COM 125 Week 2: Email to Instant Messaging

From Email to Instant Messaging

The internet has played an integral role in our lives since the early 1990's. Though some might describe the birth of the internet as "accidental", we cannot deny that one will find life seemingly empty and out of place if we do not have any access to the internet today.The birth of the internet started in the 1950's when engineer Douglas Engelbart began to think about understanding an increasingly complaicated world dominated by technology. He wanted to see if computers could assist him in handling and solving many intricate problems. Hence the motivating factors behind the development of the net was cultivated by people who were keen on using the computer to intensify human thinking and communication.
(Rheingold, 1993)

It is tough for one to discuss about the internet without mentioning the functions of e-mail. Electronic Mail or e-mail for short is the pioneer of modern age internet communication. It is the improvement of snailmail as one can receive a mail in the matter of minutes, as compared to the number of days or even weeks one had to wait for a letter to be posted. The email is basically a way of storing and forwarding "method of composing, sending and receiving messages over the internet." (Wikipedia, 2006)

The email was invented in late 1971 by computer engineer named Ray Tomlinson. As an engineer, he experimented with a self-written program called SNDMSG. It was a program that researchers used to leave messages for one another using network communications. However, when using that program, one could only leave a message on the computer that you were working on for other people to read. Hence, Tomlinson created a file transfer protocol, called the CYPNET which adopted the SNDMSG program to send electonic messages on to any computer on the APRANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). The first electronic message that was sent was actually between 2 computers that were situated next to each other! Using the ARPANET network as a connection between 2 computers, the first message that was sent was "QWERTYUIOP". As many found the email a quick and convenient way of relaying messages to people over vast geographical distances, the email grew popular amongst many. The development of email storage started with Hotmail when it offered 2MB of storage in 1996 and more recently, Google launched the Gmail 1GB storage. (Wikipedia, 2006)


To sate our never ending desire to want more, humans constantly developed improved ways of online communication. Although the email provided a quick and almost fuss-free way of delivering messages to one another, one could not communicate with the other party in real-time. In addition, one always had to go through the trouble of accessing the inbox and then retrieving the new messages from it.

Thus, the birth of "instant messaging"was born. To many, "instant messaging" seemed like an enhanced and superior way of online communication. This was because one could hold real time conversations with one another. This meant that there was no time lag when sending the message to the receiving party. The Internet Relay Chat (IRC) for example was the first world-wide chat system that allowed people to chat in real time using chat rooms. Born during Summer in 1988, it quickly became a popular way of online communication as it was a cheap way of communicating across vast geographical distances in real time. (Stenberg, 2002) The IRC also played an important role in providing information during an emergency. When Hurricane Katrin struck in 2005, the IRC was the only communication mechanism that people used to gain information about the disaster. (Kalt, 2000)


Mirabilis Ltd launched the instant messaging program, ICQ ("I Seek You") in November 1996. It was the only producer of instant messaging till May 1997 and had attained 850,000 registrations. I still vividly remember the distinct green flower as its logo and the sound produced each time one received an incoming message. In 2002, the downloads for ICQ surpassed 200 million. Other instant messaging services that followed include the American Online Messenger (AOL Instant Messanger) which was released in May 1997. The AIM is being constantly upgraded, with a new version AIM 5.5 that comes complete with live video instant messaging and is compatible with Apple's iChat AV video conferencing. However, the instant messaging service that many are most familiar with would be the MSN Messenger. Launched by Microsoft in July 1999, the MSN fever was caught by many and after only 2 years, MSN messenger has become the single most used free instant messaging throughout the world. In May 2003, the user base hit a high of 100 million active users per month.


Hence, the above shows how the development of the email has influenced the internet that we are so familiar with and use today. From a quick and convenient way of relaying messages over the internet, people started to invent ways of conveying messages in real time. This led to the development of instant messaging where people not only communicated with each other via text messages but could also conduct live video instant messaging. Hence, it is the human nature of constant improvement and upgrading our current technology that has led us to the internet we use today.

References:

Rheingold, Howard (1993). "Visionaries and Convergences: The Accidental History of the Net" Retrieved January 24, 2007 from http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/3.html

History of World Wide Web (5 September, 2006). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 25, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_the_World_Wide_Web&oldid=73974490

Stenberg, Daniel (2002). "Internet Relay Chat". Retrieved January 25, 2007 from http://daniel.haxx.se/irchistory.html

Kalt.C (2000). "Key Features of IRC" Retrieved January 25, 2007 from http://www.livinginternet.com/r/rp.htm

Introduction of Email (n.d.) Retrieved January 26, 2007 from http://www.lyris.com/resources/whitepapers/listservers_history.pdf

Email (n.d.) Retrieved January 26, 2007 from http://inventors.about.com/od/estartinventions/a/email.htm

The Development of Email Storage (n.d.) Retrieved January 24, 2007 from

http://news.com.com/5208-1032_3-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=212&messageID=11791&start=-1

Instant Messaging and its Effects on Student Life (n.d.) Retrieved January 25, 2007 from

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~yrjiang/background.htm