Some fun fax about Germany

[Hitcore]

Germany still relies a lot on fax machines. Not mentioned in the article, but I happen to know that to the otherwise high-tech Japan the same applies. Often it is for legal reasons. Still, always cool to see when old tech still prevails, in some way!

Germany, the land of tech pioneers, still relies on fax and paper for basic public services. Why is digital government stuck in the slow lane while Denmark and India race ahead?

Fax and furious: Why Germany struggles to go digital – DW – 12/27/2025

Germany, the land of tech pioneers, still relies on fax and paper for basic public services. Why is digital government stuck in the slow lane while Denmark and India race ahead?

www.dw.com

 

[Retro]

That's crazy and I believe the legal profession in the UK still does this too. It beats me why they consider this more secure than modern methods of data transfer. Perhaps it's to show a human signature on contracts? That's definitely an issue with digital only documents that must use a different system to sign.

Interestingly, the article talks about digital alternatives, but faxes are actually digital, just a very antequated form of it, kinda like computers of the 1980s compared to those of today.

If one reads a scanned document, it looks quite the mess, however, if it's text generated by the fax machine itself, or fax software, it looks pristine, if blocky. The difference is due to the low resolution of the fax scan and that it's strictly black and white text, no shades of grey, so computer generated text fits properly into the pixel matrix, just like you see in this post, for example.