thoughts on an increasingly connected society - part 1

i've been thinking of how our society has changed in the past decade or so... and i thought i'd whip up something in the process...

there was a time when the only way to arrange events was through call trees or call brigades laboriously set up to make sure that when something has to be communicated to the group, it would reach their intended targets. they were also often set up such that everyone gets the number(s) of the crush(es)-ng-class/org/office.

or when a group goes to the mall to do some shopping, there's an agreed meeting place at a certain time so everyone could do what they please without having to inconvenience the others. whenever someone was late getting back, they'd wait within the vicinity of the area while some would do some last-minute window shopping.

of course, none of these really hold true these days, now that the text message revolution (circa 1997) has taken over our daily lives.

need to send an announcement to your org? you can send 20 text messages in one go. (or split it up to text trees/brigades - making sure to still set it up such that everyone gets their crush(es)'s number(s). fun!) need to divide and conquer the mall? no need to set meeting places anymore. as soon as they're done, they just send text messages to each other so that they'd converge at the store where the last shopping friend is - hopefully he/she isn't in some embarrassing store to be in (like a guy in a lingerie store, or a girl in a "toy" shop).

there's so much more to think of in this direction. more on those later.