THE TECHNOLOGY OF BUSINESS COMMUNICATON

Today’s horticulture business makes full use of the technology that has swept across the country. Typewriters have been replaced with word processors. Telephones answer themselves and both send and receive messages automatically. They identify callers before being answered. They have escaped the constraints of wires and can now be found in cars and trucks, back pockets, and in the center of conference tables. Their fiber optic lines can be used to send and receive facsimiles of printed documents. Pagers chirp and vibrate on workers belts to advise them of someone attempting to reach them. E-mail enables businesses to contact suppliers and customers as well as to respond to their que­ries. The Internet gives every company the opportunity to showcase its products and services to a worldwide audience. Still, it must be remem­bered that a voice mail system cannot answer a question, a pager can­not differentiate between a friendly call and a nuisance call, and a fax machine cannot smile or shake a hand. In some ways, the advance of technology and its embrace by much of the business community has moved faster than the understanding of how it can be used both effec­tively and offensively.