As the collected stories of the human journey, history offers the fundamental lesson that the challenges we face today aren’t unique. No matter how much we flatter ourselves with self-absorption, we are but the continuation of the human saga.

We know the stories that led us to this moment. We know how actions of those who dealt with history’s changes created our today. Now we are in a historic moment of our own, and it’s our turn to guide how new technology determines the future.

Included in the GSM standard for mobile devices was the ability to use the mobile network’s control channel (the parhway that controls the call but doesn’t carry the call itself) to send short alphanumeric messages. It was envisioned principally as a means for one-way communication from the company to the subscriber (such as your bill is due). That changed when the functionality was discovered by Norwegian teenagers in the late 1980s.