watching movies about nature, i’m reminded that opposable thumbs are very cool. once upon a time they helped us grasp fruit. then tools. today, they help us to TXT.
TXTing was the cheapest fruit on the Telco tree – voice and data much more expensive. (for the Telco, it’s very cheap to send sms’es.) this pricing encouraged many consumers to learn to communicate with their thumbs.
the popularity of TXTing worldwide suggests that there is tremendous demand for instant telecommunications, no matter what form it takes – thumbing included.
these new forms of communication can have wide-ranging and surprising effects. consider the case of japan. japanese computer users who want to send an email have to work through several menus to find each character. (there are a few thousand possible.) txt’ing, in slang, is much easier.
as TXTing has taken off in Japan, it has invigorated the nation’s publishing industry with a new literary genre: the cell-phone novel (as opposed to, say, the typewriter novel or the quill and ink novel.)
by making it easier to write, cell phones have inspired more people and more young women, in particular to write. thumb’s up to that.