Fax-mad New Yorkers
Not so long ago, they typical New York sign-off used to be 'Have a nice day'. It is fast being replaced by a new one: 'What's your fax number?' From Tokyo to London to Los Angles, the craze of the facsimile machine is sweeping the world, but not city seems to have gone as fax mad as New York. Radio station, for example are taking record requests by fax – the advantage is that office workers can do it without the boss hearing them telephone. To order lunch, you can zap off a completed 'le fax menu' to your favorite restaurant. If you are looking for a partner for the evening you fax your needs to a fax-dating service. Down in Greenwich Village, there are even artists busy developing the genre of fax art. Half the telephone calls from New York to Japan are between fax machines. This being New York, you can also, of course, use the machine to communicate with your 'shrink' for some fax therapy.
The craze, however, has its excesses and various spoilsports are already working on ways of reining in the more dubious joys of fax. First, there is the danger of faxing in the fast lane. The police have decreed that under no circumstances may you transmit from your car fax while on the move, though of course you may receive.
People in the fax industry are also expecting restrictions on a growing menace in the new culture – junk faxes. The advertising companies which pack your letter box with 'personalized' brochures and telephone you to offer their goods just as you are sitting down to dinner, have latched on to the fax with a vengeance. Since they are presumed to be affluent, people with fax machines are a desirable target. Since machines cannot filter out unwanted callers, they are being increasingly clogged up with unsolicited advertising.
There is another hazard in faxing that can cause embarrassment – the wrong number. It can prove ticklish to fax a love letter to an office machine by mistake. More damaging, though, is the mis-faxed business letter. Things have gone so far that some experts are predicting an imminent 'fax-lash'.
The Times (BrE)
KynioWolny