Wait, couldn’t you use a letter for a booty call, if you so desired?  Especially in a city where messenger services are plentiful.  You could even FedEx it overnight… 

I like text messages.  There are some things about the conventions of texting that annoy me (all that “sms lingo” and arbitrary massacring of the written word for no real reason!).  But I was converted in college when I realized you could text someone who was still in class and let them know where to meet up with everyone else later.  Also great when out in a loud bar with friends—if it’s time to go, you can just send everyone a text. 

I’m also a fan of texting when I’m running late, or when I’m supposed to meet up with someone who is late. 

Really, aside from the fact that I hate the way ATT structures the pricing on them, I’m all in favor.  As long as you make an effort with the spelling and grammar.

“it wasn’t what drew her to the sex in the first place.”

Yea, that would be the fact that WOMEN ARE HUMAN.

I’m not a huge fan of text messages, but only because I haven’t mastered my cell phone’s keyboard and the typing format. Now a phone with a full QWERTY keyboard and I’d be all over it.

Col Bat Guoano:I’m with you,comrade,I’m with you!

OK, I’m outing myself: I don’t own a cell phone and never have. I don’t get all self-righteous about it, but I confess to getting annoyed by people’s astonished reactions when I tell them.

The phone keypad thing gets easier with practice.  Like anything else, really.

Complaining about text messages because you’re not good at working the technology is like people in 1898 griping that these newfangled Tellie Fone contraptions are useless because it’s just so goshdarn hard to get someone on the other line…

Once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty simple.

How much does text messaging cost?

I just got a new cell phone after about three years with the last one. I chose the LG eNV because it opens up to reveal a fetching QWERTY keyboard, and added the cheapest text-messaging service package. I tell ya, it took 10 years off my apparent age, this joining the youthful texting masses.

I didn’t realize I was supposed to start texting people at 2 a.m. for booty calls. Why didn’t the Verizon store guy tell me??

My plan has 2 options (as far as I’m aware, I haven’t looked into it in a while).  You can buy an unlimited “data” plan for an extra $10 per month, or it’s 10 cents per text sent or received.  I think I send and receive less than 100 texts per month, thus making the addition to my plan pointless.  But then what if I do?  I often don’t scrutinize my bills that well unless the total seems really out of wack.  Basically it just keeps me always feeling vaguely financially guilty for sending texts.

Oh, and can we talk about my latest “Hi, I’m a luddite!” pet hate?  The ubiquity of built-in IM features on popular websites (like, oh, say, my gmail inbox).

I didn’t realize I was supposed to start texting people at 2 a.m. for booty calls. Why didn’t the Verizon store guy tell me??-Orange
I suppose he wanted to keep all the booty for himself…

being a Luddite is a noble calling. Ned Ludd led protests against mechanisations that were driving wages down to below starvation levels. He was trying to stop the first wave of globalisation. Now I am not a Luddite but I fail to see how texting, which requires up to three keystrokes to type one letter achieves anything other than fulfilling a need among those who have have absolutely nothing to say, to say it in an accelerating stream of novel but environmentally damaging ways.

Sorry but I did a lot of work on developing SMS gateways to permit messages to be sent between networks. I guess it pisses me off that people ignore the many possibilities and just use it to demonstate, were further demonstration needed, how stupid technology is making us.

BTW technology fans, if anybody can identify the fucker who invented predictive text, I would like to kill him. But the popularity of that technology does prove my point about people with nothing to say.

and finally…out of the thousands of text messages I have received, I cannot recall one that was either interesting, relevant or necessary. A message cannot be in the least bit important if somebody has time to key it into a cellphones text messenger.

It does worry me a bit that kids have starting to use text/AIM shorthand in their school papers, frustrating teachers to no end.  But I’m not sure if it’s really an issue or just the newest version struggle to teach kids the difference between good writing and bad writing.

Still, it kind of boggles my mind to think that a middle-schooler might believe it was actually OK to write something like “My smmr was gr8” as the opening line of everyone’s favorite “What I did on my summer vacation” assignment.

A message cannot be in the least bit important if somebody has time to key it into a cellphones text messenger.

Yes, because heaven knows “I’m running half an hour late!” or “Is the theater on 215 West 42nd or East 42nd?” “Could you add a veggie burrito to the lunch order?” are not important at all.  It’s never important to me that I meet up with the person I’m trying to see, find the place I’m looking for, or actually get to eat meals on a regular basis. 

It’s much more important to be against all technology in support of a historically misunderstood dude who died centuries ago.  Even if it means wasting my time, missing out on things I wanted to do, or making a social gaffe.

I hate phones.  Text messaging saves me having to talk to people I don’t like.  There’s nothing more satisfying than selecting DELETE ALL to a bunch of unopened messages.  I figure if I piss off enough people, I will no longer have to pay for these useless messages.  On the other hand, my job requires I keep the stupid feature.

I’m not a luddite, I’m a misanthrope.

Not asking the important questions:

Is text messaging:

1)  racist
2   misogynist
3)  patriarchical
4)  classist
5)  abelist
6)  unjust
7)  unfair
8)  anti-union
9)  capitalist
10)anti-muliticultural

Until these questions are answered, one must suspend judgement on teh text message!

I keep my phone turned off, and get messages on voice mail.  What reason is there for me to ever want text messaging???

I guess text messaging is ableist, in that people without hands or fingers (or maybe even people with severe arthritis) can’t do it.

But there are a great many things out there that a great many people can’t do, and I don’t condemn their existence.  I’m OK with tall shelves and cabinetry, even though I’m only 5 feet tall.

Technology always is quickly adapted to sexual interests. One of the first uses for the printing press, in the west, was the printing of indulgences - which allowed one to commit sins and have they applied against the purchased virtues of others. Radio, television, film, telephones, and automobiles have all been blamed for the immoral decline of women and adolescents—I’m sure, somewhere, there’s an essay linking the immorality of the Gay ‘90s (1890’s) with the telegraph.

