Electropolis: Communication and Community on Internet Relay Chat

Despite the recent innovations of radio and telecommunications, communication and language theorists make a sharp distinction between the spoken and the written word. That distinction is based on a perception of temporal and spatial proximity in the case of spoken communication, and distance in the case of written communication. "Most analyses of linguistic interaction," as Naomi Baron notes, "are based on the paradigm of two people speaking face-to-face." 1 It is further assumed that alternative methods of communication-telephones and letters for example-supplement, as Baron expresses it, 'normal' face-to-face communication. 2 The underlying assumption that physical contact is necessarily a part of human communication pervades social theory. This is understandable. Until recently, physical contact was almost always a prerequisite for communication, with letters mainly being transmitted between people who had met in the flesh. Even the telephone assumes physical contact. It is generally only in the business world that people phone others whom they have not met, and personal telephone conversations are, as in the case of letters, conducted between people who are already known to each other. The technology of computer-mediated communication offers an alternative to this. Computer-mediated communications systems (CMCS's) use computers and telecommunications networks to compose, store, deliver and process communication. There are three basic types of computer-mediated communication systems: email, news, and chat programs. 'Email', or electronic mail, allows users of computer systems to send messages to each other. 'News' allows users to send messages to a database divided under subject headings, facilitating electronic mail between multiple users on diverse subjects. These two types of communication are asynchronous-messages, whether private email or public news, can be created and received at widely separated times, allowing time for reflection and deliberation in response. The third type of CMCS is the chat program, which does not store messages but transmits one person's typing directly to the monitor of another person or group of people. Chat programs deal in a form of synchronous communication that defies conventional understandings of the differences between spoken and written language. CMCS's are a recent development, with widespread availability only becoming possible within the last decade. Consequently, little has been written about them outside of technical considerations of their design and implementation. The few articles that have addressed the subject tend to do so from a commercial orientation-discussing the impact of CMC on 5 problem solving techniques, office communication and corporate structure. 3 An assumption that …