Text

A written passage consisting of multiple glyphs, characters, symbols or sentences. Or the British word for Short Message Service, the SMS.

The standard was defined in 1985. Virtually nobody believed in it. Why would somebody use a numeric keypad of a cellphone to write a 160 characters long text message to transmit it to an other cellphone when calling somebody is much easier? This was the seemingly reasonable question of the sceptical majority. In a few years, SMS became the most widely used data transmission method of the known universe with approximately 2.5 billion active users - forerunning even the internet itself. I belong to this 2.5 billion. You belong to them too. Almost 3 of 4 cellphone owner use it regularly. The meaning of this three letters abbreviation is better known than such brands as Coca Cola or Aspirine. There are parts of the world where people use it as a verb for sending and receiving text messages, independently from the underlying technology. There are artistic competitions where you have to compress your message in 160 characters. There are poems and even books written in this form. You would be amazed at how many feelings can be expressed this way. SMS formulated its own language with abbreviations and even new forms of words never seen before.

The meaning of the word text has unrevocably been changed. The world is not the same as it was before. However, it's still a strange place to be.

End of transmission.