I feel old. SMS turned 20 this week and I can remember sending my first text message. I didn't like it. It was fiddly on those old phones where you had to touch a key several times to get a letter. You also had to limit yourself as texts could only be about as long as the modern-day tweet. Then it annoyed me that people started using abbreviations like code. Sometimes I got text messages I couldn't quite figure out, not to mention the sheer ugliness of it all; the beauty of words was being ravaged. For example, “gr8 c u l8r” still looks like a series of nonsense syllables to me; why could they not type out “great, see you later”? I couldn't understand the predictions that it would take off; frankly, I couldn't see the point. But 20 years on I have reluctantly accepted its usefulness. It is the most direct and unobtrusive way of contacting someone. All cellphones in the world can receive and send text, it's relatively cheap, it's quick and it's good when you're on the move. It's good too for sharing information like an address or a telephone number – and how often do we lazily send a text message to someone sitting next to us rather than writing down a number on a piece of paper! But I still find it the most frustrating way of communicating. It all started when Neil Papworth, a software engineer in Britain, sent a message from his computer to the cellphone of Vodafone director Richard Jarvis. That was on December 3, 1992. It was a one-way message; Jarvis could not reply. It took a few years for commercial SMS messages to become available. You see back then, the big thing telephone companies were investing in was pagers. Do you remember those? And how important people felt because they had one! Sweden was the first country to offer an SMS service commercially, that was by Telia in 1993. Other countries quickly followed suit. And it took off, massively, like a giant snowball, and now 8.6 trillion messages are sent annually across the globe. As with much modern technology, teenagers led the way. You give away your age if you phone people and actually talk to them; teens text, or at least they used to, for the humble and now aging SMS is being challenged by newer, more sophisticated services such as WhatsApp and Viber. Do you remember how popular the BlackBerry became a few years ago in Saudi Arabia because of BBM?
And this is what I found interesting, even before instant chat services became available with the arrival of smartphones, teenagers used text messages not to share information but to have conversations. Thumbs would fiddle at breakneck speed, and without needing to look down to see what was being typed, zoom a message would be sent, beep beep. And weren't all the different SMS alert sounds annoying! Send again, beep beep; it became a modern-day soundtrack. The sight of people sitting in a cafe, their phones in their hands texting other people, always makes me smile. Not people sitting alone, but people who are sitting with friends and instead of talking to them are having conversations with other people. It's not only rather rude, but it's also rather telling: Why do people prefer exchanging brief messages across a screen to talking face to face? Have we lost the art of conversation? I note too that it has become common practice to make important announcements, from births to deaths to divorces, by text message. I know someone who informed his wife that he was leaving her by text message! Am I alone in feeling that this is wrong? Are we nurturing a generation of cowards who shirk saying difficult things face to face and take the easy option of a brief message from a distance? As we raise a generation attached to their cellphones like a lifeline, I worry about the consequences for the future. It's all that right now, right here, instant, constant stimulation, attention never focusing very long on one subject or one person, thoughts being fired off like constellations none of them ever being seen through to their rightful conclusion. But then to be fair, was it SMS that killed conversation or was it television? When families started to have meals while watching television, was that not the point at which we stopped needing to really look at each other and talk to each other? Nowadays families still meet in living rooms presided over by large television screens, but rather than all of them sitting and watching – and what is so sociable about watching a program in the company of others? - people watch intermittently, say a word here and there, and hold a myriad of conversations on their phones with people in rooms across the globe. Well that's globalization for you. We have the option at any moment, to instantly lift out of the place we are in, the company we are with, and join with anyone we like, wherever they may be, and truth be told, I find that aspect rather wonderful. And as for all those youngsters spending hours messaging each other, well at least they are learning how to write again! All is not lost. — Imane Kurdi is a Saudi writer on European affairs. She can be reached at [email protected]
