Today the "illiterate in technology" exists. That old man is one of them. He doesn't understand mobile phones, or computers. He doesn't even understand VCRs. Meanwhile, the young man next to him is changing the world with his cell phone. He is ready for the XXI century. He controls the new technologies, he sends short love messages: "I luv U". From the beach, the young man can perform a multitude of tasks: stock market, check the Internet, find the closest pharmacy, play with his friends. The old man, ignorant to all of this, looks at the horizon, drifting away with the sound of the waves. Who could have told him that the future was full of small buttons? Who could have told him that, one day, so many telephones without wires would fill up the streets? The old man meditates that these things are for the young. But he doesn't understand the language of the young, and for him, anything from the past was better.

This is an excerpt of a short article published in El Pais, on June 25, 2001 by Enrique Mochales, and in a simple way conveys the impact that mobile telephones are having in our everyday lives. In Mochales story, the boy has failed his Language test because his spelling is now like the messages he sends to his friend from the mobile. The old man looks at a little girl playing with the waves, not knowing that soon she can also change the world with her telephone.

The New Language of the Millennium

Among young teenagers the mobile phone has become a sign of identity. Equipped with a variety of applications intended to attract young markets, the mobile phone is the central motif that directs new forms of interactions between its users and their social environment. Young teenagers around the world have adopted the mobile phone as the standard of their singularity and identity. The mobile phone makes them independent, empowers them with time, choices and space. How identity and place are produced through and within digital media infrastructure, has been the subject of study by Japanese Anthropologist Mizuko Ito (Rheingold, 2)1. In Japan, for example, a number of factors favored the rapid integration of the mobile phone in younger groups. Telephone landlines are more expensive than mobile phone subscriptions, and at the same time the landline phone belongs to the realm of the family home, control and "tyrannical" supervision. The mobile phone frees young users of such controls. It allows for the construction of networked social interactions and venues where they can be subversive without being caught. For example, the choice of people they interact with and the behaviors that emerges from such interactions. In a notorious case described in Rheingold's Shibuya Epiphany (4)2, a virtual motorcycle gang met through text messages, never gather in one place at the same time, included members who didn't owned a motorcycle and the leader of the gang didn't know any of the girls she had ordered to beat. In Sadie Plant report "On the Mobile", a 17 year old from Beijing explains that the mobile makes it possible for him to have relationships with friends of which he knows his parents disapprove. For this same reason, many Afghans living in Peshawar were horrified by the prospect of girls and boys making private calls, leading private lives and forming their own friendships and attachments without the knowledge or approval of their families. The physical attachment to the device - for the most part the user always has direct control over it, allows for this privacy to take place. No one has access to the phone without the consent of its owner, and that is empowering.

A sense of togetherness, connection and belonging grows around the commonality of the mobile. In Japan it's a taboo to leave the mobile behind or to let the battery die. The mobile is always on, with them, it is part of them, it is them, like an extension of the hand that plugs them into the world out there. Who you are is through the connection of the mobile. Clothes are designed to hold the phones and get at it easily when it rings. Some of them don't let it ring more than once. It's important to show that they are there for those who call. The calls are not intrusive. Neither are the short messages in constant flow: "what are you doing?..I'm ready to go to bed…" The constant presence of the virtual other through the messages is a welcome interference. It validates them in their new self; they belong to the mobile community, always connected, always on the move, always on call. Decisions can change at the last minute. Decisions don't have to be made until the last minute. You have to have the mobile. If you don't, you won't be part of it. You won't be connected, you won't know the last minute changes, you won't live with the excitement of the waiting for the call, or the message to arrive. The inevitable question: where are you? The invariable answer: "on the mobile."

Such is the sentiment of millions of young teenagers around the world. Their mobile culture repeats social patterns in such different places as Japan and Finland, Russia and Dubai, Egypt and Italy. For most of them the mobile provides a venue for encounters in the virtual realm where the rest of the social group, particularly families, don't have access. This bypassing of family networks by creating sub-networks of social relations is favored and emphasized by the use of text messages. While the mobile provides the private venue for the sub-network to converge, the text messaging creates the language spoken in that venue, almost exclusively by the young users who created it.

