telephone lines and is floating out there somewhere between satellites high above the planet.
So, as would seem only logical, the sender now takes the time to call me personally, to see whether or not I got the FAX. For some news releases, several pages in length, this might not seem like a waste of time. But for a small item which takes 20 seconds to read, a one-minute phone call to confirm the arrival of the FAX might seem like a duplication. Could the sender have simply called me up in the first place with his simple 50-word statement?
But, the first rule about technology is that it is there to be worshipped and to be used.
Now big offices, mostly of the government kind and originating out of Toronto and Ottawa, take this checking up business a few steps further. They will send a FAX, then, uncertain if it actually made it, will send it again. So now, I hold two FAXes in my hand. The next day in the mail, will arrive at least one and maybe two of the same press releases I received by FAX the day before.
Now, forgive my crankiness on this point, but wasn’t the FAX machine supposed to be used instead of the mail?
What some of these companies and government offices are now doing is paying the cost of sending one and maybe two FAXes, not to mention the staff time spent in transmitting them, and then paying for the same material to be delivered by mail.
And then, the ultimate curiosity comes when someone from the office phones a day or two later to confirm that the FAX or the mail or both arrived safely. Three contacts have been made where in days gone by only one – the mail – would have pretty much covered it.
[the_ad_placement id=”top-of-page”]
But, so deep is our love of lights and buttons and buzzers and whirlygigs, that someone who questions the value of the FAX is about as welcome in an office as a dog at a cat show.
Someday, no doubt, there will be invented a glorified FAX machine which we’ll be able to climb into, press a few buttons and be transported, seconds later. to another place. But, there will be sure to be glitches in that system at first, too. To think of one, you wouldn’t want to dial the wrong number.
Say, to your local prison, for example.
Or to even worse places and when I think of what a few of those might be, I will draw up a list and FAX it to you.
Let me know if you don’t get it.
Like the country song says, if your phone’s not ringing, that’s me not calling.
©1992 Jim Hagarty
