Work

Title

T9 Numerology

Author

Moritz Greiner-Petter

Date

2017

Description

T9 (short for ›text on 9 keys‹) is a predictive text technology developed in 1995. It was designed to optimize text entry on 3×4 numeric cell phone keypads commonly used at that time. On these standard 12-key layouts the number keys from ›2‹ to ›9‹ are assigned to a group of three to four letters each. In T9, a sequence of single keystrokes is matched against a stored dictionary. Words associated to the entered sequence of numbers are then presented to the user to choose from. Coincidentally and inherent to the working principle of T9, one sequence of keystrokes can potentially represent many different words. This guide book compiles an incomplete and subjective selection of these so-called ›textonyms‹ to be found in the English language. It exposes the collateral poetry, incidental truisms, and semantic comedy that are latently lurking in encoding and compression technologies like T9.

Statement

The book's design is based on NOKIA's model 7110 handset, the first mobile phone to commercially implement T9 technology. It incorporates a modified version of NOKIA's iconic display font, adopts the device's key layouts and a page color reminiscent of late 1990s mobile phone LCD screens.

URL

http://jammersplit.de/#t9-numerology

Medium

Book

Size

11 × 16.5 cm

Pages

120

Edition

250

Price

15€

Technology

T9, Offset Printing

Keywords

compression, encoding, interface, language, obsolescence, reading, writing

Added

ID

1468