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Telex to Internet

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-11-24 10:58

The fax of life

The telex system was abandoned around 1990 when it was overtaken by the fax (facsimile) machine, which operated over normal phone lines and only required you to get one machine for each end. We had one of the first faxes in Beijing too, which we had brought in from Hong Kong.

It was faster and more reliable than the telex, and it enabled us to send pictures and communicate with our US office using Chinese characters. The early models used rolls of a chemically-coated paper that we had to import and which had the annoying tendency to fade when exposed to light. Valuable fax records had to be photocopied onto normal paper or else you would open your files to find illegible, washed-out curly pages.

Faxes were also much more efficient partially because they tapped into the productivity of that other new tool: the personal computer. You could write your text with a word processor and send only the final printed version. Faxes were also more economical, many times cheaper than the telex.

But e-mails topped all that. They enabled us to send text, spreadsheets and other software, which could not only be read but could also be instantly modified on the other side of the world. They also allowed us to send high-density pictures and sounds - and in turn they were much cheaper than their fax predecessor.

China catches up

Times were changing, and China was embracing new technologies with gusto. There were all sorts of benefits. We had the new ability to make much better sales presentations, as well as providing customers with better sourcing services by sending them instant quality control pictures, for instance.

Investments were facilitated by excellent cellular phone connections, instant number crunching with laptops and inexpensive audio and video conferences through media such as Skype. The impact on trade was considerable. We tend to take all this for granted because we adapt so quickly to tools that are designed to be used without thinking. But my experience in China was marked and colored by the communications devices that I used in the early days.

As a final note, the depth to which technology has impacted China can be illustrated by one guy I noticed pushing a handcart full of junk in Beijing recently. The cart was the wooden kind with bicycle wheels and long handles. The man was dirty, wearing faded blue and grey clothes, ill-fitting and torn, one of the numerous poor. But then he stopped, dug in his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. I like to think he was checking on his stock investment.

 

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