The most powerful resource that we have is the ability to communicate.

Throughout history, humans have come up with some of the most creative ways of communicating their thoughts to one another, especially in the worst of times. From scribbles on walls of caves, to codes and ciphers, from carrier pigeons to mobile phone text messaging, people find a way to get their message out.

Now we all know that the origins of communication between humans started with drawings in caves; any trip to the Field Museum will remind you of that. And we all have heard, or unfortunately seen in theaters – think U-571 – stories of how important codes were in winning World War II. So you'll all buy in to the power of these two forms of communication, right? But a flying rat and a cell phone? Let me just point out some facts before we proceed.

- Genghis Khan was able to conquer a large portion of the known world due to the carrier pigeon relay system he set up in order to know what was going on within his empire.

- These same flying rats gave the French the upper hand during the siege of Paris by the Prussians in 1870.

- On January 20, 2001, President Joseph Estrada of the Philippines became the first head of state to be overthrown by a group of people brought together by text messages. More than one million Manila residents, mobilized and coordinated by waves of text messages, converged on Epifanio de los Santas Avenue within an hour of each other.

So with that, let's discuss.

Low Tech: The Carrier Pigeon

On October 5, 1918, the now world-famous carrier pigeon – and yes I'm laughing as I write this – flew his last flight during World War I. More than 200 American troops where surrounded by the German army . With his last pigeon, Major Whittlesey wrote this message in an effort to be found and rescued:

We are along the road parallel to 276.4.
Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us.
For heaven's sake, stop it.

As the pigeon took off , the Germans saw him rising out of the brush and opened fire.  The bird flew 25 miles in only 25 minutes to deliver his message.  When he finally reached his coop, he could no longer fly.  He had been blinded in one eye, and a bullet had hit his breastbone, making a hole the size of a quarter. The pigeon's leg was hanging by just a few tendons.  Attached to that leg was a silver canister, with the all-important message. The shelling stopped and more than 200 American lives were saved .

Now how in the hell could a bird find its way home after being shot? After just a few shots of Jagermeister I can barely find my way to the bathroom, let alone precisely pinpoint my place of origin over 25 miles away. I don't know how they do it, and the truth is that no one else does either. In a lot of ways, the science of pigeon navigation parallels the male study of females – incomplete at best, and full of conjectures. We males can hypothesize why women go to the bathroom in groups, but our answers are childish and our research is based on juvenile relationships and bad Hollywood movies .

The theories that have been presented over the years are beginning to finally settle and two theories are regarded as the most likely. The first credits small amounts of lead in the brains of pigeons. Scientists believe the lead helps pigeons use the Earth's magnetic fields to guide their way. The second is the pigeon's ability to hear infrasound waves, or sound so low-pitched that very few species can actually hear it. We know that pigeons have lead in their brains and can hear low-pitch sounds, but there is no real proof that they can feel magnetic north or that low-pitch sounds can provide navigational information. Alas, the mystery continues.

From 2001 to 2003, European scientists equipped 216 pigeons with GPS devices and followed their f lying paths by satellites. They studied the behavior of these homing pigeons during trips varying from 20 to 80 kilometers in an area around Rome. To their surprise, the pigeons followed the highways and roads to get home even if it meant going far out of their way. This of course doesn't account for how pigeons knew what roads to follow in the first place, but it appears that pigeons prefer not thinking about directions, just like humans, and would rather just follow signs.

Carrier pigeons may be low-tech, but they're still a mystery to us. The important idea here is that pigeons have stopped wars and made fortunes for men. In short, they've brought people together, just like text messages.

High Tech: Text Messaging, or SMS

I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but somehow in the last few years a new language was created that we're being forced to use.

There I was standing in line for a movie when “WURD” appears in my cell phone. I starred at it for a while thinking about which one of my dyslexic friends could be trying to spell “word” and what the hell did he mean by it? Yes, I had no idea that it meant “What are you doing?” and it's a good thing too because I have no idea how to write back, “I'm trying to decipher your cryptic, dyslexic, lazy-ass message you fucking hipster!”

Truth be told, for a long time I assumed that there were two types of people who actually used text messaging: 15-year-old girls in malls and hipster boys drinking and writing the next great American novel via cell phone. As usual, I was wrong. As it turns out text messaging has been used to bring people together with some startling effects.

In recent months text messaging has been used in two different capacities to unify crowds . At the Democratic National Convention this year a program called TXTmob used text messages to notify protestors of information on road closings and other safety related news. One protestor commented on the system by saying, “ TXTMob was great! When the cops tried to arrest one of our people, we were able to get hundreds of folks to the scene within minutes."

In London, garage bands are using the speed of text messages to start “guerilla gigs” within minutes. By sending out the messages the bands give directions to secret locations and are able to play sets for hundreds of people within an hour of the first message. Yes, it makes you wonder what was wrong with traditional fliers, but it's cool nonetheless. So how does it work?

The Short Message Service is the ability to send and receive text messages to and from mobile telephones. The first short message was sent in December 1992 from a computer to a mobile phone in the U.K. What it all comes down to is the question of how technology manages the ability to start a message via phone, e-mail, Web or voice, and deliver it to a certain cell phone when there are more than three types of cell phone technologies.

When a computer or cell phone is preparing to send an SMS message, the phone registers with a device called an HLR. This device contains a database of names and networks and places where your message could go. The HLR relays this to another device calls the MSC, which carries out the actions of reformatting your message from your network type to the receiver's type, and then delivers it. That place it is delivered is called the base station, which through antennas and towers sends the message off to its recipient.

The actual process is very bureaucratic and boring, very unlike the applications for which people have used this technology, and very unlike the language people have invented to be quick with their messages. Our very own Chicago Critical Mass was formed by SMS technology. Participants receive messages on their cell phones to notify them of where to meet for the day's bike ride through the city.

Conclusion:

So we've learned that sometimes a little mystery is OK, especially with women, and that text messaging isn't just for Britney Spears fans and 23-year-old PBR-drinking Tolstoy lovers. Technologies that we don't understand can easily appear as either antiquated or as a fad if we don't use them. But when it comes to technology, nothing can be more important that the technologies of communication.