Fax me. No seriously, send me a fax
Fax me. No seriously, send me a fax
The fax machine outlived Google Glass. What else will it outlast?
This week’s Social Signals was written to St. Paul band Briefcase, who emailed me to check out their latest EP, “Are The Stars Keeping Score,” plus Little People’s first new single in five years, “Vowels” which I’ve listened to on repeat for five days.
There is a GIGANTIC fax machine in my home office and you can now fax me at 316-854-0132. And here’s how the conversation went at my house last month as I loaded it in:
Jenny Swan: “You bought a what?”
Me: “No, it was actually free.”
Jenny Swan: “I don’t want to talk about it. Also, it’s gross and yellow and huge and I don’t want it in my house”
Me: “But soon everyone can send me a faxxxx!”
Here’s how we got here: part of my journey in making some career and life changes in the last few months involved driving to St. Anthony Village and loading a 60-pound Canon Laser Class 3170 industrial fax machine into my Jeep.
At an MSRP cost of $2,995.00 when first introduced in 1999, this machine was a STEAL on Facebook Marketplace at a cost of $0.00. Just look at this description:
The Canon LASER CLASS 3170 brings offices a high-volume fax machine. Process documents quickly with pages being processed at 17 pages-per-minute. Simply place up to 70 sheets into the LASER CLASS 3170 document feeder and press one of the preprogrammed buttons, for faster processing.
The LASER CLASS 3170 Cost-Saving Compatible black toner/drum cartridge has an estimated yield of 5,000 pages—averaging 5% page coverage.
In truth, the machine was listed for $100, but I had messaged the seller and mentioned that if nobody wanted to pay $100 for a fax machine in the year 2024 I would gladly come over and take it off his hands.
Two weeks later I found myself in a cleaned-out law office with the owner. He mentioned what a great machine it had been — and still was — and I was able to rattle off some of the above facts I had researched to underline how special I knew it was, too.
Here’s some fun dad math: that $3,000 price tag in 1999 is really more like $5,500 in today’s dollars adjusted for inflation. We both smiled looking at the yellowed plastic of the paper drawers as the smell of expired toner filled my hatch. This thing is gold.
So I lugged it home, plugged it in, and discovered a new problem. My sophisticated smart home from the future doesn’t have any analog landline phone lines.
In fact, my home internet system is so advanced that an out of the box VOIP, Vonage, or competing modern communications solutions wouldn’t work. And yes, I did check with my local telecomm company about running a physical landline to our home, but they really wanted me to purchase a VOIP solution and one estimate was going to be $90/month just to run and maintain an analog line service. Gross.
I consulted my friend Blake, a Cisco systems architect, and he directed me to a $100 adaptor for my home server that would convert wifi to an analog phone line and require a $9/month fee to keep it live. After a second tense discussion with my wife about investing real life money into a real dumb fax machine project in the year 2024, I ordered it and waited for it to ship.
The Ubiquity Analog Telephone Adapter finally arrived this week, and it took me some time to figure out how to get the settings right to get it onto the server. I’m actually still having a hard time getting the wireless option to work (despite what Unifi advertises) so I ended up unplugging the Ethernet from my work computer (that I use to produce income for my family) to plug in my new toy.
And then I had another problem… I didn’t own a telephone cord.
Yes, I know you’re reading this and thinking, “Doesn’t the tech guy have a plastic tub in the basement full of random cords like every man of his age and life stage? Surely there are telephone cords in that,” but no, I donated them when we moved three years ago. Huge mistake. Clearly.
So I popped over to Target after work on Monday and guess what? Target doesn’t sell telephone cords in their store. You can order one online, but they don’t just carry them. Because again, it’s 2024.
There I stood amidst the four aisles of iPhone cases at my local Target ordering a telephone cord for $6 via Amazon Prime next-day delivery.
And yes, we’re up to about $125 for the free fax machine project at this point.
When it arrived, I plugged the phone cord into the phone jack of the fax machine, sent myself a test, and it didn’t work. The machine gave an error that said to hang up the phone, and after some Googling and that feeling that creeping notion that maybe the machine is a lemon, it occurred to me that many fax machines have a handheld phone attached to them. That was it! I had plugged the phone line into the wrong jack. A quick switch, and my test fax went through. BOOM! 💥
The next morning I excitedly told my new team at work, and they had no idea what to think. “I have some personal news,” I said at our weekly status. Then I watched their stunned faces frown and freeze in disbelief as I recounted my project to get a working fax machine going in my home office in the year 2024. “Who TF is this guy?” I’m sure they Slacked to each other out of view of their webcams. But I was just getting started.
I texted my shiny new fax number to a few friends who had fun unearthing free-to-fax services and mobile apps (HP Smart seems to be a good one) to send faxes in the year 2024.
And then the faxes started rolling in…
The best part about retro technology is USING IT to recreate nostalgia, unlock memories, and explore creativity when forced into constrictive limitations.
I don’t really love faxes. I love the intrigue the word coerces from people when you bring it up. The memories it triggers. As the curiosity it sparks.
Facsimile technology was once a core part of buying a home, receiving medical care, and yeah, buying media and distributing press releases — all of which I did via fax earlier in my career.