From the limitations of SMS (Short Message System) evolved this language known as lingo. Short messages limited to 160 characters have stimulated a full vocabulary that some linguists associate to the cryptographic symbols of ancient times. Lingo language writes sounds. The phonetics of the language transcribes into an array of symbols, numbers and abbreviations intended to communicate compressed thoughts, instructions, arrangements and emotions, in 160 characters at the time. The low cost of the service made it widely accepted among young users. Texting became particularly popular in cultures where people tend to be reserved with other people, said Plant's report. In some places, texting is valued as a means of expressing emotions and thoughts without having to voice it. "The demands of brevity can also encourage text messages to be candid, frank and informal: ice can be broken, intentions declared and invitations offered, all without the risk of embarrassment".

The impact that this new form of communication may have among young people is still unknown. Whether a new conception of mediated interpersonal communication is breeding or a dysfunctional personality is growing from the mobile phone and chats rooms, is still a mystery. Teenagers are in the process of learning their primary language, which some linguists believe will be affected by the widespread used of SMS. Thoughts and vocabulary have to be simplified considerably. It's not about communicating more or better, but faster. "The chatting hardly resembles real exchange of information or even intercourse, as much as merely sharing one's life with others in real time. It is a question of living in the same rhythm or wave with one's closest friends, the feeling of a continuously shared live" (Rheingold, 16). A California High School teacher receives students' in-class papers written in lingo. She believes that two main motivations are behind it. One is a rebellious attitude intended to break the norm and stick out as different and controversial (they know their grades could be compromised). The second is a self-identity issue. They identify with the language, the speed at which they can write, and the exclusivity of being the language of their mobile community. The fact that the teacher will have difficulties reading the lingo text fluently re-enforces their differences. (Conversation with the Teacher).

The SMS effect in our culture is not ephemeral and is here to stay, or is not? Sadie Plant in Mobile Knitting3 uses the analogy of knitting to explain that, like knitting, mobile phone communications (voice and texting) can be a second skin, become an integral part of the body, or an extension of it, through complex loops. But they can be unmade easily, like a knitted material, and disappear into one single and simple thread. Most mobile messages are short-term-made, read, and responded to as quickly as they travel. They exist only when they are already going out of existence, like the spoken word, leaving no trace of memory behind. However such influential institutions like the Oxford Concise Dictionary, is accepting SMS integration into the language as a proven fact. In the Revised Tenth Edition, the New Oxford Dictionary of English has included a page about the abbreviations and emoticons used in electronic text messaging or SMS4.

At a recent symposium celebrated in Madrid (Spain), it became evident that there is no consensus among linguists as to the long-term effect of the SMS texting. For some the evolution of SMS is a logical practice in languages known since ancient times, where languages evolve into shortened versions for more effective use. An example cited is the lack of vowels in Hebrew, and the pictograms of the Hieroglyphics5. For others, the validation of a language comes with its inclusion in the literary world through literary creation, and see with dismay how institutions like the International University of Catalunya, in Barcelona, recently closed a juried poetry competition of SMS messages, paring the recognition of the SMS language to the languages of Shakespeare and Cervantes6.
The Guardian newspaper in England has organized a very successful poetry contest with almost 8,000 entries. Organizers and juries of the context think that the limitations of the technology are one of the best things about it. Andy Wilson, one of the judges, goes as far as saying that "having rules and barriers to overcome is very liberating creatively. Creation becomes a game, a test of ingenuity. How can I fit this into 160 characters? That leads to much better poetry than the freedom to express deep thoughts on deep subjects at great length." An example of such better poetry follows:

14: / a txt msg pom. / his is r bunsn brnr bl%, / his hair lyk fe filings / W/ac/dc going thru. / I sit by him in kemistry, / it splits my @oms / wen he :-)s @ me.

14: / a text message poem / his eyes are bunsen burner blue, / his hair like iron filings / with ac/dc going through. / I sit by him in chemistry, / it splits my atoms / when he smiles at me.

Artists Fiddian Warman and Siobhan Hapaska built an SMS sculpture near Loch Lomond in Scotland. Taking their inspiration from the age-old tradition of carving lovers' initials in the shape of a heart, the pair embedded mobile phone type interfaces into trees. The idea was to create little message boards deep in the heart of the countryside7.