That said, I hate text messaging - not the premise, but the application. The UI is terrible on nearly all phones and carriers treat it like it’s some special service which deserves high fees. Does this make me a Luddite? I would like to hope so—but I’m the Luddite who’s spent the last twenty years helping to build and engineer the Internet and it’s transport systems. I work with technology every day, and like most engineers have strong love/hate relationship with it.

I’m sure, somewhere, there’s an essay linking the immorality of the Gay ‘90s (1890’s) with the telegraph.

And if not the telegraph, then most certainly the bicycle!

Pr0n was also one of the first forms of media to use video, which nowadays a lot of more low-market TV is shot in (and certain indie features, as well).

And if not the telegraph, then most certainly the bicycle!

Took me a minute to find the quote:

Reverend W. W. Reynolds wrote in 1899:

“A large number of female bicyclists wear shorter dresses than the laws of morality and decency permit, thereby inviting the improper conversations and remarks of the depraved and immoral. I most certainly consider the adoption of the bicycle by women as detrimental to the advancement of morality.”

It should be remembered that is was the bicycle that pretty much obsolesced the bustle and corset—though many manufactures tried to introduce bicycling corsets

Yep.  The bicycle massively freaked out patriarchal types because it meant their women had an affordable and portable way to leave the home without their husbands’ express permission.  I don’t know that it was ever actually expressed that way, but the mysogynist noise about bicycles is brilliant to behold if you ever happen to come across it.

I don’t have a cell phone yet, and yeah, I know I need to get one, partly because of the whole OMG MY CAR FELL INTO A DITCH issue.  I think I will use it like watercat: keep it turned off and use voicemail.

But see, I don’t have a lot of the newest electronics stuff, no iPhone, no little mp3 music player thingie, no tiVo, no plasma stuff, and that’s because I cannot justify the expense.  I don’t have enough money, and fortunately, new communications and entertainment stuff isn’t high on my list of Gotta Haves.  Here’s the weird thing, though: if you stop buying the latest stuff, you very quickly fall behind in the capacity to conceptualize it.  Well, maybe “you” don’t, but that’s what’s happened to me.  A friend of mine used to give me his PCWorld magazines when he was done, but I can’t follow what they’re writing about any more.  It’s almost as bad as trying to read articles about contemporary music.  It’s like a selective, specific, externally-applied aphasia.

But it’s not like I’m gonna write an article claiming it as a virtue.  It’s not even endearingly quirky.  And I don’t feel economically victimized, either.  Well, I do, but not on the basis of an inability to afford the latest tech stuff.

I was house-sitting the other week, and the house owners had arranged for one of their cars to be in the shop and then delivered home.  All I had to do was drive it into the garage.  I accomplished this quickly and without mishap, but I swear to god, sitting in the driver’s seat of that fully loaded recent-model BMW seemed like something out of Battlestar Galactica to me.  So many blinky things and screens and options and stuff wanting me to use it or press it or whatever!  My 20 year-old Honda has roll-down windows and virtually no blinkies.  But I’m not anti-new car.  It’s just another thing that doesn’t make the cut when I apply the Do I Want It/Do I Need It? test.  The ensuing technological ignorance is just a by-product.  It could be solved by studying hard, but feh, and/or meh.

Yes, that’s The Rule of First Adopters for you.

An iPod shuffle costs about the same as a discman now, doesn’t it?

Though I guess if you simply haven’t had to replace your CD player in the last 4 or 5 years since MP3 player prices became more competitive, more power to you.

Yeah, see that’s the thing with the “I stopped buying new gadgets and now nothing makes sense to me anymore.”  You must have stopped buying electronics 5-10 years ago.  Text messaging has been around forever.  Cell phones have been ubiquitous for at least the entire Bush administration.  PC World makes no sense to you?  Haven’t PC’s been about the same since like 1995?

Though I will admit I don’t know how to work my mom’s TV - she has sattelite and direct tv and on demand and all that, which I have completely missed the boat on.  Though of course it’s been ubiquitous for just as long as texting, cell phones, PC’s, etc. have.

Yeah, Opoponax, I freely admit that I am long overdue for a cell phone.  That made the list of Gotta Haves a long time ago, and it is just a matter of me hating the telephone and dragging my feet.

Also: yes, my Discman still works.  I thought it died a few months ago, but I dug out some ear-buds I forgot I had, and it turns out the Discman is still viable.

PCs may be the same (yes, mine is old and a little buggy, but I installed a memory card and it’s much peppier now), but my dear, the accoutrements!  Flash drives, wireless, network stuff, bells, whistles, add-ons, photo manipulation software, YouTube, stuff I can’t name.  I suspect much of it is that I tend to take things literally, and PCWorld has never felt like my particular kind of English.  That’s what I meant by the music reference.  I cannot understand music reviews, either.  Oddly, though, descriptions of wine make sense to me.

I think it would all be different if I still worked in an actual office, but I haven’t done that in over five years.  You can’t help picking up tech info in an office. 

But I have you beat on TVs.  I don’t even have cable at home, but when I house-sit, oh my, I can work the state-of-the-artiest entertainment set-ups around.  Also?  Most of the folks don’t even have their set’s time-and-date function on, so I do it for them.  ::preens::

“Remember when Luddites complained non-stop about cell phones?”

Ha, I still do this. I own a cell phone (because when I moved into my own apartment it was cheaper for me to have a cell phone than get a land line) but I treat it for all intents and purposes as a land line. I do not take it with me when I go anywhere, because having a phone on me at all times is OMG too intrusive!

(Also, I’m 23. Just for the record).

That said, I agree with Amanda’s reasoning about how text messaging is actually a boon to us cell-phone haters. Text messagers are not inflicting their private conversations on the rest of us, and not filling the air with loud, shrill and interminable ringtones (which, as an autistic person who is hypersensitive to noise, I appreciate). The only reason I don’t use it myself is that there’s a charge for using it, and I’m really cheap. I do most of my communication via IM rather than phone anyway, because it’s easier for me to produce words in a text format than out loud, so texting would be a natural choice for me if it were free.

