Good article in the Washington Post yesterday about the popularity of text messaging among teens and the implications on the parents from out of control bills.  The story "For Texting Teens, an OMG Moment When the Phone Bill Arrives" profiles a high school junior named Sofia that racked up an $1100 bill at 15 cents a pop. 

If you ever wanted a clear picture on the evolution of communication, here it is.  I posted earlier on this topic with the Generational View of Electronic Communications.

I took the data in the article and did some quick math with a few assumptions to get to Sofia’s number of a text message every 4 minutes.  She used 6,807 in one month so let’s assume a 30 day month and that she has 16 waking hours to text (maybe she texts in her sleep, but let’s go with 8 hours off for sleep).  I’m also assuming this is both sent and received as the wireless companies charge on both ends (at least Verizon does).

That’s 227 messages per day, 14 messages per hour, or 1 about every 4 minutes.

Welcome to mobile instant messaging by the next generation. 

It’s not about voice minutes, it’s about data.  The wireless companies are loving it with traffic doubling last year to 158 billion text messages in the US (according to the CTIA) leaving the still strong 20% growth in minute usage in the dust.  Other interesting nuggets in the story are about texting being the second most popular use for a cellphone right behind using them to check the time (silly me, I use a watch).  Also, text messages are not given their own line item on a bill complete with time stamp and destination like a call detail record – they are reported in a bulk number with no line item detail leaving parents with little understanding of the who and when.

There has been something a bit disturbing happening on the world stage for the past several weeks.  Estonia has been under attack from, what seems, the Russians.  The only difference is there are no tanks, troops, or missiles.  This is the coming in the form of targeted and direct denial of service attacks on government ministries, news providers, and even financial institutions.  Estonia is, according to the Washington Post, one of the "most wired societies in Europe."  Whether this is state-sponsored cyber-warfare (the Russians deny involvement) or the product of rouge or nationalistic factions in either Estonia or Russia is secondary when you look at the apparent havoc it has created from government email disruptions to financial institutions shutting down on-line banking.

The ramifications of this are pretty huge.  NATO seems to be scrambling with how to react to this kind of "hostile action" because it is not a direct military confrontation.  The reasons for the Estonia/Russia animosity are many including most recently the relocation of a Soviet-era war memorial that has proven to be a bit of a flash point.  Ross Mayfield has covered this episode in detail and here is a story in the NY Times on it.

From the Washington Post article:

"The Estonian government stops short of accusing the Russian government of orchestrating the assaults, but alleges that authorities in Moscow have shown no interest in helping to end them or investigating evidence that Russian state employees have taken part."

Think for a moment how our connected society here in the US would come to a halt if our email streams stopped, our on-line banking and information sources were unavailable, and we generally had difficulty in maintaining the connections we have built both by habit and technology over the last many years.  Requires some serious thinking and preparation as more access points are made available and we become ever more connected as a population.