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IM On Mobile Phones
Dr Occult writes "Some of the biggest mobile phone networks have joined forces to push instant messaging (IM) over mobiles.Fifteen operators, including Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and China Mobile have agreed to work together to make it easy to IM across networks.
Third-generation mobile networks can carry more data and move it around far faster so messages really can be instant.This is important because IM conversations typically involve more back and forth than text message chats and it ensures that the experience is similar to that enjoyed online.
Under the initiative, the 15 operators covering 700 million mobile phone users have agreed to use a single standard for IM, which would work across networks.The operators are looking to launch instant messaging mobile services later this year."
Do we REALLY need more stuff on our cell phones?
I mean, isn't an mp3 player, camera, games, calendar book, internet access, email access enough?
Is it just me, or is there not really that much point to this (unless you're deaf)? After all, the point of a text is that you can send it when you're not in a position to get involved in a lengthy conversation, just need a quick snippet of information, or just to send "pub, 8pm". But with IM, you're effectively just having a conversation.... why not just talk? Surely it's easier and more effective than typing like mad at keys that are hardly designed for the purpose?
I use Ramble IM on my Nextel BlackBerry and it works great as a real time AIM client.
How is this any different than that?
Just different because we call it IM now?
There is a unified text messaging system, it's standardised across all GSM networks. Yes some countries do have different text message lengths to others, which can get annoying if you send international texts and have them truncated. And there are a couple of countries that refuse to standardise on anything, like the USA, so use bizarre non-GSM systems. But for the vast majority of the world, which is on some variant of GSM, text messages are standardised and more or less seamless.
And IM is different to SMS. SMS is about sending messages one at a time from one phone to another. It only works on phone networks, and the messages are not connected together in e.g. threads. If your phone is off, they queue up until you turn it on; the person sending you a text can't see if you're 'online' at the moment. IM is at least in principle network-neutral; you should be able to send IMs back and forth between your phone and an Internet-based IM service, for example. People can see that you're online, and messages are threaded. The two are very different.
We barely have to look at each other now. I work at a gas station and because its incredibly old we still dont have any pay at the pump credit car machines. I get people walking inside constantly complaining about this. And even more scary are people who come in and tell me they have never payed for gas inside before, a 40 year old women told me this recently. I usualy just glare at the people who complain and ask them if human contact is really that bad of a thing.
As much as the trendoids out there may feel that they are the "digerati" since they use all the latest buzzy technologies, it all comes down to one thing: two tin cans and a string. When it comes to communication, people only fall into one of two camps especially when they are young:
/home/mystuff
1. You and your best friend rigged up some kind of comm system between your houses because you were actual real live techno geeks.
or...
2. You were a catty, snippy teen who passed around "he said/she said" notes in school all day and that's about the extent of what communication means to you.
Now obviously there's a right way and a wrong way to look at communication. The right way is to ogle the technology itself and try to learn how it works so you can do more interesting things with it. The wrong way is to use it to pass around "he said/she said" information (ie. what most morons consider communication to be). Personally, I think IM is overrated because there are very few IM systems that you can actually force into serving you properly. My preference is Jabber because I can actually run my own IM server for private use among friends and family. I can also do very interesting things with it, like trigger events remotely by sending commands to a "bot" account. I've got one at home on my Jabber server that I call "Bash Boy". All I have to do is send IM messages to it like:
cd /
ls
mv file1
and it obeys. I challenge you to do that with the proprietary IM that other companies offer. If your IM can't do that, then you're not really using IM to it's fullest capabilities. And that's a VERY basic example. Now adding this IM feature to cell phones is ridiculous. Think about all the fat, lazy white trash you see walking around with a cell phone grafted to their ears in the grocery store. You know why they won't use IM? Because they can barely read let alone spell. Can you imagine what sort of horrors they will be "typing" via their IM???
SnuffyBear25: "i heart u babay"
MotorMan: "yeh"
SnuffyBear25: "whatchu doin"?
MotorMan: "yeh"
SnuffyBear25: "do u no how much i heart u"?
MotorMan: "how much"?
SnuffyBear25: "i heart you bigger than peter north's pole"
MotorMan: "damn baby. git on over here. i got a 40 and we can party"
SnuffyBear25: "i b there in a flash 4 u babay. hugs".
Do we really want to promote this kind of sick behavior? If anything we should be building re-education centers to clean this kind of thing up. Who's with me!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o