Text messaging is taking over the world. Fast, simple, inexpensive and confidential, the SMS is 160 characters of pure convenience. I detest the concept. Most simply put, I don't see how typing out a message can communicate even half as effectively as speaking. Text messages are predetermined. They don't depend on how sprightly or bored the "Hullo!" on the other end is. If we limit all discussion to specific topics, aren't we killing literature? And perhaps even handicapping the body of knowledge that is the English Language? Frequent users of SMS have already ruined the language beyond repair. What with "typin lyk tis" being "kewl". It's thoroughly annoying to receive a mispunctuated, misspelt message that I must take hours to decipher. (Yes. Hours. How am I to know that "comMon… dud" and "Come on, dude!" are one-and-the-same?) One must accept that this new script is giving a completely new life ("lyf"?) to phonetics. Why take the effort to type the extra character when "2" also sounds just the same. This new language is fascinating. It's a nice way of overcoming the length-limit on messages. But it's not English. He who tries to pass it off as English deserves to go back to school. (May be not. I hear some schools in Great Britain are considering thus script.)
An SMS is a tremendously useful tool, when it comes to getting the point across. But, does it really convey the message in its entirety? Honestly, I think not. Text can never convey feelings as coherently as voice. No! Not even if it has its more-than-fair share of emoticons. There's a fundamental difference between saying something, and typing it out. There will always be. The same way a video-con is never as interesting as chatting with somebody in the flesh. Always.
On a lighter note, since we're not conveying any more than what text (in one typeset, and one size) can convey, we might as well start chatting in C++.
