I posted an item on this on Holscher's Hub as well, and I've written on communications here before, but this is an item worth noting again, in terms of treands:
When Only a Human Will Do by Froma Harrop on Creators.com - A Syndicate Of Talent
We're all used now to listening to, and responding to, the commands of a telephonic machine. That is, we call places, and go through the routine. Perhaps we're not thrilled with it, but we do it. You know the drill: "If you have a question about X, press 4, and state your name". . . and so on.
What an enormous change in expectations.
In some parts of the country people still spoke with telephone operators at the telephone exchange simply to place a call in to the 1950s. You could always get an operator by dialing 0, and sometimes ask questions about the call you just had. I haven't tried to get an operator for years, but I suspect it'd be automated now. And nobody calls an operator to place a long distance call. Shoot, I wonder how difficult it would be to even fine an operator if you wanted to.
And I don't know that many of our predecessors of a few decades back would have tolerated a call that only involved responding to machines, which is just what I did this morning in order to determine the answer to a government payment question on a mater I was working on.
Most folks don't like this change much, and I don't frankly either. It's always a relief when you get to speak to an actual human being.
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