21 Outdated Office Technologies… and What Replaced Them, slide 20

Replacement: Email

Glorious, glorious email. From the early stages of hearing Elwood Edwards tell you that “You’ve Got Mail” when you signed in to your account, to today’s constant single vibration in your pocket every time your connected smartphone received an entry into the spam folder of your email account, email has revolutionized the current workplace. No longer did you need to print out documents, fill out envelopes, find postage, and send. No longer did you need to wait in line for the fax machine while Gloria from accounting fails for the 500th time to send and expense report across the wires. Finally you could input a person’s contact information, crumple up their business card, and throw it in the trash. Email may be the single greatest technological contribution to the modern workplace.

While today we roll our eyes at the sheer magnitude of the amount of emails we are inundated with on an hourly basis, our early adopter counterparts stared at their screens with reverence and fear as they typed out messages, clicked buttons, and instantly conversed with coworkers from across the world that once were easily avoidable.

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21 Outdated Office Technologies… and What Replaced Them