COM125 Assignment 2: Messaging Instantly

The Internet was the product of some futurist thinking by people in the early 1960’s who saw vast prospective value in allowing computers to share information on research and development in scientific, communication and military fields. Instant Messaging plays a popular role in human society today because it is one of the best means of communication through the internet between two parties and has now become a worldwide application. There are many different programs you can use to “chat” with people, mainly your buddies on the internet. They are AOL Instant Messenger, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and there are still programs that are in development for an even wider array of chatting methods. Recently, even video-chat methods have been uncovered and made internet chatting even more complex and popular.

The development of Instant Messaging started in the 1970’s on operating systems like Unix, where multiple users were connected. One of the first chatting protocols was a chat room network protocol known as Internet Relay Chat, or IRC. IRC was started in Finland in 1988 by Jarkko Oikarinen known on IRC as WiZ, was the developer of the first Internet chat network, called IRC, short for Internet Relay Chat. He wrote the first server and client in August 1988, while working at the University of Oulu in Finland. Although there were other chat room protocols available, IRC gained popularity during the Soviet Coup of 1991, when a group of Soviet government leaders attempted to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev. While doing this, there was a media blackout. During this blackout, IRC was the only way to know what was happening in the Soviet Union until order was restored. Following the blackout, people started using IRC for other matters, such as technical support chat rooms.

In the last half of the 1980s and into the early 1990s, the Quantum Link online service, now known as AOL, started user-to-user messaging.

Quantum Link looked like the picture on the left. If someone wanted to use instant messaging, they would click on "People Connection". The screen was visually divided up into sections and messages would appear as a yellow bar saying "Message From:" and the name of the sender along with the message across the top of whatever the user was already doing, and presented a list of options for responding.

Instant Messaging offers real-time communication and is the closest thing to a real conversation. There are many benefits in today’s society from the development of Instant Messaging. Allowing instant communication from two people with access to internet, wherever in the world, may be one of the biggest developments in technology today. Many people today use Instant Messaging because it is easy to use, and it is a way to communicate with people for free. For example, instead of a high-priced phone call to the other side of the world, you could talk online just by subscribing to a free service.

I believe the only problem with Instant Messaging is the division of different programs. For example, someone on ICQ cannot chat with someone using Yahoo Messenger. The development of a unified Instant Messaging client would be one of the biggest advancement of the technology today. So, as you can see, Instant Messaging has become a huge part of everyday society for almost any individual with access to the internet. This advancement has played a huge role in technology and will continue to play a big role in the different means of communication worldwide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Link