pendell

Current Hyperfixation: Wizard of Oz

  • He/Him

I use outdated technology just for fun, listen to crappy music, and watch a lot of horror movies. Expect posts about These Things. I talk a lot.

Check tags like Star Trek Archive and Media Piracy to find things I share for others.



cathoderaydude
@cathoderaydude

I imagine a lot of people have quietly wondered "how and when did 'answering machine' turn into 'voice mail'?"

the answer is that "answering machines" are a device which provides "message taking" service, but "voice mail" was a corporate internal communication concept invented in the 80s, which also takes messages, but does much more

companies selling voicemail systems for integration with business phone systems thought people would use voicemail like they now use email - leaving messages for people without actually calling them, by just dropping a message directly in their mailbox; fanning out announcements to the entire company with voicemail distribution lists; that sort of thing

this functionality actually got delivered. if you have voicemail at work, you can probably do all this stuff. nobody does, however, and that's because it's

deep breath

REALLY STUPID

Edit: I've decided I am seeing it too retrospectively. It wasn't stupid in the mid 80s when "ghosting" hadn't become socially acceptable and people would interrogate you like a prisoner if you didn't answer your phone when they knew you should be home


pendell
@pendell

When I first set up voicemail on my phone, I navigated through all of its menus, and I was absolutely stunned to find it has this feature. You can, on any modern voicemail system provided by the major US carriers, send a voicemail to someone else's voicemail inbox without actually calling them. I've never done it myself, because, y'know, why, but it's a functionality that does indeed still exist, at least in the dial-in version of voicemail. I'm not aware of any Visual Voicemail implementation that bothered to carry over this functionality, because, y'know, WHY.


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in reply to @cathoderaydude's post:

i hate our companies voicemail system.. but it's fine, imagine you actually needed it and you actively campaigned against it and got it removed from your company and now you need to deliver a message to your boss or someone but couldnt. not that that has happened to me, but imagine XD it would be really stupid too, because all along you could have just sent them an email ignoring the voicemail system alltogether... but you read this post calling out voicemail as stupid and just wanted to join in on making fun of it. ^^/

in reply to @pendell's post:

The thing that sucks is: This is useful! This is a cool idea! Texts are not the universal solution to all situations and sometimes it would be great to send a voice message to someone WITHOUT bothering them, when you specifically do not want to make their phone ring. Except A) everyone stopped listening to voicemail six years ago, B) even before that, nobody retrieved them on any kind of reliable schedule, and C) it almost CERTAINLY wouldn't work across carriers