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**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 network, but a number of
networks that communicate with each other, however to the user it
appears to be one big network.
The Australian arm of the Internet is known as AARNet, the Australian
Academic Research Network. AARNet grew out of ACSnet, the Australian
Computer Science Network, which served to connect computers used
directly by computer science researchers. Initially this network was
linked by conventional telephone lines, with machines exchanging data
and mail each night. This has developed into a nationwide system
permanently linking virtually all computers at major academic
institutions, and some commercial and government research
organisations. Initially a link to the Internet was run via undersea
cables to Hawaii, but in early July 1990 the final links were
installed to make AARNet fully operational, and operation of a
satellite connection to the United States West Coast segment of the
Internet was commenced.
The most heavily used forms of inter-user communication on the
Internet are still the asynchronous forms of email and news. On most
computers on the Internet synchronous communication is possible using
a program that enables two users to type directly to each others'
screens, thus having a real-time electronically mediated
conversation. This method of communication is, however, fairly
limited - only two people can 'talk' to each other at once.
It was in response to the limitations of the synchronous
communication programs in existence that Jarkko Oikarinen decided to
write a computer program that would enable multiple users to engage
in synchronous communication across a network. This project was known
as Internet Relay Chat.
_INTERNET_RELAY_CHAT_(19)
Jarkko Oikarinen wrote the original IRC program at the University of
Oulu, Finland, in 1988. He designed IRC as a 'client-server' program.
The user runs a 'client' program from his or her local machine, which
then connects, via the Internet, to a 'server' program which may not
be running on that local machine. There are hundreds of IRC 'servers'
over the world, all of which communicate with each other and pass
information back to the client programs - and users - connected to
them. IRC was first tested on a single machine with less than twenty
users participating. IRC's networking capabilities were then tested
on a suite of three machines in southern Finland. Once tested it was
installed throughout the Finnish national network - FUNET - and then
connected to NORDUNET, the Scandinavian branch of the Internet. By
November of 1988, IRC had spread across the Internet. The latest
listing of countries whose Internet branches host IRC include
Australia, the United States, Italy, Israel and Korea.(20)
IRC differs significantly from previous synchronous communication
programs. Fundamental to IRC is the concept of a channel. 'Talk',
'chat' and 'voice' had no need of such a concept since only two
people could communicate at one time, typing directly to each other's
screen. On IRC however, where two or three hundred users is the
normal population, such a system would create chaos. It was therefore
necessary to devise some way of allowing users to decide whose
activity they wanted to see and who they wanted to make aware of
their own activity. 'Channels' were the answer. On entering the IRC
program, the user is not at first able to see the activity of other
connected users. To do so he must join a channel. Channels are
created or joined by users issuing a command to the IRC program to
join a channel. If there is already a channel of the specified name
in operation, then the user is added to the list of people
communicating within that channel; if such a channel does not exist,
then IRC opens a new channel containing the name of the user who
invoked it, who may then be joined by other users. The user can issue
a commands requesting a list of the users connected to IRC and
which channels they are attached to. IRC keeps track of who has
joined which channels, and ensures that only people within the same
channel can see each others' typed messages. IRC can support an
unlimited number of channels. Channels can have any name, but
generally the name of the channel indicates the nature of the
conversation being carried out within it - 'Finland', 'hottub',
'worker', 'party', and so on. The user who initially invokes a
channel name is known an a channel operator, or 'chanop', and has
certain privileges. He or she may change the mode of the channel -
may instruct IRC to limit usage of the channel to a certain number of
users, may limit entry to the channel to people specifically invited
by him or her to join, may make the channel invisible to other users
by specifying it's exclusion from the list of active channels that a
user may request of IRC, may kick another user off the channel, or
confer chanop privileges on another user.
IRC supports numerous other commands. Once a channel has been joined,
everything that the user types will be by default sent to all other
occupants of the channel. It is possible, however, to alter that
default setting by issuing commands to direct a message to a
particular user, users, channel or channels. A number of other
commands - the ability to send messages to all users or to kick a
user off the IRC system entirely - are reserved for IRC operators, or
'opers', the people who run and maintain the IRC network connections.
Opers also have access to special commands related to the technical
implementation of IRC.
IRC is not an 'official' program. There are few 'official' programs
on the Internet. Most are simply programs that a group of people, who
by virtue of their paid or student work have access to computers on
the Internet, have decided to install on these machines. IRC
operators are people who have chosen to invest the time needed to set
up and maintain the IRC program on their local machines for the
benefit of other local users.