The one thing I hate about text messaging is the way its users butcher the English language, but I think that* actually began with instant messaging, which predates texting.

* “That” meaning the specific orthographical and grammatical violations common to text-message and internetspeak, like using “u” and “r” and typing in all caps or all lowercase, and substituting numbers for letters or syllables. General complaints of butchering the English language are probably as old as the English language!

Cell phones and texting are useful technology, but that does not mean that there is not a certain amount of cool kid snobbery going on.  I mean what kind of loser are you if you don’t text all your bff’s on your play-by-play commentary of American Idol.

I don’t pay for text, but that’s only because nobody I know uses it regularly. Don’t enable picture mail either, because I haven’t seen it used for much more than weirdos mailing my friends pix of their cock.

Doesn’t mean they aren’t useful for other people. More options and more tech is always better. You can always choose not to use it.

The Opoponax, there is a new program called YAP that promises speech to text functionality for the cell phone.  Thereby making “text” messages as annoying or perhaps even more annoying than a cell call.  Assuming that people just start talking to their phones in text speak.  (But on the upside, available to those who can’t physically type.)

Personally, I look forward to it, as so little entertainment is free these days.

BTW technology fans, if anybody can identify the fucker who invented predictive text, I would like to kill him.

I’ll hold him/her down while you do it.  They also make virtually impossible to figure out how the fuck to turn it OFF without clicking through a hundred screens.

I love texting, though, and it is very useful for those “where are you and when are you going to be here?” or “can you grab a quart of milk on the way home?” moments.

If I had to pay through the nose for texting, I might love it less, but I have a prepaid plan with AT&T;and it’s 10 cents to send and free to receive.  Since a phone call costs me 35 cents, it’s a bargain to text instead.

I am a doctor and in the hospital text messaging is the best thing ever. I can get detailed messages about stuff and not have to play phone tag just so someone can tell me something simple like “can we have a tylenol order?”.So much more efficient than paging.
But I hate email and only read mine once a month.

I dislike text messaging, not only because it “wierds language”(*) but because it is yet another tool for work to consume even more hours every day.  The only text messages I get are text spam and messages from work, and they get pissed off if I don’t drop what I am doing and immediately respond.  (I was nearly fired two months ago for failing to respond to a text message while I was driving to work.)

Any way they can, employers will try to figure out a way to take time from you for their benefit.

(*) Anyone remember Calvin & Hobbes?  One of my favorite lines was “verbing weirds language.”

I love text messages.  I find it well worth it to pay for the unlimited texting on my plan, and not just because I have a daughter in middle school on the cell plan with me.  It saved my sanity during my divorce—my ex and I couldn’t speak to each other without it getting unpleasant, but communicating via text message took enough of the heat out to let things be rational.  My roommate and I usually exchange several text messages over the course of the day—sometimes practical things like “pick up antifreeze for my car when you go to the store today?” and sometimes just social notes.  I don’t have e-mail at my job (I’m a baker) so it’s a handy thing.

And I don’t see what’s so dreadful about a 2 AM booty text, if everyone involved is having a good time.  Sure, if one party wants a more involved relationship and the other only ever texts as the bars begin to close, there’s a mismatch of desires and expectations there, but that’s hardly the fault of the text messaging!  The author seems very self-congratulatory about wanting a certain sort of relationship instead of “meaningless” sex, and acting as if her being a little slow to decode the social signals that go along with a new mode of communication made her a virtuous damsel led astray, and not… well… human.

Amanda is correct.  “Text messaging is very useful to deaf people.  I think the whole “ableist” criticism is kinda silly.  EVERYTHING in this world is restricted from someone in one way or another, whether they don’t have thumbs, can’t hear, can’t speak, can’t see, etc:.  The best we all can do is embrace new technology that is adapted to our needs and to keep in mind that it might not be as easily accessible to others, such as podcasts or youtube (which almost never have transcripts and captions).

In the USA, text messaging is unfortunately associated with the young millenial-age cohort, so it naturally has an association with being “newfangled” and “creppy” and the “dammit, won’t those text-messaging kids get off my lawn!” mindset.

But 10-15 years ago, because of differences in the way that mobile phone billing was handled, text messaging was extremely common in Europe. The generational anxiety over text messaging isn’t common there because text messaging has had more time to become normalized.

Reading the entire essay, however, one gets the impression that ultimately the tone of the essay is, “I am supposed to be taking up the Luddite cause here, but I can’t bring myself to hate text messaging.” She point blank says that it has its uses. She concedes that its greatest use is that it allows users “to be their better selves.”

BTW technology fans, if anybody can identify the fucker who invented predictive text, I would like to kill him.

Huh? This is one of the more useful features I have gotten out of my cell phone, and I say this has someone who, pre-predictive-text, had awesome text-messaging skillz.

I dislike text messaging, not only because it “wierds language”(*)

AHEM!

BTW technology fans, if anybody can identify the fucker who invented predictive text, I would like to kill him.

I’ll hold him/her down while you do it.  They also make virtually impossible to figure out how the fuck to turn it OFF without clicking through a hundred screens.

—

Count me in! I think its broken on my boyfriend’s phone, because 95% of his messages have at least one incoherency from the thing substituting a completely different word than what he meant!

I’m not one of those 1000+ texts a month people, but I do find it useful for, say, checking up on someone who’s at a party, or school, or work, or anythign else where they might find a few spare minutes to type but don’t have the time at the moment to call you, or its too loud for a good phone conversation.

I hate text messaging because it works poorly, is hard to input, is often based on a terrible pricing model, and is really in general just a stopgap technological half-measure that should and will be replaced with something that interoperates with internet instant messaging.

