Two technologies - one greatly suffered from the internet and the other easily living along with it

Today I will talk about two technologies. One of them became significantly overtaken by the internet and the other gaining advantage from it. 

Fax- technology widely replaced by the internet

I think it is really impossible to find a technology, which became totally vanished by an internet. But you can find technologies, which suffered the most from it. Their whole existence was significant at some point, but in case of several technologies, there was a chance, that internet could easily replace them. One of those is fax - technology which could be totally replaced by the internet. Surely, fax is still widely used, but its popularity is falling, especially compared to the e-mailing system.

Fax meme [1]

Interestingly enough, seeming quite modern, fax main principle comes from the 19th century. Invented back in 1843 by Alexander Bain, the "Electric Printing Telegraph" was the world's first faxing device [2]. But if we consider what we nowadays call a fax - it is a actually using a telephone transmission. Such faxes were produced from mid 1960-s and their rise was in the 1970-s up to 1990-s, when internet came around as an alternative to a fax.
This comes to a question - what advantages has internet has over a fax? The main usage of fax was a simple exchange of documents as an alternative to postal mail or other delivery services [3]. It also has abilities to copy or print documents. However, most of its functionality nowadays is replaced with an e-mail, since it is more simple, faster and eco-friendly. Also, a great advantage of fax was that people could send signed documents, however as electronic signatures become more common - sending electronically signed documents becomes more popular.

I do not want to say, that fax is a "dead" technology. However, if you are searching for technology, which was greatly replaced by the internet - fax is one of the obvious ones.

GPS - Technology which lives along with the internet

GPS, or the Global Positioning System, is a global navigation satellite system that provides location, velocity and time synchronization [4], which was first started by the U.S. Department of Defense and used as a military technology. In 1983 the U.S. government made GPS publicly available [4]. This is a system which has two main physical components - satellites and a receiver and some algorithms or programs to synchronize them.

GPS is a technology, which is in its core independent of an internet. There is no need to have internet for it to work and internet can work without GPS. There are even technologies, which can partly replace GPS, for example mobile tracking. However, instead of fighting and replacing GPS, internet and companies started utilizing it and the some great solutions come from a mix of two. Take Google Maps as an example - GPS is needed to locate a users position and than internet is used to dynamically download a map. This is a more convenient way to have a navigation than to have a map always stored on a smartphone or another device. Here are only some example of internet-based apps working on mobile devices which can utilize GPS - sport apps, online shops, traffic and navigation, social activities and many others.

In my opinion the reason, why GPS is so successful in "staying alive" along with internet is because it is separate and can be integrated with internet.

Conclusion

If you followed my first blog, there was a thought, that one should not repeat themself (does not matter if it is a programmer or a technology). In case of fax and an internet it comes to a point, that e-mails somehow started repeating fax's functionality and doing it in partly a better way. Moreover, in programming there is such thing as a single responsibility principle [5]. Fax is a multifunctional machine which breaks this principle - you have printer, sender, receiver - all in one and you have to rely the opposite side has all the same functionality. On the other hand if someone wants only to send and receive messages, they probably want to have a more simple tool only for that.

On the other hand GPS totally follows a single responsibility principle - dealing with positioning and navigation. It is like a module, which can be added to an application and switched off if needed. It does not try to take any part of an internet - it gives internet extra opportunities and developers can design their apps utilizing it. So there are two main thoughts from me today:

1) If two technologies become rivals in one field, then there is a chance that one will dominate over the other (a Tesla - Edison example).

2) Following a single responsibility principle is probably a good way for any technology.


1. https://www.memedroid.com/memes/detail/2493732/FAX
2. https://www.efax.com/blog/brief-history-of-the-fax-machine#:~:text=Invented%20back%20in%201843%20by,sending%20photos%20via%20wire%20transmission.
3. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/uses-faxes-business-41669.html
4. https://www.geotab.com/blog/what-is-gps/
5. https://stackify.com/solid-design-principles/

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