John Linton .......for as long as Mr Hill's inspired concept of postage stamps has lasted......"texting"....I'm not so sure.
I read this earlier this morning:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577080570335788452.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_RIGHTTopCarousel_1
and considered what I have seen over the last few years in terms of business internet usage. I exclude myself from this consideration because I don't think I know anyone who uses the telephone (fixed line or mobile) less than I do or uses email more. I do this because I prefer the 'audit trail' of email compared to the lack of a 'audit trail' with phone calls and I have got in to the habit of seldom turning my mobile on except when I want to make a call - which is rarely.
So I found the article interesting in its dissection of reply patterns and just general timings. I have read two other articles recently on the 'demise' of email caused by social texting which were just garbage opinion pieces (as this article is largely restricted to being) with no possibility of ever acquiring the research to support the views expressed - how could you ever attempt to measure the comparative usage changes in email and text across any population sector? Obviously you can't do that in any meaningful way. So whether the desire for various sections of any population to 'text' (strange how a noun has morphed into an adjective or adverb in current usage again demonstrating the paucity of education in these barbaric times) various 'friends' constantly during the day and night has changed their business email usage is impossible to gauge - as the two correspondents are totally different it would seem highly unlikely....at least to me.
Email serves an obvious and immediately useful purpose - communicating with other people in business immediately and easily. It's replacement of Australia Post is equally obvious and the changes in the speed of iterative correspondence cannot be underestimated. A telephone call cannot provide an adequate substitute and a written 'letter' cannot begin to be as efficient. Over the past 20 years (since OzEmail/Malcom Turnbull/Etc recognised the need to introduce the concept in to Australia) email has dominated the ways all business operate to a degree that is impossible to estimate. Just how would any business operate in Australia today without email? It certainly couldn't use SMS or 'texting'. Not since the four posts a day stage of the UK postal system has their been any reason for something like email to exist -it beggars the imagination that you could once exchange correspondence with someone via the early morning, 11 am, afternoon and evening post if you were in the same city/town which, in those days, would have taken care of most business dealing let alone personal correspondence. deleted.
I have to confess that I have never actually sent an SMS and the few I have received I have simply deleted. I understand my peculiarities are totally irrelevant to the ongoing development of instant communications. What I do wonder is just how far SMS/its equivalents will develop from here into the medium term future. Will SMS last two or so centuries as postage did? Does SMS have any truly long standing usefulness other than conveying notice of being late for 'face to face' meetings? I now work with people who seem to receive a stream of, I assume purely personal, 'messages' in meetings, during lunch and when you are talking to them at their desk or in the street. Many of them consider it to be perfectly OK to not only read the messages but then reply to them while you are engaged in talking to them. I wonder how long their 'face to face' interlocuters will put up with this gross rudeness before they snatch the offending device and hurl it to the ground and then stamp on the pieces?
Then again, perhaps everyone else in the world except for me has the mental capacity to 'converse' on two completely different subjects simultaneously.
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