Communicative Technology - Short Messaging Service (SMS) - Essay Example

Communicative Technology - Short Messaging Service The technology chosen for the presentation is called Short Messaging Service or SMS for short. It comes under the label of Communicative Technology. As obvious from its name ‘SMS is a Short Messaging Service because it allows only to send a total length of one sixty characters of a message to and from a mobile, fax machine, and/or IP address.’ Those 160 characters can comprise of words or numbers or an alphanumeric combination. (Illinois State University 2014). Implementation of the SMS is a very easy process all a person needs is a ‘subscription’ to a mobile network that provides Short Messaging Service, a mobile phone that is capable of sending a SMS also known as a ‘Text Message’. The user should have activated the service of sending text messages, this activation involves paying a cost to some mobile network whereas on most mobile phone networks the activation is free. However, each text message costs some amount per text message, though now a days mobile service networks offer packages that allow you to send a limited number of text messages for a cost in bulk. Lastly, the user who wants to send an SMS should know how to read and type a text message on the mobile phone and the model they have and should have a recipient to whom they want to send their texts to and they are good to go. (Illinois State University 2014). In 1984, a man named ‘Friedhelm Hillebrand’ was experimenting with casual sentences and questions on his type writer at his house in Germany. Whenever he wrote a question or a sentence he made a count of the alphabets, number and the spaces in between them. This led to an odd discovery, which further on became the idea behind the length of a SMS. He noticed that every time the he counted, the total quantity of characters was less than one sixty characters. (Gayomali, C. 2012). It is said that the first ever text message sent in the world was: ‘Merry Christmas’. It was sent by a man named Papworth. He was a computer designer at ‘Sema Group Telecoms’. Since the mobile phones at that time did not have the ability to type as there were no keyboards he used his computer to send the greeting to his buddy ‘Richard Jarvis’ who was employed at ‘Vodafone’. (Erikson, C. 2012). In 1993 ‘Nokia’ became the pioneer to launch the first ever mobile phone set which allowed the users to send text messages. However, there was limitations to the SMS service, firstly, it could only be typed through a numerical keypad by the multi tap system and most importantly the SMS service was only limited between one network. Only two people on the same network could send SMS also known as a text message to each other. (Youcom 2011) Because of these limitations the preliminary growth of the text messaging service was sluggish. An average American sent a record of 0.4 SMS each month in the year 1995. It was not until 1999 that the facility to send text messages from one network to another was accessible for the public. And this facility lead to a drastic increase in the number of text messages sent per month from 0.4 it reached to 35 SMS sent per month by each person. (Erikson, C. 2012). According to the Wall Street Journal ‘a new fever is born’. The users studying at college level attached to the SMS service like fire as they found it to be very accessible, affordable and a helpful of communication with their peers. (Gayomali, C. 2012). Sending a text message involves a mediating body that is responsible for sending the SMS to the correct person. This body is called the ‘Short Message Service Center (SMSC)’. When a user sends a SMS it is received by the SMSC who is responsible for sending the received message to the correct mobile phone. For this process, as appeal is sent to the ‘home location register (HLR)’ to locate the roaming customer. Upon receiving the request the HLR will inform the SMSC about the current position of the customer whether he or she is inactive or active at the moment and where the customer is located. Two actions can then be taken by the SMSC if the customer is inactive the SMSC will withhold the SMS for a period of time and will not send it until the user becomes active. Or if the user is active the SMSC will send the message and then categorize the message as sent upon transfer to the user. (Illinois State University 2014) Initially the medium of sending SMS was through the usage of ‘multi-tap’. Each numerical button on the keyboard of a phone had three or four letters of the English alphabet connected to it and each time a letter was needed to written the user had to tap according to the position of the letter on the keypad. This method though easy for the common user was less competent. Thus in 1995 another tool was added to make the process of SMS more efficient the ‘T-9’ feature. It is called as a ‘predictive text technology’ and users had to tap once and write the whole word and the phones system used to detect what phrase was typed in. This feature not only made texting helpful it also corrected their spellings of the common words used. (Erikson, C. 2012). On a social level this feature was very helpful to the user. Initially when the text messaging service started users started using their own colloquial abbreviations while typing SMS. This came to be famously known as sign language. The sign language which included words like ‘Cul8r’ or using the letter ‘u’ instead of you started to ruin the correct spellings of users and was also coming up in their everyday writing assignments at schools or colleges thus, socially the invention of the T9 was a step to correct this disadvantage of the SMS. In the year 2002, the initial years of the twenty-first century there was a big boom in the SMS industry where by a total of two fifty billion text messages were sent all around the globe. So much so that by 2007 the number of text messages sent surpassed the total number of phone calls made in a year per person. (Gayomali, C. 2012). With the advent of text messaging packages, the SMS industry has become a multibillion dollar industry. Its accessibility has made it to be the most used technology to ever exist. Since 2003 the SMS is not only being used for sending messages from person to person rather it has been incorporated in all kinds of activities such as voting in reality shoes such as American Idol and the X-Factor where by each contestant has a code which the users of the text messaging service all around the world can text to a four digit code of the respective show. In 2008 the first ‘text to donate campaign’ was started in the United States of America. (Youcom 2011) Thus the evolution of SMS from a person to person tool of communication to a knowledge and resource center has revolutionized the present society and its behavior. SMS can now be sent in bulk for the purpose of advertising a brand a business or any kind of promotions. It can be used to inform people about emergency protocols in the country or area an example of this is the ‘the World Health Organization-backed typhoon and disaster response system in the Philippines’. Services like Facebook can be fed with a person’s mobile phone number and they can be informed about the latest events or notifications on their mobile phones through SMS by the Facebook server. Something to think about: ‘Everyday, somewhere in the world, some is experiencing SMS for the first time.’ Lastly, it has only been twenty two years down the line since the invention of SMS and the achievements of this facility have been innumerable, here is a thought to ponder upon, what other wonders this invention would bring to us as the years pass by. (ERICSSON 2012) Reference: ERICSSON. (2012, November 30). Twenty years of Short Message Service (SMS): how text messaging helped to change the world. Ericsson.com. Retrieved October 16, 2014, from http://www.ericsson.com/news/121130-twenty-years-of-short-message-service_244159017_c Erikson, C. (2012, September 21). A Brief History of Text Messaging. Mashable. Retrieved October 14, 2014, from http://mashable.com/2012/09/21/text-messaging-history/ Gayomali, C. (2012, December 3). The text message turns 20: A brief history of SMS. The Week. Retrieved October 14, 2014, from http://theweek.com/article/index/237240/the-text-message-turns-20-a-brief-history-of-sms Illinois State University, I. o. (n.d.). SMS overview. Webcontent/Reading. Retrieved October 15, 2014, from http://www.itk.ilstu.edu/staff/drathke/277web/WebContent/reading/SMSoverview2.pdf Youcom. (2011, December 28). Start creating, sharing & exploring great visuals today!. Text Messaging a Timeline of how 160 Characters Changed the Way We Communicate. Retrieved October 16, 2014, from http://visual.ly/text-messaging-a-timeline-of-how-160-characters-changed-the-way-we-communicate Read More