When text messages first started they were completely free and consequently a quick and cheap way to pass a message to someone at a time when call charges were obscene. Now they are often included as part of a package and, to all intents and purposes, free again. But at the same time, calls have come right down in price so they are very accessible.
So why do people still insist on texting when an actual conversation is very much more interactive, informative, friendly, civilised and human?
Texting has become one of modern day's great curses. People walking down the street do it and look like complete zombies. People sit down in a restaurant with another human being and have their mobiles next to them on the table - just in case they get a text or something similar. Conversations are abruptly curtailed because one of the participants has received a text message. You see people - more often than not young women (but not exclusively I hasten to add) - concentrating on texting whilst they're driving a car.
What is this idiotic obsession with texting?
I spent four and a half hours one evening sorting-out a friend's computer as a favour - for free. When I came to leave just before midnight - and I still had to drive home and get up early for work next day - my ex-friend started texting. I pointed-out that I had to leave and she rudely snapped at me - "Can't you see I'm texting!"
I had to issue a smart phone to a work colleague - a nice woman in her late twenties. We were chatting whilst the device was going through its start-up procedure when she received a text message on her personal phone. Instantly I no longer existed and all her attention went to finding her phone in her voluminous bag in a kind of mild panic. When she had finished jiggering about and returned to the world of human beings I said "I hope you don't do that while you're driving!" To which she replied "Well, I know I shouldn't, but I just can't help myself. I just have to look at it!" And there am I just about to issue her with a company device which could only make matters worse.
For some reason texting turns perfectly normal, sensible human beings into complete idiots. What makes any sensible person think that texting while you're driving is even remotely acceptable? A one year ban from driving and a £1,000 fine should be the minimum if anyone is proved to have done it. There was talk of banning even hands-free use of mobiles by drivers in cars: how can they even consider that when they cannot stop f*cking idiots texting whilst they're driving?
