**ELECTROPOLIS:** **COMMUNICATION AND COMMUNITY** **ON INTERNET RELAY CHAT** Elizabeth M. Reid Honours Thesis 1991 University Of Melbourne Department Of History Internet email: emr@munagin.ee.mu.oz.au emr@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au IRC: Ireshi **ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS** I would like to thank the History Department for sponsoring my use of the University of Melbourne's computing facilities, which enabled me to undertake this research. I would also like to thank Richard Oxbrow of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and Matthew Higgins of the Department of Engineering Computer Resources, for allowing me to use the computing facilities of each of those departments. Lastly, I would like to thank Daniel Carosone (Waftam on IRC) for his unfailing support, and for his advice on technical details. **PREFACE** _COMPUTER-MEDIATED_COMMUNICATION_ 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 problem solving techniques, office communication and corporate structure.(3) An assumption that is commonly made by researchers of computer-mediated communication is that the medium is not conducive to emotional exchanges. As Ronald Rice and Gail Love state, "the typical conclusion is that as [the communication] bandwidth narrows, media allow less 'social presence'; communication is likely to be described as less friendly, emotional, or personal and more serious, business-like and task oriented."(4) This may have been found to be the case in some instances, and may reflect the overall concern among researchers to study CMC in a business environment. But computer-mediated communication systems are not - either theoretically or in practice - limited to commercial use. It is also possible to use them for social interaction. Internet Relay Chat is one such system. IRC is a multi-user synchronous communication facility that is available all over the world to people with access to the 'Internet' network of computer systems. IRC was not specifically designed for a business environment - the use to which it is put is entirely decided by those who use it. Work is certainly done on IRC. It is an excellent forum for consultations between workers on different points of the globe - everything from programming to translation to authorial collaboration goes on on IRC. However, a large part of what goes on on IRC is not work but play, and it is this aspect of it that I will address. Communication using the Internet Relay Chat program is written, and users are spatially distant, but it is also synchronous. It is a written - or rather, typed - form of communication that is transmitted, received and responded to within a time frame that has formerly been only thought relevant to spoken communication. IRC does not assume physical contact between users - either prior to or after communication via computer. Users of the system will, as the medium is international, know in person at most only a few fellow users. IRC allows - encourages - recreational communication between people who have never been, most likely will never be, in a situation to base their knowledge of each other and their methods of communication on physical cues. Users of IRC do not, however, have no knowledge of each other. The people who make up the IRC community are effectively preselected by external social structures - access to IRC is restricted to those who have access to the Internet computer network. There are many such people - the Internet spans countries as diverse as Germany, the United States, Japan, Israel, Australia and Korea. However, those individuals who use IRC will be in an economically privileged position in their society. They have access to high technology. Due to the nature of the computer network on which IRC runs, the Internet, they will most likely be members of an academic community, often students of computer science.(5) Interaction on IRC is then carried out in the knowledge that users are on a rough equality - according to conventional economic measures - and members of similarly privileged social groups. This 'equality' is not intrinsic to IRC, it is a by-product of the social structures surrounding computer technology. Nevertheless, IRC provides a unique field to the social theorist. It challenges and forces an escape from traditional paradigms of social interaction by reference to an architecture that allows relative anonymity. It stands as a challenge to the methods of analysis that have been directed at computer-mediated communication systems. IRC was not designed to perform a corporate function, nor has it come to do so. It was intended to be a tool for social interaction between spatially disparate people, and as such it cannot be completely explained or analysed by reference to the methods used by other CMC theorists.(6) Interaction on IRC involves a deconstruction of traditional assumptions about the dynamics of communication, and the construction of alternative systems. IRC is essentially a playground. Within its domain people are free to experiment with different forms of communication and self-representation. Within IRC, "Power is challenged and supplanted by rituals combining both destruction and rejuvenation."(7) To paraphrase F.R. Ankersmit, users of IRC do not shape themselves according to or in conformity with the conventions of social contexts external to the medium, but learn to "play" their "cultural game" with them.(8) This is my central thesis, and I will seek to address it from two perspectives. My first concern will be the methods by which users of IRC utilise the medium in the deconstruction of social boundaries. As I have suggested, users of IRC are a pre-selected community - they have much in common as far as such considerations as social position and education are concerned. IRC, however, presents unique problems for the expression of this community. The methods by which such groups are usually held together rely on physical proximity. These methods are not open to users of IRC - computer-mediated communication challenges and deconstructs these social tools. I will discuss the means by which communication on IRC does this. My second concern is the construction of alternative communities on IRC. Denied or having deconstructed the more traditional methods of sustaining a community, users of IRC must develop alternative or parallel methods. Both positive and negative methods of sustaining community are developed on IRC. Computer-mediated rewards and punishments are developed, and complex rituals have evolved to keep users within the IRC 'fold' and to regulate the use of authority. Discussion of these points will lead to a presentation of the social discourse of IRC. The challenging of the power of social norms and their replacement with rituals combining both destruction and rejuvenation, brings into play areas of discourse that are postmodern. This connection between postmodernism and that phase of culture and technology marked by computerisation has been remarked upon by even those antipathetic to the discourse. Perez Zagorin describes postmodernism as "a fundamental mutation in the sphere of culture reflecting the new multinational phase of... [the] electronic society."