From: doug@uuisis.isis.org (Doug Thompson)
Subject: Re: Future of fax?
Organization: International Shared Information Service (Ottawa)
Date: Thu, 09 Apr 92 19:11:15 GMT

lkomito@ccvax.ucd.ie writes:

> For someone who works in a paper environment, it is *much* simplier
> to write the note and send it by FAX than write the note, get it
> into a computer somewhere, and then figure out how to send to someone
> else (who may still have to get it downloaded and printed before
> he/she can read it!). Of course one can assume that everyone will,
> sooner rather than later, have a computer or terminal on their desk,
> but would everyone agree with such an assumption?

Of course FAX is great if you A) don't have a computer and B) do have a
FAX machine. I think there are a lot more people in the world with
access to computers than there are people with access to FAX! Dunno -
that's a hunch.

Since FAX machines can only do one job (and cost about as much as
computers) which computers do many jobs, there is a rather powerful
argument for getting a computer instead of a FAX if you can only do one.

Although penetration varies in different parts of the world, almost every
environment in which typewriters were found 20 years ago here is now
crowded with computers. There are often more computers than there were
typewriters. I find it hard to imagine that this trend will do anything
other than increase in the future.

As scanners, digitizers, and OCR technology advances, the capacity to
add an 'image reader' to computers so that you can send the image by
e-mail instead of FAX (cheaper) will increase.

This will, I nervously predict :-), result in a slow fading away of FAX
machines as *most* of their commercial uses are supplanted by e-mail
technology. 

While it will *never* be true that e-mail is better than FAX in *all*
cases or for all people, it will *likely* be true that FAX will decline
to a rather specialized and narrow market - much like the fountain pen.
You can still buy fountain pens, and they are fun to use, but I haven't
seen one used in a commercial communications environment since the
1950s.

And as for Seagull quills as writing instruments, I have *never* seen
one used. But likely there are places and applications where the quill
is more accessible than other writing instruments and would therefore be
the technology of choice.

FAX will remain strong in the market only if the use of paper in
non-computerized enviroments remains strong. I think FAX and paper are
intimately linked in the future, but the trend seems to be toward using
computers for most paper communication because most people seem to find
computers faster and more efficient than other means of generating
paper. 

While some undoubtedly prefer paper for *reading* messages, I think this
is changing too, such that use of the computer for reading is
increasing.

=Doug

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