A few days before Christmas 1992, then 22-year-old programmer Neil Papworth from the United Kingdom sent the first written personal electronic message in history to his colleague Richard Jarvis, via Vodafone.

He worked as a developer and test engineer for the creation of the Short Message Service (SMS). His message was a simple “Merry Christmas”.

It is rather unlikely that he would have imagined that 32 years later SMS messages according to convergent estimates see the light of day more than 20 billion SMS are sent every day worldwide. It is even pointed out that the figures refer only to traditional SMS and do not include messages sent through messaging applications such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Viber, WeChat, Telegram, whose users amount to hundreds of millions per application.

Text messages originally had a 160 character limit. Early adopters overcame this limitation by creating symbols from keyboard characters to express emotions. These later inspired the creation of the first emojis (characters that symbolize emotions and ideas). In 1999, seven years after Neil’s first SMS, messages could finally be exchanged across multiple networks, propelling them to greater popularity than ever before.

Just as no one could predict the degree of mobile phone penetration across the globe, even in the poorest countries. In particular, according to GSMA data, the number of mobile phone subscribers worldwide exceeds 5.6 billion. with the prospect of rising to 6.3 billion in 2030. in number. With an impressive 60% of the world’s population having access to the internet via mobile phone as they have a smart phone, giving the possibility of communication from anywhere on the planet with anyone. As well as the ability in real time to control and manage everything: our movable and immovable property, make our purchases and spend a lot of time on our entertainment. Something that the great Italian wireless inventor Guglielmo Marconi had predicted and to some extent achieved 92 years ago.

Speaking to the journalist Alekos Lidorikis, in 1932 during his visit to Athens, accompanied by his wife, he had told Lidorikis: “We are not far from the time of absolute radiotelegraphic dominance. Very soon we will not need to accept the mediation of the radio station. Everyone from his home will be able to communicate with persons who are far away, on the other side of the world, and this will certainly be a paradise of convenience and economy.”