Texting And No Contract Cell Phones
Since the latest explosion in technology specifically for no contract cell phones throughout the past decade or so, more and more gizmos have sunk their teeth into cultural lexicon and designed the way communication in modern society has functioned. The iPod has made CDs virtually obsolete. The Kindle has taken literature out of the paperbacks and onto the digital screen. GPS has substituted the atlas. But nothing has an effect quite like the advent of text messaging for mobile phones and sometimes the no contract cell phones.
Essentially every cell phone on the market is capable of text messaging, which as of 2007 is the most widely used mobile data program in the world with over 2.4 billion customers. In Scandinavia – Sweden, Norway, and Finland – over 85% of the population uses text messaging. It’s easy to see why text messaging has become so typical so quickly. All service providers offer some form of text messaging and the feature is even available on no contract cell phones.
The majority of service providers offer a flat rate for texts, while others offer unlimited texting, while no contract cell phones often charge on a per use schedule. This allows almost anyone with a cell phone to communicate on the fly 160 characters at a time, without having to devote the time or attention to holding a verbal conversation when it may be undesired or uncalled for. Users can receive a message and reply to it at their leisure and normally needn’t fear receiving a text during conditions where it may be improper to converse verbally.
So typical is text messaging, that an entire system of social manners has developed around the technology that is very diverse and stands wide apart from that estimated during a regular phone call. Replies need not be quick unless otherwise noted, and there is no harm in texting someone when they are incapable to speak with the intent of leaving the message for them to read later – a practice much more practical and succinct than leaving a voice message. Text messages are also typically saved and much simpler to reopen for quick reference than a voice message, so that texts with important data such as directions or reminders can be employed on the fly. Users can even send pictures and often time audio files such as music or sound bites along with texts.
Text messaging has had such an impact and is so popular among users that an entire language – of sorts – has developed around the technology. The strategies of typing on a small keyboard or phone keypad blended with the typically restrained character limit has come in a sort of shorthand English comprised widely of acronyms, abridged spelling, emoticons and other symbols that is widely recognized by many users across the globe. The lingo even sports a consistency and popularity wide enough to warrant the presence of several dictionaries and glossaries cataloguing such terminology and abbreviations. Many fear that such a truncation of the English language has done it harm, though whether this is true or not is unimportant to the question of whether text messaging has had an influence on society, and on the contrary really supports that conclusion.