Can you remember where you were when the first text message was sent in the UK? I'll give you a clue - it was 10 years ago next Tuesday. You can't? I'm not surprised.
Nor can anyone else. In 1992 mobile phones, as mass market consumer products, were on no one's radar screen, let alone text messages. It is worth reminding ourselves that in 1991 a completely unknown company was facing bankruptcy and was on the verge of being taken over by Ericsson of Sweden.
The company somehow pulled itself together and now manufactures 36% of the world's mobile phones. Its name is Nokia. It's an unpredictable world and nothing has been less predicted that the rise of text messaging. It was unplanned and came from nowhere to become the fastest growing phenomenon of recent times.
Over 2 million text messages are now sent every hour in the UK. The industry claims that 95% of them arrive within 10 seconds "in normal circumstances". Texting has opened up an entirely new layer of communication between people that didn't exist before - brief messages for which there is a huge demand but which don't merit all the ritual attached to a telephone call or the grandeur of a written letter.
Texting has become a conduit for flirting, a means for parents to maintain contact with their children, of grandparents bonding with grandchildren, of television interacting with the audience and a marketing tool of huge potential for companies which, for the first time, can build up profiles of individual users and target them with finely honed offers.
You can receive news flashes, football results or stock market prices by text message or else play games or vote in elections. There has even (time for a commercial) been a text message poetry competition offering creative possibilities for a medium that is often accused of dumbing down.
The downside, though, is an increasing trend of unsolicited texts from companies bombarding phone owners with misleading promises of cash offers. Call it text abuse.
Critics say that use of text shorthand - in order to fully use the limit of 160 characters in a text message - will make British spelling even worse than it is. But this may be offset by the spread of T9 or predictive texting which guesses the words you are trying to write.
It reduces the number of key inputs you have to make by up to two thirds - but you have to know how to spell the word in the first place. The prize for the year's most impressive use of texting must surely go to Shazam.
If you dial 2580 (at 50p a throw) and point your phone towards a radio or juke box playing a record - after a short period you will receive a text message giving the tune and who is playing it.
The creative possibilities will be greatly enhanced by the arrival of multi-media phones which enable you to you send ring tones or photos with your text message. It remains to be seen whether texting is a flash in the pan or a permanent feature of the mobile landscape.
It certainly chimes in with the primitive herd instincts of humans. Youngsters can now go into town without needing to say exactly where they are going because tribal discussions about what club to go to can be held later by texting each other or everyone else at once.
Some people think that, as phones get more capacity, the need to restrict your message to 160 characters will cease and texting will give way to mobile emailing. But this may once again be confusing the medium with the message.
Texting has not been successful simply because it enables you to communicate with others by phone without speaking. It has swept the world precisely because it is necessarily brief and no one expects any of the usual formalities (like starting with "Dear") to be observed. Its brevity may ensure its longevity.
· Victor Keegan is editor of Guardian Online
Vic.keegan@theguardian.com