You’re right, these old people should just shut up and die already!

While I do find cell phones and text messaging to be annoying, it is not the technology that should be blamed…but the large numbers of self-absorbed users who would take grave offense if someone does not immediately respond to their call/message. 

I’ve witnessed several ugly incidents of friends being berated by acquaintances, friends, relatives, etc merely for waiting for a more appropriate time to call/text back.  This was one reason why I held off on getting a cell phone until work made it necessary….just did not want to deal with the aggravation of self-absorbed immature users who had no consideration for other people’s valuable time and their overall lives.  Unless it is a life or death emergency or something genuinely requiring immediate attention, waiting a few minutes or hours is not the end of the world.

It is not the technology…but the stunning lack of maturity and consideration of many of its users. 

Blaming the technology is a big cop-out…and prevents us from placing them blame where it truly belongs….on the people who use/abuse it.

But see, I don’t have a lot of the newest electronics stuff, no iPhone, no little mp3 music player thingie, no tiVo, no plasma stuff, and that’s because I cannot justify the expense.  I don’t have enough money, and fortunately, new communications and entertainment stuff isn’t high on my list of Gotta Haves.  Here’s the weird thing, though: if you stop buying the latest stuff, you very quickly fall behind in the capacity to conceptualize it.  Well, maybe “you” don’t, but that’s what’s happened to me.

I’m not very much different from you in terms of attitude.  If I cannot justify the expense….I won’t get anything….even if it annoys the conformist orthodoxy influenced friends and acquaintances. 

I used a walkman up until it died and an acquaintance dumped a discman on me in 2001.  Even when I was tempted by mp3 players as I have downloaded/ripped gigs worth of music….I put it off for several years.  It was only after mom’s computer died, my discman died, and I was entitled as a grad student to Apple’s summertime buy a mac and get a free Ipod nano/equivalent discount on more expensive models that I broke down and bought one.  Now I can carry around most of my favorite music collection without lugging around bulky cassettes and CDs. 

As for falling behind, that is true…especially if you do not have a keen interest and/or work with it on a regular basis.  Never really had that problems with computers as I had been working with them since high school….though I can understand how one can easily lose track of the technology considering the rapidly changing of processors, RAM types, hard drive/optical drive interfaces, motherboard/case standards, power supply standards, network technologies, etc.  Only slight glitch was that I didn’t really do much in the Mac area as my freelance work in college was focused exclusively on PCs in the late 1990s as that was what most of my clients used.  Also, considering how expensive Macs were back then, I just couldn’t afford to go out and get one back then. 

Though the last time I purchased a PC was back in the Pentium III era…and it was used, I have had no problems following the technological trends thanks to working on client machines and reading up on tech websites/wikipedia. 

My computer enthusiast friends do see me as a luddite as my most modern PCs are two Pentium 4 desktops from 2002-3 era that were obtained at no cost.  One of them is currently running a modded version of Mac OSX Leopard that runs just as well as the current Macs.  Not bad for a piece of “antiquated technology”.

Assuming that people just start talking to their phones in text speak

Wait, but wouldn’t voice-to-text render “text speak” obsolete?  The only reason it exists is to make it more convenient* to thumb-type. 

* Though to be perfectly honest I don’t find that there’s much difference between “Could you please pick up some milk?” and “Cud u plz pk up mlk?”, at the end of the day.  I also feel like if I’m paying a dime for this goddamn text, it better be clear, well written, properly spelled and punctuated, etc.  It’s not like I’m paying by the keystroke.

Is it okay if I don’t like cell phones because I can’t understand why anyone would sacrifice reliability for convenience?  I’m getting damn sick of calling friends of mine who don’t have landlines and having calls not connect, crappy sound quality, audio drop-outs in mid-call that make it hard to understand, and the inevitable, “Oh, sorry, my battery’s dying.  Can you call me back later?” or the sudden cut-off that means the same thing.  By contrast, when I call people landline to landline, I get call connection rates in the six sigmas (even for international long-distance), good sound quality, and the call continues until either of us hang up.  Yeesh.

Text messaging I can understand, but I’d personally rather do it through tiny laptops, universal free Wi-Fi and e-mail…

This Ludditism is nothing new. Before “I don’t even have a cell phone,” there was the guy who “doesn’t even own a TV!” Plenty of people were slow to adopt touch-tone phones and had rotary phones well into the 80s. I’m pretty sure my 60-something aunt still doesn’t have a credit card (or debit card).

Being an early adopter or technological gadgets is, of course, a fool’s game: you spend money on things before they become truly useful. However, not updating your technology long after it’s stabilized and have been taken up by everyone else just ends up disconnecting you from everyone else and making you less effective than others because you can’t use the same tools that they do.

TECHNOTE: it would be nice if the HTML of the page included the graphic’s HEIGHT value, so that once the graphic started loading the text wouldn’t jump down the page, away from the viewer’s eyes.

Geez, Opoponax, you might want to adjust; your privilege is showing in a big way.

What makes you think everyone could afford a Discman? I have flipping cassette players, 20 years old and may no longer work (I haven’t even tried to use them in years). But what the HELL makes you poke fun. OTOH, I have a cellphone, a digital camera, and an indigo iMac. None of it’s new or state of the art, but all of them are useful to me as a self-employed artist, and the cellphone is especially useful for the OMG am INJURED! situations. But, no, I can’t afford gadgets that are just for fun.

A friend of mine used to give me his PCWorld magazines when he was done, but I can’t follow what they’re writing about any more.

Larkspur,

This could also be because PCWorld has become more of a marketing rag devoid of much substantiative content regarding PC technology.  There were already indications of this when I read it more regularly in the mid-late ‘90s.  Nowadays, I only read it if I am curious about what kind of marketing BS OEMs like HP, Dell, etc and their supporters are trying to dump on the computer buying public. 

