Last Saturday night I was at the hotel's complimentary workstation to print boarding passes, and noticed an option to subscribe to text messages about the impending flight. I declined the amenity, simply because, well, we all know what happens when you give a big faceless corporation any tunnel to your attention. (That, and the week before, when our flight out of Philadelphia was already running two hours behind schedule, the gal sitting next to me responded to her cellphone's "new message" notification by checking it and announcing sarcastically, "Oh, look: Our flight's running late.")
Granted, these are merely two anecdotes, but as we come into a world where you can text your pizza order (and probably pay for it with the same phone), the question of whom to do business with--even in such a cut-and-dried transaction--will become more important. Even when your wireless plan charges you for individual texts, those little slices of your attention are worth more. I'm personally not looking forward to SMS spam-filtering, but given how freely robo-callers and other bottom-feeders avail themselves of my landline, it's only a matter of time.
Different technology, same old story.
