A Texting Nation

Texting has become a big influence in many people's lives because they change their ways of speaking, writing, and how we, the people, communicate with each other. In Howard Rheingold's The Next Social Revolution, he talks about how texting first started and how big of an impact it has to our lives. First, the telephone comes out and now we have cell phones that can communicate to others by text messaging. Although Rheingold's data is out dated, his prediction about how our social world now is accurate.

In Rheingold's article, he says that he first noticed people using their telephones to "send text between tiny black and white screens." Rheingold first saw this when he visited Japan in 2001. He started to realize how people started to develop new forms communication and predicted that texting will become, within the next ten years, one of our basic ways of communicating. I know many people have read his article in today's society and might assume that Rheingold is "late on the new trends," but if you put yourself in the past where he started to realize this new way of communicating, you will see that Rheingold's prediction was accurate and he reveals how society started to change into this texting nation.

In today's society, many teenagers and adults use text messaging as a faster and better way of communication. In this video, you see many teenagers in high school discussing about how texting is a big part of their life. Many teenagers say that texting has affected their lives both negatively and positively. The negatives are because of how addicting texting is, many teenagers text in school and get in trouble. Many teens say that texting also effects their speech, meaning that when they speak to their teachers, parents, or a more professional adult, they tend to use text words that are considered non-professional. Some teenagers say that it affects them on the way they type on computers and on their papers. The positives is when teens text others, they tend to talk to alot more people. Some say that texting is better than talking on the phone because it eliminates long, awkward silences. Another positive look on how texting affects teenagers is sending messages to others about where parties are at, what's the latest trend going around, and/or where to meet up for study projects. This video relates to Rheingold's article by these teens, in the video, making Rheingold's prediction as accurate as possible. He said that in the future, people will tend to replace formal communication and that future, the one he predicted, is now.

As you can see, people are developing new ways of communication. People are tossing aside formal communication and using new a technological revolution in communicating to the world. Rheingold's data is very out dated but has interesting facts about how the texting world became to be. When someone buys a cell phone, they don't use it just for talking formally, it's now about the texting and sending picture messages. People want to communicate now without their arms getting tired from holding the phone up to their ear all the time. Since texting is now a big part of our social world, it makes it easier for people who know how to multi-tasks and makes conversations much longer. Texting is still developing new strategies and maybe in the next ten years, will evolve into something even more extraordinary.