If you think 1982 brought us revolutionary advances in communications technology, then hold on to your hats---1984 is just around the corner, and the growth of the voice store and forward market will start to prove everyone was right: The voice mail race is on. There have been survivors and losers---the real winners will be the users. Vendors that don't understand the dynamics of customer acceptance and don't engineer a usable method of applying voice mail will lose the fundamental opportunities of this technology. Voice mail is not as complicated as it looks. You pick up any telephone, anywhere in the world, and record a message for someone else in your own voice. It's a new medium of communicating. Voice mail is a fast, convenient way to tell someone something when you can't reach them directly. Everyone will use voice mail.