To the fascination of witnessing the emergence of a language which influence is latent in so many areas of the social structure, it's unavoidable to wonder if this influence is transforming into better and meaningful communication processes. Teenagers express their enthusiasm when referring to text messaging because it allows them to express themselves, and at the same time, avoid face-to-face interaction. Expression of emotions is simple, 160 characters at the most. Thoughts can be built and transmitted within minutes, or seconds. Million of messages are written on the train, and the bus, on the move, in close integration with the environment, frequently crowded and yet in isolation. Most of the rest of the world is not noticed. The rest of the world is not part of the virtual community. For some this is a new form of social alienation and express fear before indicators that threat to destroy our sense of social cohesion. A picture of the Tokyo underground shows most of the people in the train looking down at their cell phones, oblivious to the others. A little boy in a park in Madrid doesn't play with the other children, but with his mobile phone. Dad gave it to him so he can call him during visits. Lots of dads and moms have given mobile phones to their children in the last few years. They feel that the children are safer with a mobile phone on them. They both work and the children spend too much time alone, so they send messages to mom and dad, and to their friends. They don't play as much with other children anymore, they have been replaced by the mobile phones. According to a study from the AIMC, 20% of Spanish kids have mobile phones, 33% of them are between 8-13 years old. In the US numbers are very similar. According to a research by SpectraCom, 21% of American children ages 8-12 own a mobile phone8.

Santiago Llorente, Professor of Sociology at the Polytechnic University of Madrid thinks that there is no reason for preoccupation. The relationship with the mobile phone goes through three differentiated phases. The first is as a child, who uses the cell phone as a game console. Second is the teenager who embraces the SMS as a shield for his/her insecurities and emotions, and finally the adult who uses the telephone in the more traditional way9. In all three styles however, the mobile phone is an interface to the exterior world and its inhabitants, and like the early landline system it has changed the modes of social interaction.

When Private Becomes Public

The invention of the traditional telephone changed enormously interpersonal communication practices, and many of the aspects relevant to the case of mobile telephones and their impact on society can be seen in the early stages of the telephone development. The invention of the telephone brought with it the possibility of immediate communication between people, independent of physical distance. Initially the private consumers didn't clearly identify with the usage of the telephone. The telegraph was a robust and widely accepted system of communication, which covered long distances, with more than 200 submarine cables around the world, making the telephone unnecessary as a communication device. The telephone was an entertainment toy used to broadcast music, drama and news from remote locations, precursory to the radio transmissions forty years later10.

Like in the early stages of mobile telephones implementation, the high cost of the new technology made business and professional communities the primary target of early advertisements. The telephone had the conspicuous advantage of immediacy, allowing direct contact with business associates within 20 miles distance, and didn't leave a record. Doctors and other professionals could be reached easily when needed, and after the first decade since the invention of the telephone, the public in general adopted the new technology as the main means of communication11. The notion of time and space, public and private space, mobility and fixity changed forever, and so did the way people socialized.

In times of industrial development the rising middle class developed a growing polarity between private and public space. The public space, represented by the agitation on the streets, came to be identified with business, speed, and a sense of threat. On the contrary, the private space signified the security of the home, comfort and harmony. The telephone added to the citizen's sense of security and connection with the world without risking the safety of the domestic space. The idea of "there" was the abstraction of a fixed place in permanent motion, and a new form of mediated socialization started to emerge.

In 1975 a fire in a major switching center of the NY Telephone Company left a 300-block area of Manhattan without telephones for twenty-three days. The blaze disconnected 144,755 telephones. A study conducted immediately after the black out showed that during the period in which people had no access to home phones, the face-to-face mode of interaction didn't increased significantly, and very few tried other methods of communication. Most of them went to use pay phones or made their contacts from the office phone. A majority of the subjects reported feeling a loss of control and loneliness. (Turner & Wurtzel p. 246-247)12. Looking at the conclusions of the NY study it becomes apparent that the telephone defined a different form of social interaction, which would not take place without the technology.
The mobile phone is today the epitome of mediated socialization. The extraordinary growth of users since the technology was implemented has made the mobile phone a social phenomena. In 1990 there were 11 million subscribers in the world; 500 in 1999, and nearly 1,400 million at the beginning of 2003, with Northen European countries holding the higher level of penetration13. The short-term effect is already seen influencing business practices, behaviors, interpersonal communication, and the melting of private and public space.

