Technological Fun Facts

I was watching Things We Love to Hate on the Discovery Channel this morning and they did a show on e-mail and a show on cell phones. I thought that I would share some of the more interesting facts and statistics that I learned from the show...

E-Mail

• People spend an average of 3 hours a day on frivolous e-mails.
• Ray Tomlinson, the inventor of e-mail, sent the first e-mail message in 1971.
• The first e-mail message read as follows: QWERTYUIOP. The top row of your keyboard.
• Charles Bechner committed suicide due to spam.
• In London, you can attend an e-mail dance party where people wear iPods, MP3 players, or Walkmen and dance in the street to their own music.
• Teens voted e-mail as one of the top inventions of the 21st century for making life easier.
• King's College conducted a study which showed that people who regularly e-mail have a 10% drop in their IQ scores.
• Spam is 75% of all e-mail.

Cell Phones

• Dr. Martin Cooper from Motorola placed the first cell phone call in 1973.
• Cell phone addiction is a medically documented form of OCD and there are clinics where it is treated.
• Cell phone usage is 6th on the list of driving distractions.
• There are 170 million cell phone users in the United States and 2 billion world wide.
• Cell phone use lowers the IQ more than smoking marijuana does.
• 30% of Americans believe that cell phones cause cancer.
• At the turn of this century, cell phones replaced cigarettes as the top addiction among teens.
• In 2005, Australian doctors diagnosed the first case of carpal tunnel syndrome that was caused by excessive text messaging.
• Having a Bluetooth capable phone could equal having a stalker.