Last week, I received one of those chain mails that warranted forwarding. It is not a regular habit, so please don`t start sending me messages urging me to sponsor an elephant in Somalia who has a missing foot!
But I digress.
The forwarded mail became the mailing list`s answer to instant messaging. It wasn`t the content of the ongoing group conversation that amazed me, it was the medium. Even though we weren`t spread out over more than a 10m radius, we continued this conversation over a three-day period via our inboxes.
I attended day one of a mobile broadband conference yesterday and a delegate asked whether voice transmissions are destined to become a free value-add to data-focused mobile technologies.
"Maybe," was the answer. Why? Because cellular providers are now providing technologies which cater more and more towards data transmission. WiFi, the approaching WiMax, existing 2G and 3G, CDMA and HSDPA have put their cards on the table. Type up and pipe down, they seem to be saying.
Emoticons simply do not convey the facial expressions needed to express girl-talk, but we are resorting to them more and more.
Bhavna Singh, journalist, ITWeb
But then ladies, what happens to good old heart-to-hearts? They`re a dying breed, along with emotions, I think. Emoticons simply do not convey the facial expressions needed to express girl-talk, but we are resorting to them more and more.
Statistics have also shown that voice is losing ground as a business model. To those who are chasing such technologies like VOIP and Skype, the statisticians say beware, they`re not living up to their promises.
In this age of e-mail, SMS, MMS and streaming video, how many people do you interact with daily that you have actually spoken to or even met?
Mobility has reached the point where your Johannesburg-based company can have offices in the outer rims of Uzbekistan and you interact with those colleagues as if they were sitting right next to you. All this via some kind of text communication.
But I shouldn`t complain. If you know someone well enough, facial expressions transcend plain text and HTML. I`m receiving regular e-mails from London, emotions firmly expressed. Love it or hate it, the typed word is here to stay.
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