It was all very different just a few short years ago. The first cell phones, back in the 1980s, were the size of house bricks and had a level of battery life that was barely enough to make that all important “I’m on the bus, what’s for dinner?” call.

Back then in the days when the late John Hughes could do no wrong and the rah-rah skirt seemed like a good idea, the idea of text messaging was as far fetched as Madonna having more muscled arms than the current Terminator.

But things change, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the world of mobile communications. By the mid 1990s, those who were too young to remember Top Gun at the cinema or Madonna with her clothes on were suddenly presented with a new technology that was as liberating for them as the Chopper bicycle had been for their parents. The SMS gateways had arrived.

By the end of the decade there had been an explosion of users and texts were being sent in the millions. The SMS providers had created a new means of communication that took most people by surprise.

The old hands thought it would never catch on: why would you “text” someone when you could speak to them directly? But as ever with old hands, they had forgotten what it had been like to be young hands. Privacy is one of the key issues in a teenager’s life and the simple text message provided this as never before. Gone were the hushed phone calls that you didn’t want your parents to overhear (not that you had anything to hide, but that wasn’t the point). Banished forever where those embarrassing conversations with the boy you sat behind in American History classes. The SMS had set you free.

Suddenly, almost as if a Ray Bradbury short story had come to life, towns and cities were filled with young people sending text messages via satellites in the cold depths of space to their friends to tell them that they had bought a new lipstick.

It was a bloodless revolution the impact of which spread far beyond the world’s youth. Dismissed by many as a teenage fad, the adult population soon saw the potential offered by the SMS providers. Businesses could communicate with staff who were unable to receive calls on their cell phones. With one fell swoop, the pager was rendered as old fashioned as the carrier pigeon. The cell phone became not just the province of teenagers and investment bankers, but also an essential part of the lives of everyone from stay-at-home mothers to factory workers, coffee shop staff and your grandparents.

The text message, along with its related text message language and predictive text, had grown to be a truly international communication phenomenon, used by almost everyone.

From pre-teens discussing Hannah Montana through teenagers ensconced in the dark bedroom listening to Nirvana records to the adult world where messages ranging from the banal (“I fancy a hot dog for lunch”) via the pointless (“Are you there?”) to the life changing (“It’s a boy!), the simple text message is constantly carrying our thoughts, ideas, hopes and passions across the street and across the planet.

It’s all a long way from the days of the Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles when it could be difficult to get close enough to speak to the girl of your dreams because their rah-rah skirt kept getting in the way. Thank goodness for the SMS providers.