One of the nice things about going on vacation is that you get to catch up on all that reading that you want to do. One of the books I read was Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs which has given me a lot to think about. This book has been out for a couple of years now so while I was reading, it was like I was connecting dots and getting answers to questions that have been sitting in the back of my mind for some time now. I now know why Dr. Mizuko Ito looked at me and rolled her eyes when I asked at a recent lecture she gave at Berkeley why texting hasn’t really taken off in the US. It’s covered in detail in this book and she is referenced quite a bit as a primary source of research.
I had the chance to dabble in SMS and have a new appreciation for T9 software. One of my first exchanges, while sitting on a beach in Hawaii was with a friend that I thought would be holed up in a meeting room in Silicon Valley. Nope, came the reply, he was sipping bitters at a pub in Edinburgh. The appreciation for the power of this medium was immediate!
Gotta try out this new RSS to SMS app Feedbeep.