Marshall Brain's Blog

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Getting the Message

We had a funny experience with Fedex the other day. My wife had ordered something, she had paid extra to get next day shipping because it was important, and on the next day at 4:00 it had not shown up yet. So she called Fedex to ask about it. Fedex checked and said, "Oh yes, we have delivered it."

My wife: "No you haven't. I have been here all afternoon waiting for it."

Fedex: "Yes, we have delivered it. It says so right here in the computer."

My wife: "No, you haven't. Do you have a signature from me?"

Fedex: "No, there is no signature. The driver left it at your door."

My wife: "No, he did not."

Blah blah blah.

Fedex said that they would talk to the driver and call back. My wife was fuming.

About 45 minutes later there's a knock on the door. It is a nice neighbor from around the corner. My wife's package had been left on her front porch. Our neighbor shared the same numeric address with us (106), but we live on completely different streets. So the driver had delivered the package, but he/she was two blocks off when making the delivery. If not for an honest neighbor who went out of her way to bring the package by, that package would have been gone and Fedex would have blamed us for the problem. Note that Fedex never did call back as they promised.

The same week, I sent email to an acquaintance at his request. An hour later he calls.

"Where's the email you promised?"

"I sent it an hour ago."

"No you didn't."

"Yes I did."

"Send it again, it never made it."

I send it again. An hour later he calls.

"Where's the email you promised?"

"I sent it an hour ago."

"No you didn't."

"Yes I did."

"Send it again, it never made it."

We try one more time, and then decide to send it to his wife's email account. He gets it 30 seconds later. It turns out that a spam filter was picking off my emails, so he never got them.

I got a call yesterday. Caller ID did not show the number -- it's marked "PRIVATE". Later I go to check voice mail and there are three messages in the inbox. I listen to the first voice mail, delete it, and then fat finger the next one before it plays and accidentally delete it. I have no idea who called me or why, so I won't be returning that call anytime soon...

Then there are text messages. I send a fair number of text messages, but in my experience only about 90% of them make it.

The only reliable form of communication left today is a phone call, but the person on the receiving end has to actually answer the phone so you get to speak to him or her directly. On just about every other form of communication, you don't know if your message actually arrived until you receive confirmation. Which begs three questions:

• Are we actually making progress? Email, for example, is getting steadily worse rather than better.
• How much time are we as a society now wasting on confirmation messages because we know that communication is so unreliable?
• How many cases are there where the message actually did make it, but the recipient can now credibly fake non-receipt? For example, you send an email, the recipient actually does receive it but later says, "I never got it" and there's no way to prove otherwise.

It will be interesting to see how technology evolves to make communication reliable again...