Historically, people have communicated on the telephone under the protective privacy of their homes. The telephone communication and its usability behind closed doors, whether at home, office or telephone booths, bring with it the notion of privacy. Even though the early system exchanges needed operators to run the switchboards and eavesdropping was probably a common practice, the central characteristic of telephone contact was a direct person-to-person conversation conducted in privacy, with no record of the conversation available to others. This freedom of expression in oral discourse was the foundation of the telephone and explains the legitimate outrage of users at perversions like wiretapping and seizure of call records (Boettinger, 204)14 .

The cultural association of telephone and privacy is equally present in mobile phone conversations. The device brings with it the notion of privacy, and as user engages in the conversation, the abstraction from the physical/public space increases proportionally to his/her integration in the virtual/private space through the conversation. It is not unusual these days to be the uninvited listener of private conversations while waiting at the bus stop, or the spectator of an exuberant performance in cafes, streets, or malls. Just recently a person in Kinross South was making business decisions while walking and waiving in circles from the front desk, to the video lab, and around several times. Situations like this one are identified by Plants's report "On the Mobile" 15 as "the need of some mobile users to make a virtue of the lack of privacy, enjoying and exploiting the presence of third parties as a unique opportunity to put something of themselves on display by stage-phoning". On a train, she mentions, a mobile can be used to attract attention from the commuters, broadcasting a great deal of information to a fixed audience. This group of people used to be more invisible before the mobile. There is a need to inform that the person has a life, that is part of the mobile world, and sometimes conversations are staged, and fake mobiles are carried for performance and display. A notorious case in Madrid in the early days of mobile phones involved a woman having a heart attack and a yuppie with a mobile phone in his belt. When commuters asked him to call for an ambulance they discovered that the telephone was a fake.

The ring of the phone is a call not to be missed. Since the early times of the landline telephone people spontaneously lifted the telephone receiver at the sound of the ring. Whether in private or in the company of others, the correct etiquette was to respond to the call. The telephone call brings expectations, and an urge to respond. Today there is a similar attitude towards the mobile. The public uses of the mobile, with calls coming at any time, at any place, has opened debate about the etiquette of handling such interventions, which often will take precedence over the flow of the face-to-face conversation. (Plant, On the Mobile). This attitude provokes mixed reactions among the people affected, but for the most part the general reaction is of discomfort. What is one to do when your conversation is interrupted midstream while your companion answers the telephone ring? Does this mean your formerly important conversation is now unimportant? And furthermore, when the mobile user now engages in an intimate discussion with the interlocutor, is he/she sharing that slice of privacy with you, or is it just a mere accident? Are you supposed to acknowledge that you are hearing? Some of the people interviewed in Plant's report expressed frustration at being part of such situations. A young teacher from Chicago indicated that she wouldn't mind so much if she could hear both sides of the conversation, which makes a lot of sense. Instead she is left to speculate about the missing side of the story. Others however feel appalled or entertained by the stories they hear, in some cases mobile soap operas taking place on the bus, or the train.

The personalities of the mobile users can be categorized and the variety refuses generalizations. So between the confident and cool user, accustomed to talking and texting on the wing and the solitary figure who keeps his telecommunications to a minimum, there is a string of distinctive personalities, which determine their public performance and their use of the mobile. The calm ones are comfortable with their mobile phones. They don't show-off and they don't try to hide the phone either. The noisy ones like talking loud and sometimes keep a second conversation going. The presumptuous ones are concerned with their own appearance and that of their mobiles. Their mobiles are primarily for show. (Plan, On the Mobile).

