Slashdot Mirror
The Fax is Not Yet Obsolete (theatlantic.com)
Fax, once at the forefront of communications technologies but now in deep decline, has persisted in many industries. From a report: Law-enforcement agencies remain heavily reliant on fax for routine operations, such as bail postings and return of public-records requests. Health care, too, runs largely on fax. Despite attempts to replace it, a mix of regulatory confusion, digital-security concerns, and stubbornness has kept fax machines droning around the world.
An early facsimile message was sent over telegraph lines in London in 1847, based on a design by the Scottish inventor Alexander Bain. There is some dispute over whether it was the first fax: Competing inventors, including Bain in the United Kingdom and Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell across the Atlantic, sought to father facsimile technology, which was a kind of white whale for inventors. Telegraphs already allowed messages to be passed across distances, one letter at a time using Morse code. But the dream of transmitting copies of messages and images instantly over wires was very much alive.
Writing in 1863, Jules Verne imagined that the Paris of the 1960s would be replete with fax machines, or as he called them, "picture-telegraphs." The technology did eventually lead to a revolution in communication, though it didn't happen until years later. It first became known to many Americans after the 1939 New York World's Fair, where a fax machine transmitted newspaper images from around the world at a rate of 18 minutes per page -- lightning speed for the time. Further reading: 'You Had to Be There': As Technologies Change Ever Faster, the Knowledge of Obsolete Things Becomes Ever Sweeter.
An early facsimile message was sent over telegraph lines in London in 1847, based on a design by the Scottish inventor Alexander Bain. There is some dispute over whether it was the first fax: Competing inventors, including Bain in the United Kingdom and Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell across the Atlantic, sought to father facsimile technology, which was a kind of white whale for inventors. Telegraphs already allowed messages to be passed across distances, one letter at a time using Morse code. But the dream of transmitting copies of messages and images instantly over wires was very much alive.
Writing in 1863, Jules Verne imagined that the Paris of the 1960s would be replete with fax machines, or as he called them, "picture-telegraphs." The technology did eventually lead to a revolution in communication, though it didn't happen until years later. It first became known to many Americans after the 1939 New York World's Fair, where a fax machine transmitted newspaper images from around the world at a rate of 18 minutes per page -- lightning speed for the time. Further reading: 'You Had to Be There': As Technologies Change Ever Faster, the Knowledge of Obsolete Things Becomes Ever Sweeter.
You cannot beat the simplicity of a fax machine. You put in a piece of paper, enter someone's phone number, and it just WORKS. Yeah, you could in theory say the same about email, but think about how complicated it gets to attempt to scan an image, and then get that image into an email attachment? Everyone here on /. probably knows how, but honestly sit down and attempt to write up the steps for someone who isn't a hard-core techie that just needs to get the job done. Too much tech is getting in the way of the actual jobs at hand.
Fax is very much alive in Japan. We use it often for the stupidest shit you think we'd be doing by email now...
How many of those doctors, service workers, and others are required by law or regulation to use FAXes?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
In the last five years I've moved from Australia to the USA and then to the UK, and now back to Australia. In all countries I have set up businesses, filed taxes for myself and the businesses, corresponded with the various government departments required to do all that stuff. I have had health care and gone to the doctors.
I had to send three faxes in this five year period - all to companies/organisations in the USA. Each time I had to do it (many months apart) I marvelled at what a weird anachronism it seemed to be, and asked various friends & family in other parts of the world if faxing was something they had to do very often (usually after me asking them if they had a way for me to send a fax, which they didn't), and they seemed equally surprised.
I can't remember the last time I sent a fax in Australia; easily more than 10 years ago.
Protection safeguards per the HIPAA laws vary with the method of data transmission. FAXes are assumed to be confidential as long as you know the number you're dialing is correct; e-mail and other digital means require you to validate most of your entire IT chain, and probably to encrypt the e-mail as well.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
This.
My broker (stock, not pawn) e-mails me PDFs of forms for signature. Most of the time, I sign it and scan/e-mail the signed copy back. On rare occasions, they want a wet-signed copy. Signed with blue ink, so it's evident that it's a real signature instead of Photoshopped. Those have to go back via snail-mail.
Have gnu, will travel.
When your doctor sends you to get blood drawn, those results come back to him as a fax. They are also sent via electronic data, but a shocking number of medical facilities still do everything by fax, and not because of anything having to do with the government.
And that test results page is packed with medically needed information that arrives as a goddamned image, as though it were a wedding picture. Someone in the doctor’s office has to sit down and transcribe that information into storable form. You better hope that person doesn’t miss a digit or transpose two fields.