• home
  • articles
  • editorial
idea mater

Compose: New Message

1/3/2013

3 Comments

 
While reading an article on the Globe and Mail newspaper about a 22 year-old engineer sending the first text message on December 3rd of 1992, I came to the realization that anyone born after my birth year (1991) was brought up with text-messaging as part of their life. That thought may not even cross most people's mind right away, but considering young adults (aged 18-24) are sending an average of 110 texts a day may stir up some thoughts. I, myself, am an avid smartphone user
Picture
and am aware that I send probably way more than 100 texts a day. What I believe is worth highlighting is the fact we are right at the centre of an evolution, and future generations will be talking (or should I say texting) about our times as perhaps exciting or detrimental. At this point, I will leave the judgement of that to you.
 
I got my first cell phone at age 10 back in 2000, ever since I've been engulfed in the fast paced technological revolution like the rest of you. Nowadays, what we call cell phones can do just about anything. To give you an idea, back in 1985 the iPad 2 would've matched the most powerful supercomputer available. With that computer power, comes a lot of things but one of which is of particular interest to me is picture taking, an art that I've grown to appreciate over the past decade. 
My grandfather was a photographer, not a fancy photographer but one that went around rural Portugal in 40's and 50's taking pictures of families and friends at religion-driven community fairs. Occasions like these gave people an excuse to dress up and take one picture that would allow future generations to see what their ancestors looked like. I am by no means saying I am inspired by my late grandfather, but some might say it runs in the family.  

Picture
This growing interest in photography goes hand in hand with the technological revolution, because it may be time to start looking into the future. Yes, texting may be a thing of the past very soon; hurricane Sandy was the most digitally recorded event in history, with 1.3 Million pictures being posted to Instagram (one of which made the cover of Time magazine), where at peak times users were posting 10 pictures a second. To put that into context, the NFL Super Bowl, one of the most watched sporting events in the world only had 85 000 posts a couple months before. Pair this movement with video calling made possible by drastic mobile network improvement in the past decade, and all of a sudden we may find ourselves rethinking our notion of communication, journalism, photography and the list goes on. All of this in a little over a decade makes it impossible for us to be able to adjust for what the future holds for us. How do you think your grandchildren will communicate? How will people consume the daily news in 20 years? 

I used the new year along with an invitation from my brother, as an excuse to start writing. Writing something. I'm not sure if anyone wants to read what I have to write but at this point that does not really matter. The point is I was tired of consuming vast amount of information daily, mostly through the digital portal we know as the internet. Not that I have anything against consuming information but I wanted to start creating, in effort to balance my consume to create ratio. 
If you have made it this far into my first post, you're either a really good friend/family or my first attempt at writing a blog post was decent. As a result any feedback you may provide is greatly appreciated, so dig right in and tear it apart in the comments below or say something encouraging along with a click on the share button. 
3 Comments
Bulk Texting link
8/16/2013 06:30:00 pm

I really found very interesting about these topic Compose: New Message because you have good content and unique thoughts on writing. So this might be useful to everyone. I really look forward some more updates. Thanks for sharing.

Reply
picbear link
4/8/2020 02:28:11 am

I really appreciate this wonderful post that you have provided for us. I assure this would be beneficial for most of the people

Reply
Gail link
12/20/2020 09:39:45 pm

Thank you forr being you

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    idea mater is a series of articles, ideas and reflections written and compiled by Rafael Fraga and Edmundo Rodrigues. Topics such as history, science, art or life-style are presented with a hint of personal opinion.

    Hot posts:
    I do not drink. So what?
    Ravel and Barnes: art and corruption
    Andon cord of life + 2 football stories
    Power of time: Lapse photography
    Travels, books and bad journalism
    Camera assassin: the smartphone
    Ladies and a virgin in the Red Light
    Subscribe idea mater HERE and get regular notifications

    RSS Feed


    Archives

    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    September 2013
    May 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Categories

    All
    2014
    Alchemy
    Amsterdam
    Architecture
    Artifacts
    Australia Road Trip
    Books
    Cell
    City Life
    Earth
    History
    Nasa
    Opinion
    Phone
    Photography
    Portugal
    Revolution
    Science
    Symbols
    Technology
    Travels

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.