BoatBanter.com - View Single Post

jps

On Fri, 23 Apr 2010 01:52:00 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 22 Apr 2010 10:43:16 -0700, jps wrote:

On Thu, 22 Apr 2010 12:59:14 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 22 Apr 2010 09:35:16 -0700, jps wrote:

I do understand the occasional Instant Message.

Note that I was discussing those who send or receive hundreds of
messages each day.

My kids can send and receive hundreds of messages in a week. For
them, it's like conversing on the phone but it can take place over
hours. Responses are as available so it fits into an active life.

New form of communication and language.

It is not really all that new. IBM field techs were carrying an RF
connected portable terminal in 1985 that had peer to peer texting
capability. This was bigger than a blackberry but smaller than a net
book. (about 4 x 6 x 1.5) It also had full connectivity with the IBM
VM network, parts, dispatch and later the internet.
We learned to express our thoughts in 55 byte chunks.
Things like GR8, CUN10min and FKNA were in use long before a cell
phone had a display on it.
Most CEs had a story about texting while driving. This thing would
wedge in most steering wheels. It used a full power 3w cell
transmitter with a decent antenna so you could get fairly well.

Well, this version is widely avaiable and being adopted and
transformed by youth. It's the modern phone call for them but far
more efficient. And when they need to talk about something, they
dial.

It has its problems, mostly related to what Nom touched on, a record
of utterances that would never be collected by a voice phone, unless
recorded. Messages can be saved and passed along at a later date when
personal affiliations have changed.

Kids learn the hazards of digital communication early in life.

I guess that was the good side of the early technology. The 55 byte
peer to peer message was not saved on the server, there was no
forwarding capability and even with the type of message that went
through the dispatch system and was logged, disk space was so
expensive that they still got purged eventually.
These days nothing ever really goes away and virtually anyone with a
little tech savvy can see it. The other difference is these days there
are search engines powerful enough to find it in the clutter.

I don't know if text messages are saved by anyone other than users.
Can't imagine the phone companies want to be responsible for storing
the millions of messages per second going between teens.

It'd be interesting to know.