It also does not say much when the same magazine which gave the Dell Dimension 4600 decent reviews when it came out also declared it one of the 10 worst PCs of all time several months later.  Doesn’t give one much confidence in the reliability of their PC reviews…

What makes you think everyone could afford a Discman?

Because a generic portable CD player costs $10-$20. Probably out of range of the truly destitute, but well within the budget of someone who purchases CDs.

It’s quite interesting how mentioning the most basic staples of cheap, throwaway consumer items of the sort you can pick up at wal-mart for a pittance is a mark of “privilege.”

This Ludditism is nothing new. Before “I don’t even have a cell phone,” there was the guy who “doesn’t even own a TV!”

During my entire undergraduate years and my first several years as a college graduate, I chose to forgo a TV….even when older relatives and friends offered on multiple occasions.  Compared to hanging out with friends, dating, going to campus parties, and walking around New England/NYC, TV’s offerings just cannot compare.  Even though I have one now….it is strictly to watch movies, educational, and news. 

By the way, there’s no reason that age has to be a reason to be inflexible and incurious about new technologies.

Ditto.  A couple of my most keenest computer tutoring students was a senior couple in their 80’s who took to their PC like nobody’s business.  They were IMing, browsing the web, and more in no time flat. 

By contrast, one high school classmate who graduated a year ahead of me was completely terrified of computers and feared their “impending takeover”.  The way he conveyed his fears was as if computers were evil extra-terrestrials bent on world domination.  Kinda strange considering my high school has been a haven for computer enthusiasts for years. 

I’ve also met plenty of technophobic young adults and students in professional and university settings.  Some of the worst examples in higher ed IME were especially common among lit, poli-sci,* and in the bio-related natural sciences.  In the professional arena, this seems quite common among business and legal professionals…excepting some IP lawyers and IT staff. 

* One of my undergrad minors.

Oh, Americans got SMS? Thank goodness! About time! I spent 2005 in San Francisco and was flabbergasted to be completely disconnected from a form of communication Australians have been taking for granted since 1995 or so- my entire adolescence & adulthood. It seemed that some phones in the US had the capacity to text, but no-one knew how to retrieve them, few people knew how to send them, and the bizarre pricing structures meant that no-one was particularly motivated to figure it out.

It was one of the first examples I came across of vastly disparate technology uptakes across different cultures. This technology that was completely embedded in Australian cultural and social life, had been for more than a decade, was barely even known in America.

I suspect it has something to do with your cell pricing structures, whereby the receiver and the caller both pay for a call or message (this is unheard of in Australia- the person calling pays for the call, the person sending the SMS pays for the SMS, you can receive both calls and SMSes on a phone that has no money on it’s account- so you can still be on the ‘receive’ end of communications when you’re broke). I’d feel pretty ripped off if I was paying 10c for every useless message someone chose to send me. Knowing that I was costing someone else money would definitely hold me back from texting at will.

Samantha vimes,

I also have an Indigo Imac, courtesy of a neighbor who dumped it out with the trash this past January.  It is not only a useful machine to test PowerPC applications/software, but also probably the most aesthetically pleasing computer in my possession.  The fact it came in one of my favorite colors is a great bonus!

Because a generic portable CD player costs $10-$20. Probably out of range of the truly destitute, but well within the budget of someone who purchases CDs.

Up until one year after I graduated college several years back, $5 was a lot of money to me.  Even afterwards, it took a while to get used to spending $10 or $20 for necessities even though my economic circumstances have improved. 

Also, I don’t know too many people who buy CDs due to the bulkiness, expense, and anger at the way the record labels have perfected corporate bullying of the public into a fine art (i.e. Suing 12 year olds for several grand for supposed infringement on one song. )

I’m glad that this new “Television Renaissance” is making those who say that sound like an uncultured, ignorant swine. (IMO)

What television renaissance are you speaking of, o supreme arbiter of exquisite taste? Reality shows??

What makes you think everyone could afford a Discman?

Did I say that?  No.  I said that at this point MP3 players cost about the same amount as a discman.  Time was, there was pretty much only the iPod, and it cost like $500.  So only the absolute most gadget conscious had them.  Last year the office corporate Christmas present was a Shuffle.  All “I don’t even have an MP3 player!” means is that you haven’t needed to replace your CD player in the last few years.  It doesn’t mean you’re some kind of higher being.

And, yes, there are people who can’t afford either a CD player or an MP3 player.  Most of them don’t flounce around being all “OMG I am an artist, and I am still getting by with, like, a pretty damn old iMac!”

But what the HELL makes you poke fun.

People who think they’re better than me because they, like, saw one of these fancy shmancy “cellular telephones” once, and it was just soooo Star Trek, y’know… 

In a comment on a blog post.

OTOH, I have a cellphone, a digital camera, and an indigo iMac. None of it’s new or state of the art, but all of them are useful to me as a self-employed artist, and the cellphone is especially useful for the OMG am INJURED! situations. But, no, I can’t afford gadgets that are just for fun.

Do we actually have to have the political purity-motivated “I’m better than you because I own less/older gear”?  Because that is LAME.  Just in case you need to know my inventory in order to judge me better:  2 year old cell phone (I move too much to have a land line), 3 year old laptop (need it for my work), 2 year old digital camera (ditto), and the aforementioned shuffle (gift from work).  I don’t have a TV or any home theater equipment.  (BTW this is off topic, but in case it might score me lefty luddite brownie points, I also don’t have AC or a washer/dryer and don’t drive).  I promise i never use any of that stuff for entertainment, EVER, because that wouldn’t be properly puritanical and leftist of me.

God forbid I might want to listen to some music on my fucking free bottom-of-the-line MP3 player on my morning commute.  I mean, that might be “just for fun”, and we can’t have that, can we?

Oh, if it helps you judge, Samantha, just so you know, I’m only able to have the 2 year old cell phone because after my old one broke I was able to get a free upgrade to the latest bottom-of-the-line / we-pretty-much-pay-people-to-take-them phone.

