We love to see society bend to the whims of technology.
First, budding musicians began to lean on MySpace as a career launch pad. Before you knew it, iPhones had combined the wonders of mp3 players, phone service and Internet capability. To top things off, Facebook was a main sponsor of the 2008 presidential primary debates.
Because text messages have increased 450 percent in the past two years, the next logical progression is for texting to take over the world.
One of the first steps on the path to all-things-text is the ability to donate to charities via text message.
Sixty percent of donations to the Children's Miracle Network from Ireland were received through text messaging. The charity launched a similar campaign in the U.S. in September and has already raised more than $10,000.
Like we said, we love trendy uses of technology. If future innovation efforts produce results as charitable as these, we'll never get off the bandwagon.
We foresee one possible problem with this system. The possibility of a late-night, inadvertent drunken donation.
If people donate some money to the Children's Miracle Network through a recent text, they could easily send the network a text message later that night while trying to track down their friends at XS.
We doubt a charity would enjoy receiving a thousand texts asking, "Where the hell are you?" or "Are they charging?"We definitely support society adopting technologies to reach traditional goals, but we hope they've provided safeguards against a few pitfalls.
