The Day a Fax Machine Arrived at the Office—Manuscripts Don't Travel Through Phone Lines.

Nowadays, fax machines are disappearing from business settings.
Some young people may have never even seen one in person.

However, when I was young, the impact of the day a fax machine was introduced to our office was immense.

Until then, quotes, drawings, and manuscripts were delivered by mail or motorcycle courier.

If there was an urgent document, a staff member would sometimes drive it over themselves.

With a fax machine, you could send it to the recipient while staying in the office.

It felt like a machine from the future.

However, right after it was installed, my boss, who wasn't very tech-savvy, was struggling to use it.

"That's strange."

After wrestling with the machine for a while, he said this:

"I've been trying to send this manuscript for a while now, but it keeps coming out the other side, so I can't send it."

When I asked him about it, it seemed he thought the fax machine was like a motorcycle courier.

He believed the actual manuscript traveled through the machine, ran through the phone lines, and arrived at the recipient's end just like that.

That's why, every time he put the paper in and it came out on his side, he was worried that he "couldn't send it."

A little while later, the recipient called.

"We keep getting the same manuscript sent over and over, what's going on?"

It seems it had been sending correctly all along.

It's a funny story now, but every time I remember it, I think that when humans try to understand new technology, they first try to fit it into their old experiences.

People who saw a fax machine for the first time thought it was a "fast motorcycle courier."

When personal computers appeared, some people thought they were "electronic typewriters."

The internet was thought to be an "electronic phone book."

And now, we are facing AI.

Some people think of AI as a "very knowledgeable person."

Others think of it as a "machine that gives you the right answer when you ask it a question."

But in reality, AI is a little different from both humans and search engines.

That's why we have no choice but to understand it while we use it.

Come to think of it, the people who saw a fax machine for the first time were the same.

No one understood its essence from the very beginning.

We always try to understand new technology through old common sense.

And we live our lives by gradually correcting those misunderstandings.

Perhaps what we think about AI and the cloud today will also become a funny story to people 10 years from now.

Just like my boss on that day when the fax machine arrived at the office.

When you think about it that way, the future is surprisingly interesting.