Is that OK with you?  Should I return it and use smoke signals, or what?

You’re right, these old people should just shut up and die already!

Dang, old people like Hepola have pretty exciting lives, getting all of those 2 am booty calls that she complains about.  Or do you mean that she was getting all of her booty calls from old people?

As others have said, Luddism has little to do with chronological age.  My dad is in his late 60s but still loves to have new technology.

I admit to being somewhat of a luddite simply because I haven’t exerted myself enough to ditch a 5 year old working cell phone and getting a new one. Plus, I get the war-in-the-Congo guilts when I ooh and aah over someone’s new phone. (A rare mineral found only in the Congo is part of the reason for the factional fighting). I really really want the old phone to die a natural death, sooner rather than later.

But then again, I read books for entertainment.

Most mid range cellphone has predictive text input these days.

Anyway, get ready for this type of advance phone.
(TV, full speed web browser, camera, full productivity app.

that means you can BLOG from yer phone !! woo hoo…)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy9v-Ki08T8

nevermind textmessage, It’ll be blogging-hooking to the net 24/7

Opoponax, I’m all in favor of “just for fun”.  You know how we regularly hear people being scolded because they don’t have reliable transportation to work, or because they need food stamps, or Medi-Cal - even though OMG those fakers, they have a big-screen TV and the whole cable package, where are their priorities?  Well, I’m not and never will be a scolder.  For one thing, however much a home entertainment center might cost, it isn’t enough to send a kid through college or put a down-payment on a house.  So why wouldn’t someone feel like their family deserves a fun thing or two?  Bread and roses, folks.

But look: I’m on my own.  I have no dependents.  Any deprivation I accept, I accept for myself alone.  My income is low right now.  If I want to live debt-free, I have to go by my own Want or Need Playbook.  The new stuff might be fun and useful, but I’m going to need new tires for my car soon.  If the Discman dies, my music goes dormant.  When I can afford to replace the tune-age, I’ll buy by price and value.  (More likely, though, is that I’ll score a used Discman from friends who upgrade.)

So no one should think I’m either claiming or advocating some kind of technological, cultural, or economic “purity”.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I love to brag about how I’ve never ever not-even-once-by-accident seen an episode of “Sex and the City”.  But many of my friends are fans.  Me, I’m a “Buffy” girl.

Flat screen TV? feh..
I’ll be passing my hat doing donation drive to get this $800 bucks phone.

(imagine having this when you were a kid. you’d be done doing all your homework during lunch break. just google everything.)

http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news-16085-New+Willcom+03,+a+Nice+WM+6.1+Smartphone.html

Upstream in this thread, mcc said I hate text messaging because it works poorly, is hard to input, is often based on a terrible pricing model, and is really in general just a stopgap technological half-measure that should and will be replaced with something that interoperates with internet instant messaging. And a few other people complained about auto-complete technology.

Those of you who’ve been shying away from texting, please know that it’s not always like that! Honest. With my phone’s adorable little QWERTY keyboard, input is easy, and there’s no auto-completion. (Which would drive me nuts—I don’t even use spellcheck because it’s too dumb to know what I’m trying to write, and because I can correctly spell all sorts of specialized words that the spellcheck doesn’t recognize.) I don’t have the cheapest voice plan—it’s a two-line family plan. But adding 250 text messages a month (sent and received) is just $5 (that’s 2¢ apiece). I’m close to someone who works in a hospital, and we can chat much more easily (albeit briefly) via texting than by phone.

SMS 4x More Expensive Than Data From Hubble

Physorg has a paper comparing the cost of text messaging versus the cost of getting data from Hubble Space Telescope. From the article: ‘The maximum size for a text message is 160 characters, which takes 140 bytes because there are only 7 bits per character in the text messaging system, and we assume the average price for a text message is 5p. There are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte, so that’s 1 million/140 = 7490 text messages to transmit one megabyte. At 5p each, that’s £374.49 [$732.95] per MB — or about 4.4 times more expensive than the ‘most pessimistic’ estimate for Hubble Space Telescope transmission costs.” “Hubble is by no means a cheap mission — but the mobile phone text costs were pretty astronomical!”“

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/12/1419204&from=rss

(current data service is total rippoff. As long as consumer doesn’t demand better price, nothing will change. But then again, phone is monopoly and they control congress.  So, no fast wireless download for you or watching youtube on your phone.)

I guess my main issue (aside from just genuinely being frustrated about all the Good Puritan Leftist “I never have any fun, EVER” bullshit) is that we’re at the point where this stuff isn’t really all that new or fancy anymore. 

I was the last of my friends to get a cell phone.  6 years ago.  I got my first iPod from a friend who was upgrading (a friend who was by no means an “early adopter”).  That was like 4 years ago and that iPod has since been put out to pasture as an occasional portable hard drive.  This whole idea where we’re all claiming to still find very common and basic technology high-falutin is kind of silly.  My dad is the luddite’s luddite (we had a rotary phone until circa 1990), and even he knows how to text message now.

Obviously people should only buy what they really want and feel that they need.  I’m a HUGE fan of that idea and generally think people waste so much time, money, and energy lusting after pointless gadgetry.  But there’s nothing wrong with having things that make your life easier or provide genuine entertainment.  Forgoing those things don’t make you a better person.

I’ve always thought that listening to people complain about cell phone use was way more annoying than listening to people actually using cell phones (oh, the annoyances of modern life).  For the first time ever, a few weeks ago, I actually witnessed someone answer a phone call in a movie theater while the movie was playing.  The sternness with which people are warned to turn off their phones while they are part of an audience would imply that people actually do on occasion answer their phones while they’re sitting in a theater or concert hall.

It hinder full web service. Instead of smooth multimedia internet, we are still counting taps.

