Modern antiques
By Mat Morrison August 3rd, 2006
In Stories
Having a conversation with Mark Hancock, strategy director at Proximity yesterday, the subject of business cards came up (being in start-up mode, we don’t actually have cards yet.) Mark (no doubt to put us at our ease) pointed out that they probably were a thing of the past.
Now, I subscribe to this idea. For the last year, I’ve carried round a card which has nothing but my name printed on it. The idea being that you search for my name on Google, and up come all my details in various human- and machine-readable formats.
Mark went on to point out that fax machines (19th century or 1970’s technology, depending on your degree of pedanticism) are also outmoded.
So here’s the beginning of a list. What other out of date technologies still pervade the business world? What marks you as irredeemably out of touch? Comments, please!
- Business cards
- Fax numbers
- Out-of-office notices on your email
- Corporate websites built in any technology that makes them search-engine opaque, inaccessible, and expensive to keep up to date
- Skip Intro
1 Richard Dance // Aug 4, 2006 at 12:53 pm
(+44) 0…
and
putting your email address as part of your email signature
2 Mat // Aug 4, 2006 at 2:54 pm
Agree with the first. I don’t mind the +44, but the 0 just gets in the way.
Disagree with the second point — if an email is forwarded by a second party, then the originator’s email disappears.
But that opens an interesting question; are email signatures themselves a thing of the past?
Anyway, we’ve got a flash new contact details page that we just built yesterday.
3 Mat // Aug 4, 2006 at 2:55 pm
Oh — and telephone directories. They’ll have to go.
4 Will McInnes // Aug 15, 2006 at 5:18 pm
Agree with fax machines, search engine unfriendly websites and skip intros.
Disagree with business card - for me it’s still a fundamentally very useful portable communications / business tool that just works.
Don’t quite understand why out-of-office email thing is in your list either.
5 Mat // Aug 15, 2006 at 8:15 pm
Point taken, Will. I’m confusing three kinds of outdated technology - which is a mistake.
The first kind are “zombies“: stuff which is dead, but won’t lie down. You can include the fax machine, the floppy disk and the cassette tape in this group. People still have them, but they’re at an evolutionary dead end.
The second are “should never have been borns“: evolutionary sports & mutants that occupy niches created and sustained by ignorance. Splash pages and inaccessible websites fall into this category. MiniDiscs might fit here.
The third are “living under a volcano“: condemned by changing ecological pressures to change radically or disappean. Out-of-office messages are threatened as email increasingly switches away from our desktops and into our pockets. CDs will give way to DVDs, then wither away as online storage and “internet everywhere” become increasingly cheap, pervasive, and accessible - unless they find a more important niche. Business cards will - eventually - change or be replaced. Phone books still have a purpose (but answer the question “What is Will McInnes’ phone number”, not “How do I contact Will McInnes?)
I believe the third kind are still dominant technologies, and - as such - probably the best and simplest solution to the problems they address.
I just don’t think they’re a great long-term investment option.