Texting?

I remember when instant messaging caught on and people at work started I thought what slackers. Then vendors started asking for IM accounts to message. Texts are a reality of the connected world and many people are now rarely reachable any other way. It's like any tech - humans will use, abuse or ignore.

Very little texting, Mostly my daughter (Weekly) and brother, Occasionally, I do E-Mail a lot, but very little texting.

Brother just texted "Registration tags came in, where do you want 'em sent?"

I probably send/receive a couple of hundred texts a month, but I don't really keep track. I've found texting to be much more efficient than voice or email at times, especially when a quicker reply is needed and a voice call would be difficult. One example would be when I was working on an engine recently, and needed to ask my son-in-law a question about some settings. After texting him, I only needed to glance at my phone to read the reply and continue working, and I still had the text to refer to as I went along instead of having to stop and write everything down. As for "old folks" resisting texting, I'm 71...

Come to think of it, we're texting right now.

Several months back my daughter was trying hard to see how many she could do and hit her goal of 13000. I swear she was on the phone all day, every day. This was during a cold spell at home and not much to do.

2oldman wrote:

fj12ryder wrote:
The list goes on. You can be opposed to something, and never have done it. Not necessarily a bad thing.

If texting were illegal or dangerous, I would agree. Otherwise your argument is absurd.

In most states, texting while driving IS illegal!

I personally don't have a problem with texting; in fact, while living in Europe for many years, I texted for business reasons more often than making calls.

However, my issue with texting is that, for most texters, whenever a new message is received, their instinctive reaction is to make a gunfighter-like draw for their smartphone to read them immediately.

During a social activity such as mealtime, business meetings, or conversations, that's merely annoying. During physical or complex mental activities, that's potentially or severely dangerous to themselves &/or others!

Texting can be very useful. It's not a substitute for email or voice calls, but it has it's place. Also, as mentioned by others, a text can often get through when signal is marginal, while a call will not connect or will continually drop. I used to tell my kids that texting was low tech, like sending a telegram...

drsteve wrote:
Texting can be very useful. It's not a substitute for email or voice calls, but it has it's place. Also, as mentioned by others, a text can often get through when signal is marginal, while a call will not connect or will continually drop. I used to tell my kids that texting was low tech, like sending a telegram...

And SMS messages cost the phone companies nothing, for all intents and purposes. The data pads out free space in other packets that are already being sent. Sort of like deadheading on an airplane.

And yet they charge a pretty penny for texts, relatively.

And I saw an ad yesterday that you can now "voice text"!! What's next? Calling a number and communicating directly to someone? What a concept! :)

The marketing drive to sell something as "new and different" when it's really just some repackaging and new paint, is truly mind-boggling.

fj12ryder wrote:
And I saw an ad yesterday that you can now "voice text"!! What's next? Calling a number and communicating directly to someone? What a concept! :)

The marketing drive to sell something as "new and different" when it's really just some repackaging and new paint, is truly mind-boggling.

I like "voice texting", as it is much simpler for this old man to speak into the phone and it writes the text, instead of my fat fingers trying to get it right on the keyboard.