Now that I’m looking for innovative uses of SMS, I see them everywhere — even on yogurt containers. This recent Stonyfield Farm lid suggested I send a text message to get climate-related information on a company, so I did:

SENT TO 30644: cc stonyfield farm

RECEIVED REPLY: Climate Counts has ranked STONYFIELD FARM 2nd out of 11 Food Products companies. UNILEVER leads this sector. Learn how to change the world at http://climatecounts.org. To get action alerts & let companies know climate change matters to you (up to 6 msg/month), reply ACTION

Getting a minimal readout on a company’s environmental behavior via SMS is a novelty, but not that useful. For that reason, I don’t think we’ll suddenly see shoppers texting as they stroll the aisles. The power of branding is too strong and our ecological sensitivity is too weak. An SMS will not help anyone decide between Coke and Pepsi, and I’m not buying a Toshiba laptop over an Apple, despite Apple’s relatively poor environmental record (sorry), because there are too many other factors at play.

This is the first time I’ve ever seen an SMS-based service promoted on a yogurt container. Can you imagine seeing that only a few years ago? I wouldn’t have known what to make of it.

Last week, the New York Times reported that New York City has subpoenaed the creator of TxtMob, a web- and SMS-based service that helped facilitate protestor communications during the 2004 Republican National Convention. From the story:

The subpoena, which was issued Feb. 4, instructed Mr. Hirsch, who is completing his dissertation at M.I.T., to produce a wide range of material, including all text messages sent via TXTmob during the convention, the date and time of the messages, information about people who sent and received messages, and lists of people who used the service.

The good news is that Tad Hirsch, TxtMob’s creator, is refusing to turn over any records, at least for now. The bad news is that this subpoena happened at all, adding SMS logs to the list of electronic communications that governments want to get their hands on, next to emails, web browsing histories and telephone calls.

Another unrelated yet awesome thing that Hirsch has done is to make the source code open and free. Maybe I could use this to power a future project…

Source: City Subpoenas Creator of Text Messaging Code

A couple weeks ago, my research into SMS as an interactive medium led me to a friend of a friend who happens to be named Brian House. Brian graciously agreed to talk with me on the phone, and our conversation validated a number of ideas I had about SMS.

Brian’s most well-known project is called Yellow Arrow. Done in 2004, the project involved distributing thousands of yellow arrow stickers, on each of which was printed a unique code. These stickers were sent all over the globe, where user-participants could stick them on surfaces, pointing to things of note. Then, by sending a text message with the arrow’s unique ID, the participant would “register” a “memory” or story about that place or object, such as “this is where we first kissed” or “this is the best chinese food in town.” Subsequent visitors can send in the same text code and will receive back the original story. Yellow Arrow was featured in the recent Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit at MoMA.

The real thing I wanted to talk to Brian about, though, was TXTML, a system he built as part of his Master’s thesis that can be used to create “interactive text-messaging applications.” I’m looking into doing some projects with SMS, and will be evaluating TXTML for whether or not it would be a good tool for what I want to do. In short, it sounds like TXTML is great for creating individual experiences and narratives. Since it’s smarter than typical SMS engines, it can remember each user’s history, and custom-tailor the interaction for each individual. (For example, you text “I am Scott,” and it responds “Hello, Scott, I remember that you like the color blue.”) It may not be suited to mediating the group experiences that I want to design, but I can certainly learn a lot just by working with it.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that yesterday’s 5-years-in-Iraq protest was well-orchestrated, in part thanks to frequent updates delivered to participants via text messages. C.W. Nevius reports:

I was told to simply text message the “DASW [Direct Action to Stop the War] text mob” to get up-to-the-minute messages describing the latest action sent to my cell phone. At 3:08:29 p.m., for example, I received a message that said, “DASW current estimate - 150 arrests - thanks for taking to the streets and joining in.”

This is the first time I’ve heard of a small, local activist group (Bay Area DASW) employing SMS to help keep their participants in the loop. It’s a great idea, and could shift the dynamic of other direct actions in the future. Protests can be intense and a little scary when you see hordes of activists running up against walls of police — “What’s going on down there?” “Is everyone okay?” Panic breaks out when individuals can’t see over the crowd to get the bigger picture. “Are we safe here?” “Should we keep marching, or turn back?” A centralized organizing committee, armed with binoculars and mobiles, can now monitor the protest status among themselves, sending only pertinent information about the big picture to participants, such as number of arrests, or “look out, tear gas deployed, head SW on Market.”

A great article, and a great headline, from Sunday’s New York Times: “Text Generation Gap: U R 2 Old (JK)”. One highlight from the piece:

“Texting is in between calling and sending and e-mail,” he explained while taking a break from study hall. Now he won’t even consider writing a letter to his mother, Jan. “It’s too time consuming,” he said. “You have to go to the post office. Instead, I can sit and watch television and send a text, which is the same thing.”

Ummm… no. That’s not the same thing at all. If writing a letter were the same as writing an SMS, then you wouldn’t always choose SMS.

Semantics aside, it’s scary to think about how SMS and other, similar technologies are already mutating our methods for interpersonal interaction. As the author points out in the article, the telephone was similarly (if not more) disruptive, but of course, to me, the landline telephone is “normal,” because I grew up with it. So the proverbial kids today are growing up with email, IM, VOIP, and SMS, and all of those communications media are, to them, just “normal.”