Message Me
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday October 5, 2000
Annikki Peramaki has kannyckka. No, it's not a Scandinavian disease, but it is plenty contagious. In Finnish it means "little hands", affectionate slang for a mobile phone. The extension of her 16-year-old arm is on the table in a cafe in downtown Helsinki.
Without even glancing down, Annikki presses a few buttons on the tiny keypad and a waiter, with whom she hasn't exchanged so much as a glance, soon appears with a cup of coffee exactly how she likes it. By the miracle of m-commerce, her kannyckka has already taken care of the bill.
Annikki taps again and AC/DC's "Highway To Hell" rumbles out of the cafe jukebox.
A few sidelong glances are exchanged but it's impossible to know who's responsible for the spontaneous heavy metal combustion.
Little hands are at work at every table, see: playing tunes, ordering meals, perhaps sending flowers, banking or reserving movie tickets, but most likely sending one of the 75 million SMS (short message service) text messages that cross the Finnish ether every month.
With 70 per cent of the population connected, the Finns own more mobile phones per head than anyone else. In the eight-to-25 age bracket, the number is beyond saturation point: if every phone started flashing and vibrating at once, some kids would need both hands to answer.
This is the frontier of the mobile information revolution, predicted to be even more rapid and profound than the Internet revolution of the 1990s. Executives at Nokia's Finland headquarters speak assuredly of "putting the Internet in every pocket" by 2003, and Australia's communication carriers are equally confident.
"Obviously we all think this is the future," says Michael Guthrie of Vodafone's Internet Marketing division. Within five years, most of us should be routinely accessing Net-based services via mobile handsets. Sorry, but your nifty new cable connection is about to look as quaint and clumsy as a landline telephone.
Back to the future later. Right now, whatever hemisphere they call home,
most devotees of wireless communication are far more interested in "where r u?" and "luv yr ass!!!" than anything more sophisticated.
Helsinki University sociologist and mobile phone specialist Dr Timo Kopomaa has concluded that the Finnish SMS explosion "is less about exchange of information than the sharing of everyday life in real time.
The question is one of the mobile phone supporting a shared feeling that people are living life together."
Sure enough, when approached on the mean streets of the average Australian city, most mobile-toting freewheelers sheepishly reveal a digital trash heap of idle chitchat.
It seems that few are conducting business by SMS, while many are sending wacky gags, saucy compliments or just shooting the breeze.
Kitchen hand Sahra, 30, has an inbox full of slightly crude notes sent by the 19-year-old chef who works only metres away. "He punches them in while I'm not looking then presses send when I'm really busy," she says with a laugh.
Even distance communication in noisy nightclubs has been revolutionised. If you're meeting friends, buzzing your location directly to the trouser pocket saves you a sore throat in the morning from all that hollering.
The fact that SMS costs a standard 18 to 22 cents regardless of destination also means economical international dialogue. Simon, 22, has an outbox full of messages to an overseas pal, the latest being "essendon beat collingwood. doh!". University student Amber, 27, shows me a message in German. "Wrong number I suppose," she says dismissively.
A rare exception to the banality is Stewart, 26, whose inbox reveals a message from his bank relating to a clothing label he's developing. "Pretty boring, mate," tuts Adam, 24. "You get bank statements, I get pictures of women fellating bananas." He demonstrates proudly: you have to scroll up and down to see the action, but there's the fruit in 160 characters or less (the prevailing SMS limit).
One 18-year-old girl in school uniform blushes and shrieks through three dense, consecutive messages in which her boyfriend very graphically itemises his intentions, as posted the night before from one single bed to another: the miracle of wireless technology.
Another schoolgirl, Grace, recently conducted a survey of her year 11 and 12 classmates and discovered that far more of them use their mobiles for SMS than voice communication. "It's cheaper," she shrugs, "and it's easier when you can't be bothered talking." Or when you're not allowed to. At Grace's school, mobile phones are banned. But as she says, with vibrating alert systems and text messages, "who's gonna know?"
Neither Melbourne's Scotch College nor Methodist Ladies College nor Sydney's Saint Aloysius boys' school sees SMS as an issue. Why not? Because mobiles are "never" switched on in the classroom or not allowed on campus at all, according to their respective authorities. Heaven forbid someone should accidentally be SMS-active during an exam.
So is this verbal horseplay doing us good or doing our heads in? Clinical psychologist Dr Janet Hall, author of the book Confident Kids, sees more positives than negatives in a youth culture obsessed with transmission and reception.
"One of the keys to communication is frequency of interaction," she points out. "For many reasons we don't communicate: we often don't find the time or the opportunity. These toys not only encourage but program you to want to communicate."
Dr Hall suspects that the new pocket technology is the key to "a whole new generation of more expressive men." Although sending footy scores and dirty pictures from one metallic, space-age phallus to another is a limited form
of expression, "it's got to be better than another generation of men who can't communicate.
"The negative is that it doesn't necessarily help them to be feeling beings, much less spiritual beings," she adds a little sadly. "But we can't fight the technology".
There's little evidence of a fight. Vodafone claims its SMS traffic has leapt from 80,000 to one million messages a month in the past year. Telstra saw a 300 per cent rise within one week of the Interconnect Services Agreement last April, when the major carriers effectively adopted a single SMS network.
