The Machine That Changed Sports
EPISODE 219: I'm back.
It was 30 years ago, this month, that the world found out about the greatest press release of all time. Written by arguably the greatest athlete of all time.
And there’s nobody better to finally illuminate the proper context for that message — which athletes continue to rip off, to this day — than Hall of Famer J.A. Adande.
Professor Adande not only reported the story behind Michael Jordan’s comeback fax, for ESPN; he also spends his time these days surrounded by young people — college students — for whom the device in question is totally unrecognizable.
All of which is why J.A. and I decided to commune, for the first time in a very long time, with this long-retired technology.
A screeching machine you once needed to navigate both sports and journalism.
And a quiet case study for what Marshall McLuhan once declared:
The medium is the message.
YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:
Nostalgically,
Pablo
Pablo, I work in health care and we still run on faxes. Email is not HIPAA compliant (which is why you have to use a portal to email your doc) but faxes are. So everything gets faxed. Much of it is by e-fax, but there are still plenty of hard copies going all over the place.