Few short text message is affordable, but viewing webpage, emailing and youtube clip are out of reach.
Advance service simply can’t happen on cellphone (advance map/direction/phonebook), commerce, multimedia, etc…  If browsing cheap T-shirt catalog online ends up costing the same as the T-shirt itself… buying T-shirt online simply can’t exist.

all the Good Puritan Leftist “I never have any fun, EVER” bullshit

Well said, everything you’ve written, Opoponax. It’s funny how the twin to this attitude is the, “and no one should ever get decently-paid for political work EVER and should be thankful to work for peanuts at their non-profit.” In many ways, I think some liberals have an extremely unhealthy relationship with money, which is exactly the opposite of what liberalism promises to people: liberalism promises prosperity and a better life for the masses. Not the fantasy of great wealth, but rather the assurance that everyone will be brought along with the changes and opportunities of the future.

Also, I don’t know too many people who buy CDs due to the bulkiness, expense, and anger at the way the record labels have perfected corporate bullying of the public into a fine art

Well, I seriously doubt you’d dismiss the Salvadorans buyers and sellers of CDs on the sidewalks of my neighborhood as “privileged,” except perhaps in a global sense in that they were doing better than the salvadorans in a lot of isolated farming villages back home.

You might have an ancient cell phone from 8 years ago, and it works for you. Great. You don’t have a newer one because you’re poor and everyone else is a privileged elite: it’s because it’s not a priority for you to get a free upgrade. Your time and effort are, in your opinion, better spent elsewhere. Other people aren’t “privileged” when it comes to these rather pedestrian consumer items: they just allocate their time and energy towards a particular thing they want. Unless you eat ramen every day and raid the Salvation Army donation box for clothes, you probably expend your resources in ways you consider important to you. (though perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps pandagon has a large number of commenters who are truly destitute and can’t afford landline phones, coffee makers, or a toaster)

Luddites are not particularly thrifty, or down to earth, or particularly virtuous. They’re simply people who have different priorities. Can we really say the people who resisted central plumbing, long after it was widely accessible, because they were fine with using their outhouse were doing something good? Or were they just being a pain in the ass to their houseguests?

Considering that I am a college student and still am able to afford my monthly cell phone bill, it can’t be that much of a rip-off.

The reference was not to voice cell phone service but rather to broadband data service over cell phones, which is, in fact, a ridiculous ripoff.

For the first time ever, a few weeks ago, I actually witnessed someone answer a phone call in a movie theater while the movie was playing.  The sternness with which people are warned to turn off their phones while they are part of an audience would imply that people actually do on occasion answer their phones while they’re sitting in a theater or concert hall.

This immature inconsiderate behavior is not only in movie theaters…but also in classrooms and libraries. 

My first encounter with this was in 2002 when I took a post-undergrad summer extension course at a Boston area institution and was astounded to find someone’s cell phone ringing so loudly that it disrupted the instructor’s lecture in a 200+ person class.  Despite urgings from the instructor and fellow students to turn off the ringtone, the classmate in question persisted in allowing the ringing to continue until the exasperated instructor had a TA go up and confiscate it for the duration of that evening’s lecture. 

When I later started at grad school, I was astounded at how undergrad and grad students were using their cellphones in the university libraries as if they were out on the street which frequently led to librarians and security guards to remind them to either cease the cell call or take it outside.  It did not help that most of these students responded to these reminders with an angry attitude borne of arrogance and entitlement.  Seems like consideration for other students and library patrons were passe as far as they were concerned. 

Again, this is not the fault of the technology…but the arrogant immaturity and lack of consideration of those who use it.

I’m well along on my march to the grave (now there’s a cheery Sunday night thought to go to sleep by) and the only people who have my mobile number are immediate family and friends that I consider immediate family.  If the caller’s *name* doesn’t come up when my mobile rings, I let it go to voicemail.  That being said, I make 99.9% of my calls on my mobile and feel at sea if I don’t have it with me.  I only text with my daughter, who works in a club and texts me from there when something interesting happens or if she has a question.  It’s easier for her to text—it’s harder for me but I do enjoy the quick little back-and-forths.

Y’know, mobile phones and computers mean we’re basically at work 24-7.  Kinda sucks.

a giant planet wide phone jammer. That person will deserve nobel peace price.

in the meantime….a portable GSM phone jammer costs about $200. (not a universal phone jammer, but I bet you can build yourself military grade phone jammer by downloading schematic online.
http://www.phonejammer.com/cell-phone-jammer/p2jbz-r.asp

Well, I seriously doubt you’d dismiss the Salvadorans buyers and sellers of CDs on the sidewalks of my neighborhood as “privileged,” except perhaps in a global sense in that they were doing better than the salvadorans in a lot of isolated farming villages back home.

Tyro,

I wasn’t the one who said people who buy CDs were privileged. 

I was just explaining how some may not afford or feel they could afford such items due to prior/current life circumstances or have other reasons for not buying CDs.

Just wanted to make that part clear.

I had one class where the teacher would give you an “F” for the latest assignment if he hears your phone ring in class.  One day during class, I forgot to put my cellphone on silent, and it rang.  Instead of reaching into my bag, I just sat there figuring that if he couldn’t figure out who’s phone it was if no one picked it up.  So the entire class just there for about a minuet looking awkwardly at each other as no one could figure out who’s phone it was.

I’m kind of proud of that moment.

If the Prof of that post-undergrad summer course had waited just a few more seconds, several of us were just about ready to grab that obnoxious classmate’s cellphone, shut it off, and toss it into the nearest refuse bin.  We were fed up with the way his disruption was wasting our time and for some of us…the tuition money we were paying directly out of our own pockets as unlike him or you…we were not counting on mom and dad to pay for our education.

Why can’t cellphone has built in automatic shut down?
(will not accept phone call at such and such time. couldn’t be that hard to build such feature.)

I mean I woulnd’t mind having a phone that I can say (shut down for next 90 minutes, instead of off switch or yanking out battery.)

