changing the way we are

Time magazine twitters. I hope it has a look at google wave next.

There are some areas of similarity for the doctorate;
1. its not like anyone sat around saying hey I know the next thing that can revolutionise telephone counselling; lets create a conversation space where no one has any clues about you unless you share them. They wont know if your male, female, young old, u'll be invisible, inaudible, and restricted to 160 characters or about one sentence. You can do the emoticon thingy to say how your feeling in two pushes of your mobile phone, and it doesnt really matter if u've got the time right now coz the conversation can be synchronised or asynchronised. YL will be there for you.
2. people were skeptical.
3. and yet thousands discover it works for them.

How come, coz lets face it, on the surface it doesn't seem to have a lot going for it.
Well, as with twitter, there's an extremely important component going on here about ambience, about being present and heard and acknowledged. There's a sociability not to be trivialised, being connected positively matters. There's concrete attestation to having others available, interested, responsive and focused for you.

While we thought we had reshaped the service being provided, there's a strong suspicion we too are shaped. We feared becoming too shallow to make a difference, but the evidence is a difference is being made that remains profound, Being there for people as and when needed matters, help is as far away as your phone, and that can be as close as your pocket. Its not like it all has to happen in one sentence or less, conversations occur. And the conversations are held, they dont dissipate unless actively deleted. I can choose to keep a message on my phone acknowledging that I feel heard and understood and affirmed, or of suggestions to explore.

Skeptics still abound, there is resistance to the unknown, there is also a demonising of mobile phones as if the only relevant link to counselling was because of their use for text bullying. Little regard had been given to the positive applications made possible and there are as many if not more. Its connectivity thats as close as your pocket, actively chosen, wherever, whenever.

Its entirely possible it wont last. But the service provided is to the current generation of young people, and they are using it. The medium of choice for a generation. Seems its tied to identity of a generation and its shaping them as they live their emotional lives through one more means of connecting. Might be fickle, the costs currently make it a preferred option, its cheap when Vodafones text 2000 or Telecoms txt for $10.00 makes it seem unlimited. Young people are then shaping the service in saying 'i jus wanna txt, k?' And they (re)shape and (re)create a service demonstrating both resilience and flexibilty.