But for the industry, SMS is small change. "It's the first step towards achieving the mobile data paradigm," according to Telstra's Robert Saviane. His mission is to deliver "SMS services which help people relate to their mobile handset as being a data device. When a customer makes use of SMS, then the more content-rich applications - WAP, mobile commerce - will become more relevant."
Cue cash registers. At present, specially enabled Wireless Application Protocol phones are comparatively expensive and rare in Australian pockets, but in the past six months there has been a sales boom in direct proportion to available WAP content. Sound familiar?
TO FIND OUT WHERE wireless mobile culture is heading in Australia, the best thing you can do is call Helsinki. Dr Timo Kopomaa suggests three reasons Finns have been so fast to adopt the mobile social model, each of which echoes across our great southern continent.
"Firstly, Nokia is (based) here," he explains, acknowledging the value of shrewd, aggressive marketing. "Also, Finland has a very short urban history, therefore people are interested in new technology. Also we are a very sparsely populated country" - hence a necessary familiarity with phone communication.
And the difference between Finland and Australia? We tend to blab a lot more than our shy Scandinavian cousins. But what exactly is in it for us?
"In a complex society, a mobile gives security," explains Dr Kopomaa, "that sense that you can live with your friends in the same rhythm.
It is part of the youth culture in Helsinki. You have to have a mobile phone because you are out of the network of your friends if you don't.
"Young people have learnt a new way to live in the now, a type of community with their friends, kind of like nomadic tribes: everything about their lifestyle is more mobile. People keep their group together (by phone) and so live together, in a sense."
Dr Hall is optimistic about the empowerment prospects. "Kids used to think they knew it all and now they do. They embrace technology so quickly that they don't have to model on their parents. They can model from themselves because they have their own communication systems which are virtually instant."
The subculture implications of the new youth network are not lost on the carriers or the technology designers. Vodafone's Guthrie puts the popularity of SMS down to its being "a convenient, silent and even a secret way of communicating with other people."
So send mum and dad a snail-mail ultimatum. They might scoff that it's a passing fad, but in Finnish society at least, the wireless network already has an irrevocable claim on the future. As canny marketing, consumer technophilia and the mobile social model evolve in cosy proximity, it's brave new world ahoy.
"I think it's already changed the urban culture," says Dr Kopomaa, "in that it's a new practice in public places and we have to listen to private conversations (and) to live with new practices which have come to our city culture.
"Of course professional people have (seen) very many benefits in the mobile phone because they carry their office in their pocket. It gives new flexibility in their use of time; they can be more flexible with their meetings and schedules. But it is the young people (who) have learnt a new way to live, a new state of community with each other. Their lives have changed already, more than adults know."
MORE INFO
+ What's WAP?
www.mobilewap.com
+ How do I SMS?
www.mobilesms.com
+ Downloadable ring
tones and graphics
www.dialaring.com
+ Send SMS from the Web
www.blueskyfrog.com.au
+ More WAP info
www.itouch.com.au
ADD ONS
There's a load of high-tech accessories to further alienate the adult establishment. From standard snap-on colour casings and hands-free headsets to mobile MP3 and FM radio players, the m-toy shop is well and truly stocked and open for business.
There are clip-on keyboard attachments to make SMS less fiddly, and Nokia's new "Predictive Text" feature makes message writing less laborious. The phone's expanding range of in-built games - Snake, Memory, Logic, React, Rotation - are aimed directly at the Nintendo market bullseye, and some are even multi-player courtesy of close-range infrared facilities.
Only the blissfully deaf or completely housebound can have failed to notice the growing synthetic symphony of downloadable ring tones, and lest they be accused of catering exclusively to the geek market, Ericsson has launched an Outdoor Adventure Kit in collaboration with Swiss Army knife manufacturers Victorinox. Your Ericsson R310 can now take pride of place in a sturdy rubber case alongside your compass, ruler, magnifying glass and thermometer. Here's what we found:
+ Covers
Forget the colour clip-ons, try the new
furry or heat sensitive editions.
+ MP3 Player
Personal hands-free headset or built into the phone with good quality earphones.
+ Ericsson Chatboard
Plug-in miniature keyboard to facilitate
SMS and e-mail writing.
+ Modems and data suites
Plug-in modem or phone to PC cable for mobile and computer interaction.
+ Flashing hand holders
Sit your phone on this baby and it flashes blinding blue, green or purple with
incoming calls.
+ Universal infrared adaptor
Cordless transmission unit clips onto bottom of phone.
+ FM Radio
Hands-free cable or built into the phone with remote control console.
+ Phone/organiser combo
Both Nokia and Ericsson now have cell phone/handheld computer crossovers.
+ SIM Manager
Edit and back-up your phone's SIM card address book from your PC
Stylist: Virginia Dowzer; hair & make-up: Maria Kopilas for Shibui; model: Michel Durand @ Viviens. Rose 'Elvis' Shirt, $165 from Marcs, Lurex denim jeans, $149.50, from Saba, adidas cream reflective stripe trainers, $119.
Note: All messages in this article are actual messages from mobile users as quoted.
© 2000 Sydney Morning Herald
