Chapter 4: Instant Messaging and Online Chat Rooms

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Overview

If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.

—James McNeill Whistler

For many people, email isn’t fast enough. Forget about the fact that you can send a message to anyone in the world and often get a reply back within minutes. Email may be useful, but once you send out your message, you have to wait for someone to read it and write back.

That’s why instant messaging is so popular. Unlike email, where you have absolutely no idea if any of your messages are actually getting through to the people you’re sending them to, instant messaging lets you write messages directly to others and have them respond within seconds. Best of all, you can only send messages to people when they’re online at the same time as you are, so you know without a doubt that your messages are being received.

Still, given the unpredictable and chaotic nature of instant messaging conversations, you’re less likely to find people trading files with one another than to find them trading thinly veiled but barbed insults. But while strangers may not trust each other enough to share files indiscriminately, many people use instant messaging services to create private chat rooms so they can share files with their friends, away from the prying eyes of any government authorities.

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