Speaker’s corner
IHAVE been a daily newspaperman for many, many years – and then some. And I have watched changes that have, to my uncomplicated mind, been terribly confusing and unnecessary. I recall 25 years ago, the newspaper for which I worked, announcing it was installing a Voice Smart System – “a telephone system that never sleeps, seven days a week. An automated attendant will be on every line, right around the clock, ready to step in as soon as one leaves the office”.
The system was to take over in a week’s time and, as I predicted, it created culture shock registering 9 on the Richter Scale.
Some of us had hardly got used to the PABX system installed 20 years earlier. It was now deemed to be obsolete even though I had not yet learnt the functions of most of the telephone’s buttons. I once pressed one labelled DIVERT and, although it might have been a coincidence, that day’s SAA flight 310 from Frankfurt to Johannesburg landed at Port Elizabeth.
The new system would include “Voice Mail”. A little man inside each telephone would, day and night, record details of calls – even whole stories – and as soon as I picked up the phone the magic voice would tell me all about it.
People could talk in to it for 15 minutes. That was its worst feature. Even the Gettysburg Address didn’t take that long. Hopefully most callers would tell their story and not need anybody to ring back. This could save vast amounts of telephone time and asking people how they are.
Some managerial type, who had “important” written all over him, came down from Above to our editorial floor to explain everything to a small group of us senior editorial people. He smiled disarmingly because he knew that senior editorial people had never really been comfortable with advanced technology. Some were still scared of things like code-activated doors and some would leap about when they heard bleeps.
We folded our hands in our laps and assumed grave expressions while the man from Above explained that our telephones would, in future, greet us in the morning. We quickly glanced at each other. It would tell us who called during the night or who called when we were still at lunch at 4.30 the previous afternoon. The editor fidgeted. It would recite messages sent out by the boss.
We would be able to tell the little man in our machine that if a certain call came through while we were dining at Bimbo’s, he could ring us there.
If we were not sure about something we just had to press a button and a voice would direct us, stage by stage, on how to operate the blasted thing.
Each of us would receive a secret number in an envelope to memorise and swallow.
The secret code would enable us to “access” our private line. I have since memorised and swallowed so many secret numbers that I have gained 10kg.
The man from Above described “audiotext” and how the “mainframe” would be downloaded, and about “ACD” (don’t ask me) and modes and things.
Then they beamed him back upstairs. When he had gone our composure crumpled and a few of us more senior members burst into tears.
At a Durban conference a year or so later, a visiting UK telecommunications expert said: “If we look at a modern telephone and compare it with the telephone of the early 1900s, then I suggest that older telephones are intuitively easier to use and do not need a manual.” That is so true. Today’s telephones don’t have wires any more – they use rays. I’ve never trusted rays. Rays affect one’s head.
My latest phone has 40 buttons and I have no idea what 26 of them are for. And I don’t care.