Once upon a time humans did not have a way to communicate unless they were in close proximity with each other. As time passed man made way. One of the first, I imagine was the drum, then the post, which was most likely delivered by horseback but not for the common man but royalty. The common man probably did not know how to read or write and had no use for posting.
Of course from that was born the post office, telegraph and the telephone. Over the years a few changes were made in the design of the telephone necessitated by the increase in use of the phone. On the first ones there was a hand crank that alerted an operator. One held the ear piece to ones ear and spoke into the fixed voice unit on the phone box inself. Later a dial was added with ten digits and a set of buttons that would create a connection with the operator when the speaker/earpiece was lifted off its cradle.
All phones were owned by the phone company then and a customer only rented them. The phone company was responsible for all repairs. The big revolution came when customers were allowed to own their own phones. The number of phone users increased and so did the desire to have a private number instead of the party line system that had previously been in place. The party line system was a number shared by five or six families. In order to use the phone one had to lift the receiver and listen for a dial tone. If one was heard one could then dial a number. If a voice was heard on the other end, one just hung up and tried again later.
A huge step forward was the invention of the cordless phone which allowed the user to move about while talking on the phone instead of being limited by the length of a cord. The next step forward, believe it or not, was the CB radio. Made popular by "trucker" songs" people realized that they could have the ability to communicate with each other from their cars while driving along the highway without the extraordinary expense of car phones which were only for diplomats and wealthy people.
People being what they are, CB use quickly disintergrated into a field of shouting matches, insults, and sexual batterings, much like the comment sections on Yahoo sportspage except one didn't actually have to be able to read or write to insult others on the CB. People finally became tired of being abused by strangers and trying to figure out which of 40 channels friends and family were on so the base of car phones becan to expand. Soon people didn't want to be stuck in their cars or houses either and public phones were such a nusance to use. The cell phone was born allowing people to talk to each other anywhere and at anytime.
The only trouble with cell phones is that people had these expensive little toys that gave them freedom to communicate with others at will but people had nothing worthwhile to say. So camera phones were invented to give people something to do while waiting on a phone call. People are any better at taking pictures then they were at finding useful things to taslk about on their new cell phones so the application was born. One can go on the internet and find stuff, look at TV and movies, use their phone as a GPSD systems and all sorts of neat stuff. The only problem was that if called someone who wasn't available to accept their call one had to leave a voice message and who klikes talking to no one.
To solve that problem text messaging was invented so now one can communicate with whomever and never actually have to speak to anyone.
The great thing about these new phones is one can send out a text message to hundreds of people at the same time. In foreign counters, the abuility has been used to organize protests that have brough down governments. Here in the USA we have used this technology to organize "Days without Pants".
As the saying goes "Only in America".
Not that it is but as revolting as the idea of seeinbg hundreds of people walking around with pants on, it sure beats "planking".
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