« Bring your own towel | Main | A Google moment »
July 11, 2004
Communication moment
Sitting in a small North Sea harbor cafe at the weekend, I saw a middle-aged woman busily using her mobile to SMS someone. No-one even took a second look as this is obviously common-place now. But wait a moment. Step back from this everyday scene for just a minute. Rewind to say 10 years ago. What would have the woman had to do to communicate with whoever she wanted to get in touch with? She would have probably got up, gone outside the cafe, searched for a call-phone, inserted some coins and dialed a number. If she was lucky then the person she wanted to talk to would have been there - and if not - well, then the "communication moment" would have ended. Maybe she would have waited and called in the evening or the next day. Probably also rethinking and tuning her message. She may even have decided not to contact the person because the message seemed irrelevant after sleeping on it. Today, she doesn't need to leave her cosy warm spot in the cafe (it rained most of the weekend), and yet was able to communicate with someone the moment she wanted to do so. This ubiquitous communication also means that we are in a position to "send" a message to someone else without the time-delay (leaving us time to rethink or discard the message) that we would have had 10 years ago.
Posted by Matthew at July 11, 2004 07:02 PM