Austin Improv

Yah. Going over phone bills for the last few months and realizing how much overage L. & I have been incurring on text messaging.

OK - my fault (and my $) for not catching this sooner.

However, when/why did texting become the primary means of telephone communication? Sure it's nice if you need an address, directions or something that needs to be viewed a few times, but generally speaking: it's no less intrusive than a voice call, it's less personal (emoticons don't help), it's impossible to respond to while doing much of anything else, and responding in kind involves manipulating tiny-ass keyboards or trying to use phone keys as some sort of Goldbergian typewriter. Yes, I said typewriter.

This isn't a neo-Luddite screed. I'm not anti-tech. Hell, I got a Kindle for my birthday & I spent most of today playing with it and realizing that it is one seriously cool little multipurpose e-toy.

However, I'm now having a serious debate with myself as to whether to change our plan to unlimited texting or to remove texting from my plan entirely. Or, at the very least, just stop answering texts altogether.

Odds are I'll succumb to the inevitable and sign up for unlimited texting, but when I realized Lisa and I fielded and sent over 400 text messages last month, my gut reaction was... well... in the subject line of this post.

Christ on a stick, I even get spam texts now.

Rant over.

Limited.... texts?

What is this caveman world you speak of, stranger?

do not anger the elder shaman! he is our repository of the old ways, that we may learn. he sings the song of the Roe Tree Telephone, the Die Lup Modem and the Lehtur Riting...the ancient wisdom still has much to teach us!

I think I only get/send a couple of texts a day, when you average it all out.

(In other news, I have no life.)



--
peter rogers @ work | http://hujhax.livejournal.com

Do you know what they call alternative medicine which has been proven to work?  "Medicine."
      -- Tim Minchin

I was forced to get the $5 a month text plan because other people who have unlimited texting texted me like crazy. It's a virus.

You can get a free google voice number. voice.google.com
Texts on that are free. You can send and receive them on your computer and forward incoming text messages to your google voice number to your phone.

This could at least save on the outgoing text costs when you are at a computer.

According to this post, you can even use it on your kindle 3g

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/v ... 4d23&hl=en

Yes, Matt - my point precisely. I'm not gonna name names but...

Thanks Gene, I'll check that out.

JTM, payback's a b*tch, and as all good shamans know - age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.

I love texting. I hate talking on the phone. I have fully consumed the kool-aid. I drink your kool-aid! Death to talking!

mpbrockman wrote:JTM, payback's a b*tch, and as all good shamans know - age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.

amen.

vine311 wrote:I love texting. I hate talking on the phone. I have fully consumed the kool-aid. I drink your kool-aid! Death to talking!

Yes.

Jeff wrote:

vine311 wrote:I love texting. I hate talking on the phone. I have fully consumed the kool-aid. I drink your kool-aid! Death to talking!

Yes.

This makes me want to buy you each a blow-up doll.

I trust the analogy is clear.

Rev. Jordan T. Maxwell wrote:do not anger the elder shaman! he is our repository of the old ways, that we may learn. he sings the song of the Roe Tree Telephone, the Die Lup Modem and the Lehtur Riting...the ancient wisdom still has much to teach us!

After a few days of pondering this, perhaps I am feeling a little elderly as I remember all the songs you mention as well as the Blah Kan Witee Vee (an ancient, noisy song best sung in the snow), the Ate Rack Tape (hell, the Ell Pee and Phor Teeph Ive - cantos of the Reh Kord Plae Er - also noisy songs), the Age Before the My Kroe Ayve (surprisingly, not a song of hunger) and the joyous Song of Pong.

I could go on, but I shan't. The kids here are going to think I fought in Cambodia against the Nazis or was at Woodstock for the Boyz to Men reunion.

I do remember, however, our putting a man on the moon with less technology than is contained in the average iPhone app and, sadly, the lead-in to the news being either the body count from an ethically questionable war or one paranoid SOB doing irreparable harm to the office of the president.

Eh, same sh*t - different decade. Apollo/Viet Nam/Nixon, Messenger/Iraq/Dubya. Welcome to the past.

Texting is still obnoxious, tho'.

as an honest query, do you think there were people who felt the same way about the telegraph? (i would imagine so...perhaps our obnoxiousness leaps and bounds with our communication technology. the easier we can reach each other, the bigger jerks we become. )

Well I sure would love to see that telegraph scene!

I've thought about this issue quite a bit as of late...

A phone call causes me mild anxiety, and I'm much more likely to let it go to VM than to answer it. I'm trying to get better at this, but it makes me ponder the "why" of this emotional response.

Is my reticence to speak on a phone due to my increased anxiety in social situations? And is this a causal relation to non auditory technology like forums, Facebook, and email as our main form of communication?

Or have I always been this way?

Another Thought: I love texting because it bypasses the standard etiquette steps I feel are necessary for a polite phone call. In a text you bypass the greeting, introduction to subject matter, and closing that are standard to the auditory conversation.

i.e. It cuts to the chase.

And we all love the chase...

And Another Thing: <---- Can't do that in a phone call!

android lady wrote:And Another Thing: <---- Can't do that in a phone call!

Of course you can. The other person just can't see it.