Today, such ancient technology is still used in some pockets of business and communications. And I’m most interested in how we can use these deprecated devices to explore new creative outputs.
My friends sent me ASCII art, generative images and prose, self portraits, and I was delighted when one printed off on legal paper. I didn’t even know this machine could do legal side faxes! And I didn’t know it was loaded with legal paper!
My friend Abraham had painted and posted the above painting that read “HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE LIKED THIS PAINTING ON INSTAGRAM” that I saw on Instagram with a few hundred likes and bought — and now hangs behind my fax machine, so I was thrilled to receive a fax from him that reads “Dozens of people liked this fax on Instagram.” And they do.
This is SO FUN. I have to admit that all this week I’ve found myself ducking into my office first thing in the morning and late at night to see if any faxes have come in. And it leads to hilarious quotes from my favorite person, like:
“It’s 9 o’clock at night, Greg! Who are you faxing??” - Jenny Swan, May 2024
📠 What’s next? Virtual RealiFAX
So what now? The end goal is to create an experience where you can send a fax from VR and the metaverse. Finally! I even worked with a designer on Fiverr to create this logo for it.
If that sounds like your kind of thing and you want to help me build it, I would love to partner with someone on it. The world is demanding it. Hit me up. No — fax me!
😎 Sending Faxes via Google Glass
This isn’t the first time I’ve done dumb things with fax technology. In 2013 Greg Osterdyk, my late friend and co-founder of The Fax Guys, and I built a rudimentary system for sending faxes via Google Glass. Finally!!
Here’s what I wrote at the time:
And yes, perhaps this is not a step forward for all of mankind.
But that’s the point. The origin of the modern day facsimile dates back nearly 100 years, and for better or worse, a statistically significant amount (albeit decreasing) of business in the marketplace is still contingent on fax technology.
Shouldn’t one of the most exciting personal communications technology innovations of our lifetime be backward compatible with legacy systems? I think yes.
And as such, I’m now accepting faxes on my face.
Alas, the fax machine outlived Google Glass. What else will it outlast?
📠 We Can’t Forget About Faxbook
How about faxable social media? Before all this silliness, back in 2009 my UK friend James Warren and I conceived the idea of Faxbook: The Fax-Based Social Network.
The idea was that you use a cover page to fax someone a request to be their friend. If they fax you back to accept, then you can go ahead and start faxing each other status updates. If they don’t accept, well then maybe Faxbook wasn’t for you.
As of today, more than 400 people like Faxbook on Facebook, and Zuckerberg hasn’t sued me in the last 15 years of Faxbook’s existence, so maybe that’s an endorsement? Time will tell.
📠 Fax Me!
Hey, if this takes fax thing off maybe I’ll join Dolly Parton as only being reachable via fax. The future is strange enough, it could happen!
⚡️ Social Signals
Zoomers are making their own MySpace. It’s called NoSpace, and you can pre-register here.
Instagram’s algorithm is changing a lot. Time to switch up that content strategy.
A few weeks ago I wrote about Swifties and advertising coming to threads (note: paid subscribers can read full archive), and now Meta is offering high-profile creators financial incentives to post to the app. Big signal here.
Pinterest dropped their travel trends report here.
The Atlantic writes Why We Still Use Postage Stamps. "Stamps serve a purpose that is not merely functional. If you look back far enough, they also tell a story about national identity, and the technological and cultural trajectory of America. Stamps 'are both miniature art works and pieces of government propaganda.'" (via
)Eldest daughter syndrome” — characterized by intense feelings of familial responsibility, people-pleasing tendencies and resentment — is having a moment.
Gen Z loves the newspaper (specifically having it read aloud on TikTok) via
at .Self-driving cars are underhyped writes
Nearly 60% of Americans believe China uses TikTok to influence U.S. public opinion, a Reuters/Ipsos poll revealed. The survey also found that 50% of Americans favor banning TikTok, with higher support among those aged 40 and older. The data is based on a survey of 1,000 that excluded people under 18, who form a big chunk of TikTok's U.S. user base. (via Inside Tech)
Pinterest added Instagram claiming.
Walmart and Roblox are teaming up to make virtual e-commerce a reality. This is big news. Generation Alpha’s go-to social platform figured out how to monetize.
TikTok and Universal Music Group ended their feud with a new agreement.
Good Read of the Week: Words that LLM regularly uses by Fareed Khan. (if it uses the word “delve it’s probably A.I.)
LinkedIn Video of the Week: Amir Berenjian offers his demo of Meta Ray Bans new functionality of Meta AI with VISION.
Documentary of the Week: A Glitch in the Matrix. And yes, it mentioned Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (ahem,
).App of the Week: Claude comes to iOS.
Insta of the Week: @cheezytalkwithmadelyn.
Podcast of the Week: People vs Algorithms’ episode Can the “Fediverse” Save Us?
TikTok of the Week: A plant’s dying wish
TikTok I am Absolutely Obsessed With And Can’t Stop Asking People About: Is plane car?
See you in the future! 🚀
Greg
It's alive!
Wow, I had NO IDEA that Greg x Fax lore went so far back! What a gem of a read!!! Also, I endeavor to never get rid of MY "box of cords". That you didn't have the right cord for this gave me just the right amount of anxiety I needed to lug my tub of cords around for all future moves.