Yes, if one goes by a report in Daily Mail. Read the report for details.
Dr D.C.Misra
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Interesting article & I agree w/ the concept of wanting to get quick Info out to people via SMS Texts on my cell phone or MySpace Acct. etc., but, I also have to agree with the comments that followed the article. Kids are usually the ones who gravitate more toward the Tweets, Facebook, SMS texts through college, but, when the actually have think about composing something longer that makes sense, has more than a flash of an idea & they need or want to add other documents as attachments, then there is of course EMAIL!!! Then again there is also the resurgence of handwritten, hard-copy mail for that truly personal sentimental touch.
Oh, how I wish it would! 🙂 So many of the e-mails I receive could be answered over the phone in under 30 seconds. But, I’m sure it took them several minutes to compose the well-thought-out e-mail. And, as more business-focused social media platforms are developed (search “Jive”), I, too, could see the end of e-mail. This is one 30-something who will be keeping her fingers crossed that it indeed becomes extinct!
I’ve thought the same thing about calling someone for 1-5 minutes, but, I’ve often been answered by the voicemail or I don’t want to get into a long discussion so I send a text or email that people can deal with whenever they see it. I’ve even told people to text me if I don’t answer my cell because I’ll see the text sooner than I’ll be able to retrieve the voicemail & call back. One of my interests is the convergence of different technologies & another interest is how people perceive things around them & how they attempt to control/manipulate their environment. Keeping those 2 ideas in mind, you can probably predict how things are going to develop if you look at trends in the telecom & computer industries where we have seen cell phones & laptop computers merging to provide us with devices like my LG Voyager which I call my palm-top. It has an external touch screen that I use primarily for calls, as well as being able to open like a laptop to provide me with a full keyboard & another screen. I can access the internet, email, GPS, & send Short Message Serv. texts & there are new toys coming out every year with better hardware & software applications in them. Take the Blackberry Storm Ver. 1, which did a lot of things well, but, caused the battery to drain faster than people expected. Eh, well HELLOO!!! It turns out that a lot of people did not understand what they had in their hands nor how it was working, so the issues were primarily operator error. The Storm #1 is able to open & run multiple applications at the same time, like a laptop. A lot of people didn’t realize that they had various Apps. open & using up the battery power until they noticed the battery was low or the device didn’t function the way they wanted it to when they made a call. I try to remember that I got the LG Voyager to be a cell phone 1st & that the other more power hungry functions are secondary conveniences that could affect my calling ability. Of course, that is why I got 2 batteries w/ it also! Anyway, all that to say it is great fun to have these communication capabilities now (Right teens & twenties?) & as much as I am tempted to get the new Motorola Droid, I will probably get the new Blackberry Storm 2 that has the bugs corrected in this 2nd iteration & then I’ll get the Motorola Droid 2 in another year or two. As these devices develop with better battery power & better Apps. software we will be able to text/email, talk, send attachments, photo/send photos, listen to music, watch video/TV, use GPS, access the internet & do all the stuff we do at home or work, but, while we are anywhere. Did you see the movie “Minority Report”? The 911 emergency call system is being upgraded to handle text messages, photos & other features too. I guess that means there should be tech jobs too. Best, Don
One of the reasons SMS is ousting other technologies is that it is instantaneous and it is independent of internet too!
Dr D.C.Misra
I think email can be a way to check communication off the to-do list, without really communicating. When you are receiving hundreds of emails a day, how many of them are you really reading?
I agree that phone/PDA technology is changing quickly how we communicate and access the Internet. Since I bought an iPhone, which has GPS, quick Internet access to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Google or any other Web site, I use my home computer a lot less to “surf the Web.”
I also agree with Dannielle. I think people sometimes use e-mail as a way to say, “Ok – I followed-up as I was supposed to. Now, the responsibility is theirs to provide an answer.” And, as a communicator that is focused on internal communications, I hate to say it, but I rarely read all my e-mail. If I can quickly discern that it doesn’t directly impact me or there isn’t an action item, it goes immediately into the trash.
Unfortunately, I think a lot of professional communicators, and general professionals, are too concerned with ticking tactics off the to-do list instead of evaluating whether the channel is an effective means for that communication.
While I get too much email to read everything, too, I find it a lot harder to discern what is important on something like Facebook – where I get to see that so-and-so played whatever game as much as anything important – than in email. I certainly can see texting and other correspondence replacing email for teens and for personal use much before 10 years but I don’t see business email becoming extinct anywhere near that soon. Of course, I’m middle-aged and also in the Midwest, where everything takes longer to catch on and to go away.