A few weeks ago, I wrote a let­ter from the edi­tor describ­ing my excite­ment at the pos­si­bil­ity of emerg­ing technologies.

I described my new found appre­ci­a­tion for Twitter, though cer­tainly not an obses­sion, and text mes­sag­ing replac­ing nor­mal conversation.

One thing I didn’t men­tion was the need for cer­tain pieces of this newer tech­nol­ogy to change once their pur­poses are clearly under­stood and accepted.

The first auto­matic answer­ing machine was invented in 1935 by Willy Müller. Since that time, the notion of leav­ing a mes­sage after the beep has become habit and only the most per­sis­tent of under-rock-dwellers could be unfa­mil­iar with the concept.

And yet our cell phone providers care­fully direct callers on voice­mail eti­quette. After a per­sonal greet­ing assur­ing us that the per­son for whom the call is meant is not able to answer, a polite voice with an eerily robotic tim­bre reminds us that we must first wait for the tone, then begin leav­ing our message.

The con­cept is nei­ther new nor dif­fi­cult. Perhaps in 1935 a bit of coach­ing was needed to use Mr. Müller’s machine, but nearly 80 years later, instruc­tion is sim­ply a waste of our time.

However, fear­ful of “the Man” as I am, one can con­coct ideas that this is a care­fully hatched scheme between Chad and the Verizon guy with a lit­tle help from Luke Wilson. This tri­umvi­rate will use that extra 35 sec­onds of instruc­tion time – which rounds up to one minute – because it may cause us to go over our limit, thus incur­ring extra charges. Sure, one minute is hardly some­thing to worry about, but a series of one-minute calls and then return calls from the recip­i­ent add quickly.

Müller’s auto­matic answer­ing machine has been rein­car­nated for a wire­less world and sul­lied by the almighty dollar.

What it will take to con­vince “Big Cellular” to remove the instruc­tions is anybody’s guess, but in the mean­while, save your­self the charges and aggra­va­tion and just call back later.