This is going to sound totally made up, but I am telling the truth here:

I was once at a funeral and a guy answered his phone and proceeded to speak somewhat loudly for about a minute or so.  Now that was a jaw dropper.  After that, I simply cannot be shocked by bad cell phone behavior.

How does one go about using the text messaging feature on one’s cell phone to arrange a so-called “booty call” at 2 AM?  You may think I’m joking, but I’m not.  I can’t imagine how this works.

Tyro This Ludditism is nothing new. Before “I don’t even have a cell phone,” there was the guy who “doesn’t even own a TV!”

Hey that’s me!

However, not updating your technology long after it’s stabilized and have been taken up by everyone else just ends up disconnecting you from everyone else and making you less effective than others because you can’t use the same tools that they do.

“Effective”?  Teevee?  Say what?  There’s absolutely nothing on teevee that’s worth a hundredth of the annoyance I suffer every time I watch it for more than fifteen minutes in a row.

When I first heard about text messaging it seemed like a step backwards.  I remember text beepers before cell phones.  Anyway, I don’t like texting because on a regular phone it takes longer than simply calling the person, and on top of that costs more.  My husband and I share unlimited night & weekend minutes, plus 500 anytime minutes which we never use up, unlimited calls to eachother, yet every text message, sent or received, is 20 cents.  Yes we could buy a plan, but however you slice it we’d end up paying more than we do now.  Although it may be inevitable as we have spent $10-$15 a month the past 3 months due to text messages from his boss.

“Effective”?  Teevee?  Say what?

Granted I work in the entertainment industry, but I once flubbed a job interview because I just didn’t have enough awareness of random crap cable TV to vibe with the office.

It’s generally considered important to actually be able to socialize meaningfully with other people you come into contact with in your day to day life.  Technology widely adopted over the last 50 years is a part of that.

We almost had an in-theater beating at the New Beverly when some asshole not only left his phone on during the movie, not only didn’t answer it, but let it happen TWICE during a fucking double feature.

Same guy.  Same phone.  Boy, was he lucky the theater was dark, because we were all screaming at him.

Look, if you don’t own a tv, fine.  But I get really annoyed with the self-satisfied attitude of “I could nevah evah watch Teh TeeVee because I am wayyyy too busy reading my dog-eared copy of The Stranger.”

Appreciation for Cormac McCarthy, a moving performance of Aida, and the finer points of Rock of Love can live in the same brain - well, they can live happily together in my brain.

God told me not to watch TV. It’s teh evul… mwahahahaaaa….

My problem with text messaging is that it’s just as inane as any other cellphone conversation.  If not more so.  Some of my coworkers IM me at work, which is basically just slightly more wordy text messaging, and the number of LOLs and smiley faces they use makes my eyes bleed.

Although I am thankful that I now no longer have to listen to that crap.

Granted I work in the entertainment industry…

It’s generally considered important to actually be able to socialize meaningfully with other people you come into contact with in your day to day life.  Technology widely adopted over the last 50 years is a part of that.

Out of curiosity, what area of the entertainment industry?

As to the rest, that really depends on a given workplace/institutional culture and the co-workers/group you are surrounded with.  Depending on which I happen to be around, TV talk was either extremely important (easy to fake with the internet and quietly listening to them at the beginning), one of many diverse topics at the proverbial water cooler, or avoided as the elitist co-workers/group and institutional environment were too eager to label anyone who even admits to watching any TV…even for news…to be frivolous and lowbrow with the negative social and professional consequences such labeling tends to confer (*cough* academia *cough*).

We almost had an in-theater beating at the New Beverly when some asshole not only left his phone on during the movie, not only didn’t answer it, but let it happen TWICE during a fucking double feature.

During my undergrad, a few Profs, my classmates, and happen to be in the town theater where during the first few minutes of the featured film, some fool started to play with a laser pointing device on the screen.  Without waiting for the theater staff to intervene, a few audience members got out of their seats, grabbed the idiot, and with the help of theater staff, forcibly removed him from the theater to everyone else’s applause.

I won’t start texting until I have a dang keyboard on the phone. My current phone is a pain in the ass to even put someone’s name into.

But really, it’s because I like proper grammar and spelling and hate reading textspeak.

I prefer texting at my leisure and I generally spell out all the words rather than use textspeak. My dad uses textspeak, which is really annoying. I just generally hate the phone and prefer text since it gives me time to think of how to respond. I love my cellphone and keep it on me as much as possible, since I use it as a watch, alarm, timer, radio (I get FM on the lovely thing) and note taker. But newer cellphones have less friendlier interfaces and get more and more complicated when they don’t have to be (this cellphone of mine has this fancy little game, but no Snake. What kind of cellphone doesn’t have Snake??).

But cellphone prices here (in Canada, I got my cellphone in Malaysia) are stupid and that two out of three companies aren’t even on the GSM network is ridiculous.

And yes, predictive texting needs to die. I turn it off every time. It shouldn’t be the default. If people want to text like they’re stupid, they should so I can identify who they are and avoid texting them unless absolutely necessary.

The love-me-I’m-a-Luddite theme is just a frame to address zeitgeist without being all zeitgeisty about it.  Your scenario:  Editor says, the kids these days and their SMS!  Why aren’t we commenting on it?  Your choices:  write an article about (a) how the text message is awesome, (b) how you don’t really understand it and therefore, fear it, or (c) how this technology fits into a complex historical or conceptual framework.
You can plug any new trend into this Choose Your Own Adventure - anal sex, new depilatory techniques, electronic gadgets, or bestselling book - and most writers will choose (b) unless they’re shilling or publishing academic material.

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature., cheap cialis, cheap cialis,  =(((, tramadol no prescription, tramadol no prescription,  gbry, phentermine no prescription, phentermine no prescription,  ypooh, generic cialis, generic cialis,  ehex, cialis, cialis,  tvox, phentermine online, phentermine online,  zumv,

broalmanone.com