[1999-10-15]
In this the third article in my rants'n'rave series, I'll talk about another pet-peeve of mine, this time in the domain of human-to-human communications and availability.
The year is 1999, soon to be 2000CE. The world population is larger than ever before, and communication is of the essence. Engineers have bridged the last remaining gaps in human-to-human communication. With the notabale exception of the language-barriers - and really tight-assed french people - one can communicate with someone on the other side of the planet with nothing but the tiniest of delays.
All would be good, if it weren't for fossils. That is, people who just can't seem to adapt to this new world.
People who don't know me very well often say that it's hard to get in touch with me. This of course, is bollocks. Let me illustrate:
Some time ago my contact at the unemployement office set out to communicate a very small and simple message to me. "You are to go there at date. Have a nice day". The imporant thing here is to make sure that I recieve the message before date come and pass, right? She failed. Apparently what happened is this:
She attempts to call me by phone. I admit I'm not easy to reach in the day, but if she were to call from around 18:00 to midnight, I'm almost sure to answer. I have no idea of how many times she tried, or at what time in the day, and it matter not because it failed. Good first try though, to call is simple and regardless of if I answer or not, you will know the current state of delivery. Surely you agree that it is somewhat important to make sure that I actually recieve the message? Good.
So what does she do next? She writes me a letter. This she do the 15:th of the month. The target date in the message is the 20:th. The 15:th happens to be on a Thursday. The letter is delivered the next day - Friday - at which time I queue it for reading after the weekend. I end up reading it first on the evening of Monday the 20:th. Ooops, I end up being one day late for my appointment.
My own fault? Partly. The first problem here is that the fossil used a very slow channel (postal service) for a very short message which really requires a protocol with a "handshake" to acknowledge delivery. The correct procedure would have been to email me the message. Wake up people, the internet is here (and have been for quite a while actually), there is no need for the classic phone conversation any more. I'm taking the first steps to completely eliminate the phone as a way as to reach me. The classic analogue and stream based phone is ancient and I see no place for it in the future. I'm now doing my share to make sure it dies quickly. No need for a long lingering death here, let's just replace this old stuff with the new, quick and flexible technologies made possible by the internet. Adapt or die.
My next example is from an acquaintance of mine who works at IBM. They run Lotus Notes with all of what that means. Anyway, he told me this: He sent a message by email to a colleague. The colleague printed out the message, answered it by actually writing his comment on the bottom of the print out with a ballpen, walked with the printout across the office and pinned it to my friends chair. See what I mean? Fossils.
Why do people assume they have the right to contact you? I mean, sure, you can try if you want, but - and this might sound arrogant - but I'm not obliged to communicate with you. I will answer when I feel like it, and if I answer, I reserve the right to end communications at any time I see fit - and that might just happen one second after you ask me to look up a phone number for you. Do I sound like a fscking telco?!
So, if you need to contact me, you know what to do. There is no excuse now, I've told you how. If it ain't digital, it ain't the correct way.
You too can rant and rave! Eddy would sure love to hear your comments on this article.
(c)1999 Eddy L O Jansson. All rights reserved. All trademarks acknowledged.