Progress?

When I was growing up in the Sixties, the thought of having computers and modern technology were always couched in terms of 'labour-saving devices', and the thought of an idyllic world where machines did all the menial labour, giving people time to enjoy life.

When I first started out in an office in the late Seventies, the telex machine was just being phased out, having been first introduced just after the Second World War. Telegraphy providers developed systems that used telephone-like rotary dialing to connect teletype machines. Provided each recipient had a machine, simple text messages could be sent within minutes. Most correspondence was in the form of traditional post. And if something was urgent, and you received a telex, you knew you had to turn it around within a week!

The Seventies saw the evolution of telefacsimile machines, popular in Japan as it was faster to handwrite characters than type them. Consisting of an image scanner, a modem, and a printer, the machine took off during the Eighties, being abbreviated to 'telefax' and eventually to simply 'fax'. Any office could have one, and they could be easily connected to a phone line. And if something was urgent, you knew you had to turn it around that day!

The Nineties saw the replacement of standalone fax machines by fax servers and scanners, and with the evolution of the internet and adoption of electronic mail it was increasingly easy to attach documents to send to each other from each desktop. This saw a financial advantage of reducing costs by eliminating unnecessary printouts and reducing the number of inbound analogue telephone lines needed by an office. Traditional post dwindled to a trickle, and e-mails ruled the earth. And if something was urgent, you knew you had to turn it around that morning!

The 21st Century is here, and we find we can communicate with each other by a variety of different electronic sources. We now communicate by text messaging, instant messaging, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, website links, intranet and extranet sites. Most of us have mobile phones with text messaging and e-mails can now reach you anywhere in the world if you have the latest Blackberry. And people will e-mail, fax you, text you, even phone you up asking for an urgent response. In today's world of fast cars, fast women and fast food, business has to be fast - urgent means right NOW!

Is that what they call progress?