There is no question that the cell phone is more of a advance in communication than the telephone was over the telegraph. As the novelty wears off, I believe it will be tied to many other meaningful applications in the future and that a lot of the tricky/glitzy bells & whistle transformations hanging off of them today will sort themselves out.

The one presently popular and highly demanded ‘whistle’ that completely escapes me is the Text Messaging capability. If the intent is to easily leave a single response or statement, why in the world does anybody want to cock around trying to use a phone key pad as a typewriter? If the TEXT message is sent from a computer, the receiving party gets to fumble with some extra buttons and $pay$ for seeing these letter scroll past on a tiny screen. If it’s sent from another cell phone, BOTH parties get to $pay$ the extra charge for something that could MUCH easier have been left and received from a voice mail with no additional cost. How is this not a step BACKWARDS?

__________________