Are the Old Ways the Best Ways?

A couple of days ago, I noted the fact that the FCC was dropping a requirement for ham operators to pass a proficiency test in Morse code. It looked like a classic case of technology becoming outmoded. But maybe we're ushering in this demise a bit too quickly. When I was looking up something totally unrelated to that for a work project, I came across an interesting story from The Times of London last year.

The Powerhouse Museum of Sidney, Australia, decided to see how Morse code stood up to the latest technology. They put a 93-year-old telegrapher who used to work for the Australian post office against a 13-year-old girl with a cellphone and a texting thumb at the ready. They raced to transmit a random sentence taken from an ad in a teen magazine: "Hey, girlfriend, you can text all your best pals to tell them where you are going and what you are wearing." Apparently it wasn't even close. Gordon Hill sent the message, which was received and transcribed in full by 82-year-old Jack Gibson, in 90 seconds. It took Brittany Devlin another 18 seconds to transmit, "hey gf u can txt ur best pals 2 tel them wot u r doing, where ur going and wot u r wearing." Hill repeated the feat three more times against three more texting teens just for good measure.

We shouldn't put Morse code out to pasture prematurely. We should at least keep it around long enough for somebody to tell me whether there's some sort of Morse code message at the end of "London Calling." The common idea is that it's SOS, which makes sense thematically, but it doesn't sound to me like you get three dashes together for the O. Someone commenting at a ham radio message board writes that it's "a series of SK's," which seems like the proper pattern of dots and dashes, but what would it mean? Anybody who can shine any light on the question would be greatly appreciated.