The Power of Text Messaging

I really liked the articles we read about text messaging. I guess I've underestimated the power of text messaging. The capability to send messages to many people at once is very powerful, especially when organizing protests and rallies. As a freshman in Madison, I've gotten many texts to show up to different events. In class we discussed how text messages might improve the strength of the number of people that attend rallies and protests but damages the credibility of the protesters. Some hear of a rally via text and show up even if they do not support the cause. This has been made apparent by the media interviewing protesters that are clearly not knowledgeable on the subject matter. However we saw that these protests are powerful in Smart Mobs: The Power of the Mobile Many by Howard Rheingold. Rheingold calls organizing protests by text messaging "smart mobs." In 2001 Joseph Estrada lost his presidential power to a smart mob in a Filipino rebellion. Text messaging makes it so easy to communicate with huge amounts of people instantly it makes organizing rallies and mobs easy.

Like the majority of technological improvements, with the pros come the cons. One thing that really annoys me is when I receive text message spam. Think about it, the ability to send messages instantly to many people isn't just great for organizing rallies, but perfect for spammers. I can't stand text messaging spam. It really ticks me off when I check my phone to view the text I just got and it turns out its spam. According to this article text message spam is a growing phenomenon. There were 1.1 billion spam text messages sent in 2007 and unfortunately that number is only rising.