Erlang to driver communication: why not a non-serialized opti on?

[James Hague]

>The second (and much larger) erosion was the introduction of
>driver_output_term() and driver_send_term().  These functions break
>the serialization barrier by making it possible to send an Erlang term
>to an Erlang process instead of a mere sequence of bytes.(*)
>
>The third erosion is something that snuck in with R8 (?),
>erlang:port_call/3. 

Are there examples of either of these?  It seems that the documentation has
gotten very behind in this area.