Not to mention telegraphs or social media. I was confident that telegrams can still be sent. I searched "Send a telegram" and found many sites. One is from PC World (what's a PC? - gosh, you must be old if you know!)
https://www.pcworld.com/article/200325/10_technologies_that_should_be_extinct.html
I don't agree that every technology listed in that article is so out-of-date that it is useless. The world, people and purposes can be quite complex so any blanket statement is bound to need qualification. We still have archers and blacksmiths, after all. I just wanted to consider the different ways that I might send or receive a message these days. So, consider paper US mail, email, text messages, links shared and attachments.
Paper
The post office still operates. We have rural free delivery (paid for by taxes) so the mailman drives up to our mailbox, inserts the mail and drives off. If we have stamped mail in the box, he will take it and send it on its way.
I live in a fairly small town so I can handwrite or computer compose and print out a message on paper and deliver the paper to the house of a friend.
Phone
We have a landline, despite the linked article's opinion that we should give it up. I also have a Google Voice phone number that is handy at times, in addition to my landline home phone number and a cellphone number. If you call, I may not recognize your number and then I won't answer.
The oldest of the "modern" technologies mentioned in this post.
Text
This refers to sending a message written in letters and numbers. People who have a smartphone or a Google Voice number receive a message written on a screen. https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/2011/10/google-voice.html
I imagine there are machines that can read text messages aloud if desired. Often, a text message arrives in a smartphone quietly or with less fanfare and interruption than an email message. Many people can read a short text nearly instantly and even respond very quickly and briefly. The TED talk by Nancy Lublin reveals how valuable texting can be:
https://sites.google.com/site/kirbyvariety/nancy-lublin-s-ted-talk-on-texting
Links
The worldwide web is part of the entire internet and it is well known for its use of hypertext, words or other symbols that also serve as clickable links. If I am trying to share a large file, say many pages of writing or a long video, I can often send a link to the file instead of trying to transmit that long file. Normally, the large file resides on a Google or Cloud or OneDrive computer somewhere but clicking on the link connects to that file.
Attachments
In Gmail, the symbol attaching a file to an email is a paper clip. So, the wellknown PDF format which tends to be used to send documents that the author doesn't want copied or modified is an example of something that might be attached to an email message.
