I’m waiting for the day my doctor’s office puts a calendar link on their website and lets you directly request an appointment. So far they bought one of those EMRs with a website that allows you to send a “secure message.”

> So far they bought one of those EMRs with a website that allows you to send a “secure message.”

HIPAA fines are fearsome. Medical IT is heavily weighted towards creating parallel systems that don't touch the rest of the world.

They should get on Zocdoc (shameless plug - I work there). Not having to wait on hold with a doctor's office is one of our main selling points for patients.

Phones for booking are absurd. Phones for food ordering are absurd.

Why? Making a phone call removes middlemen from the process.

When I order food over the phone, the only people who need to take a cut of the transaction are the restaurant and maybe the credit card company if I don't pay cash. I can also be confident that my tips are going to the person whose hand I place them in.

When I order online, there are umpteen different companies taking my data and the restaurant's money, and they often obscure where fees and tips go. To me, it seems absurd to involve so many parties in such a simple transaction.

The experience is also usually fungible. Talking to someone doesn't take longer or introduce more error in my experience, so I usually prefer it because there are less externalities and fewer complexities.

Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

Literally the purpose of a phone call is to reach a middleman.

Using computer agents avoids the middleman.

If the restaurant runs a website, there's no "umpteen different companies taking my data".

Building your own online service is more expensive than just using the phone line that they already have.

...or you can contact the restaurant via text message, WhatsApp, etc, and have all the benefits of both phone and online ordering.

You also don't have to sign up anywhere or give your email address for a phone order.

You have to give your phone number, which is worse.

The main difference is that when you place an order with Door Dash or Uber Eats, you get put on a marketing spam email list by default.

Tell that to my plumber. The plumbers with nice automated systems still use people to pressure you. And you're paying for those systems and people in your bill. One of them quoted me $2500 for 2 faucets. The local dude did it next day for $350. Those ads at football games and fancy systems and trucks don't provide revenue or better service. So I'll deal with the crazy dude who's likely cutting a wall or soldering something talking to me on bluetooth.

Also with a lot of these people, they can't really schedule, stuff is just a queue. This dude is definitely a queue.

What's the traveling salesman problem for a plumber?

You have a series of calls to respond to.

Doing FIFO may be “fair”, but resulted in more time spent travelling rather than responding to calls.

Or you can service a small region and spend little time driving. That's what this guy does. Stays in a 10 mile radius. His phone is constantly blowing up.

Alternate history fiction idea: Telegraphy was expanded to allow individuals to make asynchronous communications without an intermediary. Replacing telephones, for the most part, are machines like an ASR-33 teletype with a receiver for voice calls, on which people can do things like instantly place orders or book travel -- in a pre-WWII setting.

For booking complex, non-fungible services (like Doctor's appointments, plumbers, etc) phones are great for high-bandwidth communication for follow-up questions, triage, etc. Phones also allow a certain element of salesmanship which doesn't come through on a form, which a big reason why service providers like them.

No alternative exists that doesn't have huge downsides. The main contenders are privacy invasive proprietary apps which take huge cuts of the sale.

And then you have restaurants own websites which if they exist, are super clunky and require typing payment details rather than paying on pickup.

As soon as you want a special order, phone for food is the quickest way to order. In some of my local resturants I skip the service fee the website adds, too, that way.

The problem is that there has to be a better alternative, and it has to be better for the businesses implementing it, and the switching cost must be low.

There is a better alternative already: WhatsApp is probably the #1 way of ordering food in lot of 3rd world countries and also in part of Europe.