The intrusiveness of the mobile, whether the person is obnoxious or discrete, is calling for mobile etiquette in some places. "Quiet spaces" are spreading fast in some of the countries with widespread use of mobile phones (France and US are two of them). Initiatives to assign quiet cars (in trains), mobile-free zones in public venues, restrictions of telephone use, event telephone presence, in restaurants, theaters, etc. are underway. Rules of etiquette recommend using silent or vibrating options when indoors or in a close environment, or just turn off the phone. Don't engage in "cell yell". Nokia says there is no need to speak louder on the cell phone than you would on any other phone. But people with the need of being constantly on the mobile often speak in noisy environments or in places where reception of the signal might be deficient. Whereas face-to-face conversation naturally adapts to the environment where it takes place, mobile conversations often are out of nexus with the place. The nature of the conversation may collide with the space where it takes place. A lover call for example may be inappropriate for a quiet train car, or a heated discussion for a bar (Plant, On the Mobile). For Paul Golderberg, the integration of the private space into the urban space is denying legitimacy to both of them. At the very moment the telephone rings, people are transported from the real world into the virtual realm, where a private space is created between the two people on the phone. This renders the public space less public. "The cell phone has changed our sense of place more than any other communication technology because of its ability to intrude into every moment in every possible place. When you walk along the street and talk on a cell phone, you are not on the street sharing the communal experience of urban life. You are in some other place--someplace at the other end of your phone conversation. You are there, but you are not there". The mobile phone undermines the urban experience, Golderberg says16.

The question is where all this goes. No doubt that the widespread use of the technology is causing setbacks. People are claiming their private space within the public domain back. Let the streets to be streets and do what they are supposed to do. In the US the individual private space extends several feet radius from the person. The physical invasion of such space is not well received. Similar sentiments are being expressed when the voices of private conversations invade such space.

AT&T is running today (12/08/03) a two page advertising in the main section of the LA Times. After four different styles of rebates, customers can get a camera mobile phone for free, wireless family lines for $9.99 a month, a $50 credit if you trade in the old non-camera phone. So the next subject for discussion will be about a different type of invasion of privacy, the surveillance we will be subjected to from ourselves. The panopticon on the streets, in the gym, beaches, clubs and homes. A reversion of the State controlled society to the society-controlled society. New rules of etiquette, new restrictions to compensate the setbacks of the technology, new vocabularies that emerge from the speeding capabilities of the image. "An image is worth a thousand words", so text messaging might find a new language of communication, a new community that communicates and creates a communal experience with it, sharing the same etymology and the same technology. Maybe it won't be necessary to write short messages anymore, and like Dr. Plant said the second skin knitted with mobile voices and mobile messages, can be unmade easily, like a knitted material, and disappear into one single and simple thread. Then an image will say it all.

The old man, ignorant to all of this, looks at the horizon, drifting away with the sound of the waves. Who could have told him that the future was full of small buttons? Who could have told him that, one day, so many telephones without wires would fill up the streets? The old man meditates that these things are for the young. But he doesn't understand the language of the young, and for him, anything from the past was better.

NOTES

1 Shibuya Epiphany, Rheingold, Howard, from Smart Mobs. Soft Programs in class reader.
2 Shibuya Epiphany, Rheingold, Howard, from Smart Mobs. Soft Programs in class reader.
3 Mobile Knitting, Plant Sadie, 26-37. From Information is Alive: Art and Theory of Archiving and Receiving Data. V2_/Nai Publishers, Rotterdam 2003.
4 http://www.quinion.com/words/reviews/cod10.htm
5 http://comunidad-escolar.pntic.mec.es/725/info5.html
6 http://www.ac-grenoble.fr/espagnol/libreta/textos/sociedad/moviles.htm
7 http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,474653,00.html
8 http://www.wired.com/news/holidays/0,1882,56784,00.html
9 http://www.ac-grenoble.fr/espagnol/libreta/textos/sociedad/moviles.htm
10 Bell's Electrical Toy: What's the Use? The Sociology of Early Telephone Usage, Aronson, Sidney H., From The Social Impact of the Telephone, Ithiel de Sola Pool, editor. MIT Press, 1977. p. 13-36.
11 Id.
12 Latent Functions of the Telephone: What Missing the Extension Means, Wurtzel Alan H. and Turner Colin. From The Social Impact of the Telephone, Ithiel de Sola Pool, editor. MIT Press, 1977 p. 246-248
13 http://www.redcientifica.com/doc/doc200309230040.html
14 Our Sixth-and-a-Half Sense, Boettinger Henry M., from The Social Impact of the Telephone, Ithiel de Sola Pool, editor. MIT Press, 1977 p. 204.
15 http://www.motorola.com/mot/doc/0/234_MotDoc.pdf
16 http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_1103/obj/