A friend just texted me and said “I will send a text when the kids get quiet… In 20 years.”
And I got to thinking, how will we communicate 20 years from now? The cell phone will probably be extinct, no?
I know you folks have thought about it. Care to share?
Very hard to image that we will, at least at the level we do now. Things change very quickly in that space, we all communicate differently than we did 20 years ago, and 20 years before that.
I feel texts will always exist. There’s a basic need to communicate short messages.
leaving work. Be home soon.
At the grocery, anything we need?
Let’s meet Outback for dinner. 6:30? K?
That’s too fundamental to human life. Who wants to make unneeded phone calls?
Sure, the hardware will change. But we’ll be texting from now on.
Speech to text programs exist now. In 20 years we won’t be typing at all. Guaranteed.
Sent from my adequate mobile device using Tapatalk.
Nope, there’s roughly, ooooh, a million situations where messaging someone needs to be non-vocalised.
I sincerely hope to a (non-existent, I’m pretty sure) god that this constant flow of inanity will cease.
Whatever else came with it, the era of the written word and “too expensive for idle chat” phone calls did one thing: it made a person consider what was worth the time/money cost of what they had to say.
When people start “sharing” pics of the stuff they ate for lunch, I think maybe we “share” a bit too much.
Yes, that was a beautiful sunset; it would have looked much better without you and the dog blocking half of the view,
More than 20 years ago Kurzweil was working on speech to text that potentially was going to impact work I was doing at the time. Now STT works a lot better and many companies are in on the action (Dragon is big) but by no means has it eliminated the need for typing for lots and lots of things. I’ll see your guarantee, reversed, and raise you 5 years. 
I don’t even understand why people are sending them now. When I was growing up, we had a phone. Nobody sent telegrams, when there was a phone ready at hand.
Subvocal recognition tech is being developed, and soon enough (relatively) we’ll have the ability to compose text messages with our mind. Somewhere between those two, we’ll have lense displays with eye tracking.
It may not happen within the next 20 years, but we’ll get rid of keyboards eventually.
I hate talking on the phone. I like text communication, be it phone or internet chat or email. I’m not a big SMS user, though; I send maybe three or four messages a month, on average. But if it means avoiding direct social contact I am all for it.
Maybe I’m not a typical user, though.
(I would find it extremely surprising if cellphones and texting were obsolete in twenty years. There’s something fundamental at work with them that probably will never die.
What about when something needs a few rounds (or several rounds) of back-and-forth to arrange?
For example:
You want to meet somebody for coffee.
There are always two basic aspects: when, and where. But many times those have to get broken down into smaller chunks.
Round 1–
Person 1: Does Tuesday work for you?
Person 2: No, but I can do Wednesday morning or Thursday afternoon.
Round 2–
Person 1: Thursday afternoon would be best. What part of town will you be in?
Person 2: I’m on the north side. Is that convenient for you?
Round 3–
Person 1: I’m going to be southeast of there. Can we meet roughly in the middle?
Person 2: Ok. Do you know the Starbucks near the downtown park?
Round 4–
Person 1: I do know where that is, but I prefer to patronize locally-owned places. Are you familiar with Pop’s Coffee Shop? It’s 3 blocks west of Gently Used Books.
Person 2: I’m not, but I’m sure I can find it ok. What time shall we meet? Is 1:30 ok?
Round 5–
Person 1: I have a late lunch appointment that day. Would 2:30 work?
Person 2: Yes, that’s fine.
Round 6–
Person 1: Ok. I’ll plan to see you then.
Person 2: Ok.
Now, why in the name of common sense would you want to go to the hassle of typing all that out, even in abbreviated form, when you can call the person instead, and probably get the whole thing done in less than 60 seconds?
Moore’s law. No one will be typing messages in 20 years.
One advantage of text is that it can be asynchronous. A phone call requires both parties to be free at the same time.
I would expect a call if that was likely to be the conversation. Not that you can predict how a conversation will go.
Texting is particularly useful for a message that doesn’t require an immediate response, or when a phone call would interrupt work. I also get messages from my family, who all live in a different country to me, so it’s cheaper and easier than a direct call.
Of course not. By 205all consciousness will have merged with the galactic singularity.
My “let’s meet” chats always take a lot less chapters than what you typed, but then, I don’t think I know anybody who speaks like that.
Text messaging would never have evolved in the first place if people didn’t think that “hassle” was worth it.
Sitting in a noisy bar, enjoying a beer, I can simultaneously carry on six different text communiques at my (and my friends’) leisure.
I wish more restaurants had the option for texted reservations.
Will brief, non verbal communication continue? Yes - the value has been demonstrated.
Will this communication be text-based? Partially at best. With emojis, snapchat visuals, and stuff we can’t predict the impact of like sub-vocal triggering, I suspect text will make up a small % of the brief! non verbal communication happening.
Because you don’t know if the other person is able to talk verbally or not?
As a commuter - that is, a mass transit commuter - I LOVE that there are practically no more cell phone talkers on the trains or buses. For 10-15 years there it was a big annoyance. Now everybody texts and it’s quiet. (Not to mention the dreaded bathroom stall talkers - nobody knows who’s text on the toilet, and I don’t want to know, but I assume it’s a fairly significant number)