(9) Culture, as defined by Schneider, is a "system of symbols and meanings."(10) Since computer-mediated communication systems are "designed specifically to affect the transmission of symbols and meanings", IRC - which is both international and electronic - has the potential to alter understandings of cultural analysis.(11) My conclusion is that Internet Relay Chat, by deconstructing social boundaries and by the ways in which users construct their own community and culture, is a postmodern phenomenon. Cultural criticism in this postmodern age is, as Alan Lui states, governed by "its belief that criticism can, and must, engage with context".(12) It is also, as Ankersmit suggests, reflexive, self- referential.(13) If history is to be able to address the questions raised by computer-mediated culture, then historians must examine the impact of that cultural context upon their craft. Historians must ask what will happen to the practice of history when "societies enter what is known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter what is known as the postmodern age"?(14) If computer-mediated communication problematises cultural criticism by questioning conventional notions about the construction of the self and of culture, then it also problematises historiography. If historians continue to take to the increasingly more complex forms of computerised information exchange that are being developed then these factors will have ideological implications for their craft. What will happen to the relationship of the historian to his text, and what will happen to the historian's view of texts, once electronic data itself becomes subject to historical study? The most prosaic aspects of the historian's craft are challenged in a computer-mediated culture. If primary and secondary sources are produced and disseminated electronically, what becomes of the conventions of citation?(15) Under the application of this technology, historical texts become subject to, as Lyotard describes it, an "exteriorization of knowledge with respect to the 'knower'"(16) The form which computerised knowledge takes - electronic encoding, or data files - is not inherently identifiable with its creator. Electronic data can be modified by anyone who has the appropriate technology. It is subject to a fluidity that 'hard copy' is not - it can be changed without that change being detectable. The context of information changes the relationship between information and power, between information and discourse. As John Perry Barlow asks, "What are data and what is free speech? How does one treat property which has no physical form and can be infinitely reproduced? Is a computer the same as a printing press?... Can anyone morally claim to own knowledge itself?"(17) In examining the Internet Relay Chat computer-mediated communication system I attempt to write history within the context of the culture of an electronic, postindustrial, postmodern society. **INTRODUCTION** Most people are familiar with personal computers. Although only a small number are conversant with the technical details of microcomputer technology, or with computer programming languages, most people have a rough idea of what a computer looks like, and that they are used by typing commands into a keyboard and viewing feedback from the machine on a monitor. Word processing has become so common that it would be hard to find a person living in the Western world - especially in an academic community - who had not actually used a computer. Throughout this essay I shall assume a basic understanding of the physical act of computer use. I do not intend to explain any of the technical details pertaining to my subject - most of them are, at any rate, beyond my understanding. However I feel that it would be useful to give some explanation of the historical context within which Internet Relay Chat has been developed, and necessary to offer a description of the IRC environment. _ARPANET,_THE_INTERNET,_AND_AARNET_(18) The personal computers with which most readers will be familiar - IBM compatibles, Apple Macintoshes, Amigas and so on - are a relatively recent phenomenon. It is only within the last ten to twenty years that computers have become household items. Before that computing was the domain of governmental or commercial organisations which owned large - mainframe - computer systems. As usage of these systems increased, it became common for computers at one geographical location, or site, to be linked together so that users on each could have access to the data and facilities contained on all the others. These local area networks, or LANs, developed into networks connecting machines at dispersed sites, utilising the telephone line system. The first of these 'long-haul' networks was the ARPANET, which came into existence in 1969. This project was funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, an arm of the United States Department of Defence. ARPANET initially connected machines at the University of California (Los Angeles and Santa Barbara campuses) and the University of Utah, and was intended to facilitate research at those sites. Along the idea of sharing electronic data went the idea of communication between users. ARPANET originally allowed two methods of communication between users - email and news. ARPANET's membership grew, with many other educational institutions in the United States adopting the new technology. In 1983 ARPANET was divided into two networks, known as ARPANET (for research use) and MILNET (for military use). The ARPANET arm continued to grow, with local area networks at various government, educational and commercial sites being added to the system. With the advent of satellite communications, it became possible for computers in other countries to join the network, and ARPANET became known as the Internet. Technically, the Internet is not one