Many people in business spent the whole day long in telephone conferences. I guess I am by no means special to admit that I don’t like phone conferences very much. The only advantage is that you can exchange and coordinate messages with others with instant messenger and mail which could be fun. Things can even go worse with telephone conferences for you as in this narration here:
Of the 971 people from my division on the call, some have one code to hear one message, the others have a different code for another message. One group keeps their jobs (for now), the other group’s members will have to find other employment.
Here we go… it’s the VP of sales and marketing. Blah, blah, blah. Business challenges, industry challenges, patent losses, delayed new products, facing health care reform, …
It is a nice story. Calderwood depicts technology as a dehumanized matter of automated communication. A classic:
“I regret to inform you that you are displaced.” [I learned later that 479 of us heard those words.]
An automated mass regret message as a matter of communication annihilates the substance. But mass communicating messages like these that is not really special or new, just think of:
The IPKat has just read the tragic news on Wales Online that up to 100 jobs are to be axed in the UK’s Intellectual Property Office in Newport. Now part of Whitehall Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills, the IPO is at the mercy of the vicissitudes of the global economic downturn.
Right: don’t let the IPO go like lambs to the slaughter! Save our IPO!
Sköne Oke 
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