Like most people I have a cell phone.If I use it to take a picture, I can send that photo any number of places with a tap, swipe, and tap.It works that way with scanned documents as well.Using a hand-held phone, I can scan important papers, convert them to PDFs, and send them via email, text, “AirDrop” (whatever that is), Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—you name it.Except fax.That I cannot do.The other day a company wanted me to send them a document by fax.Within seconds I had scanned it with my phone and was ready to send it, but instead experienced electronic constipation.The company had no email; it had to come by fax.
Now, like most reasonably modern people, we have no fax machine at home.We still have some in the office in New York, but they are clunky, noisy, and seldom actually work.The technology to receive documents has improved beyond the photostatic smear that facsimiles represent.I worked for a company where the warehouse insisted on orders by fax.You’d fax them the order and wait for the phone to ring.They couldn’t read the fax and you had to tell them what it said.Well, this particular company I was dealing with wanted a fax.I downloaded two or three “free” fax apps.They suspiciously wanted my credit card info.Besides, if you send more than one page they wanted at least ten bucks for a “package” deal.I had to send a three-page document.I checked to see if my laptop could do it.The manufacturer’s website said it could, but the menu option it told me about didn’t appear.Who insists on faxes any more?
This is the dilemma of mixed technologies.It’s like those movies where the streets of some exotic city are filled with rickshaws, cars, bicycles, and pedestrians.The fax, in this analogy, is the pedestrian.My mother doesn’t have email, let alone the capability to text (or fax).Ours is a telephone relationship.Yet in my hand I hold a device that can send this document anywhere in the world with a tap, swipe, and tap.I recall my first trip to Jerusalem where hand-drawn carts, cars, and yes, camels, shared the streets.This was in the days before the internet.To contact home even by telephone was cumbersome and costly.Yet somehow we survived.I’d arranged the trip utilizing a travel agency and funded it by a letter-writing campaign.The Ektachrome slides I took are now a pain to look at because technology has so improved our lives.Unless, of course, you need to send a fax.Delivery by camel can at least be arranged via the internet.