IRC, then, is a multi-user synchronous communications system. It
allows people to choose which person or group of people they wish to
see the activity of, and to whom they wish their own activity to be
transmitted.(21) IRC - the whole Internet - forms a 'virtual
reality'.(22) In the words of John Perry Barlow:
Whether by one telephonic tendril or millions, [these computers are
all] connected to one another. Collectively, they form what their
inhabitants call the Net. It extends across that immense region of
electron states, microwaves, magnetic fields, light pulses and
thought which sci-fi writer William Gibson named Cyberspace.
Cyberspace, in its present condition, has a lot in common with the
19th Century West. It is vast, unmapped, culturally and legally
ambiguous, verbally terse (unless you happen to be a court
stenographer), hard to get around in, and up for grabs... In this
silent world, all conversation is typed. To enter it, one forsakes
both body and place and becomes a thing of words alone... It is, of
course, a perfect breeding ground for both outlaws and new
ideas...(23)
Within this breeding ground, users of IRC invent new concepts of
culture and interaction, and challenge the conventions of both.
**PART ONE:**
**DECONSTRUCTING BOUNDARIES**
Traditional forms of human interaction have their codes of etiquette.
We are all brought up to behave according to the demands of social
context. We know, as if instinctively, when it is appropriate to
flirt, to be respectful, to be angry, or silent. The information on
which we decide which aspects of our systems of social conduct are
appropriate to our circumstances are more often physical than verbal.
Place and time are perceptions of a physical reality that are not
dependent on statements made by other people. We do not need to be
told that we are at a wedding, and should be quiet during the
ceremony, in order to enact the code of etiquette that our culture
reserves for such occasions. "Being cultured" says Greg Dening, "we
are experts in our semiotics... we read sign and symbol [and] codify
a thousand words in a gesture."(24) In interacting with other people,
we rely on non-verbal information to delineate a context for our own
contributions. Smiles, frowns, tones of voice, posture and dress -
Geertz's "significant symbols" - tell us more about the social
context within which we are placed than do the statements of the
people we socialise with.(25) Language does not express the full play
of our interpersonal exchanges - which, continues Dening, "are
expressed in terms of address, in types of clothing, in postures and
facial expressions, in appeals to rules and ways of doing
things."(26) The words themselves tell only half the story - it is
their presentation that completes the picture.
Internet Relay Chat, however, deals only in words. Computer-mediated
communication relies only upon words as a channel of meaning.(27)
"Computer-mediated communication has at least two interesting
characteristics:" writes Kiesler, "(a) a paucity of social context
information and (b) few widely shared norms governing its use."(28)
Users of these systems are unable to rely on the conventions of
gesture and nuances of tone to provide social feedback. They cannot
rely upon the conventional systems of interaction if they are to make
sense to one another. Words, as we use them in speech, fail to
express what they really mean once they are deprived of the
subtleties of speech and the non-verbal cues that we assume will
accompany it. Internet Relay Chat is synchronous, as is face-to-face
interaction, but it is unable to transmit the non-verbal aspects of
speech that conventions of synchronous communication demand.
It is not only the meanings of sentences that become problematic in
computer-mediated communication. The standards of behaviour that are
normally decided upon by non-verbal cues are not clearly indicated
when information is purely verbal. Not only are smiles and frowns
lost in the translation of synchronous speech to pure text, but
factors of environment are unknown to interlocutors. It is not
immediately apparent, in computer-mediated communication, what forms
of social etiquette are appropriate at any given time.
Kiesler, Siegel and McGuire have described computer-mediated
communication as having four distinct features in comparison to
conventional forms of interaction: an absence of regulating feedback,
dramaturgical weakness, few social status cues and social anonymity.
Conventional systems for regulating interaction fall apart. The
structure of IRC causes its users to deconstruct the conventional
boundaries defining social interaction. "Anonymity [and] reduced
self-regulation" become, as I shall discuss, pronounced in computer-
mediated communication.(29)
_ANONYMITY_
Although the social and economic status generally associated with the
use of such high technology as computer systems offers IRC users, as
I have indicated, some general context within which to place each
other, they know little else about each other, and that little is
open to manipulation by the user.
Users of Internet Relay Chat are not generally known by their 'real'
names. The convention of IRC is to choose a nickname under which to
interact.(30) The nicknames - or 'nicks' as they are referred to -
chosen by IRC users range from 'normal' first names such as 'Peggy'
and 'Matthew', to inventive and evocative pseudonyms such as
'Tmbrwolf', 'Pplater', 'LuxYacht' and 'WildWoman'.(31) The
information which one user can gain about others on IRC consists of
the names by which they choose to be known and the Internet 'address'
of the computer by which they are accessing the IRC program. The
first is easily changed. IRC supports a command that allows users to
change their nicknames as often as they wish. The second is not so
easily manipulated, but still open to tampering provided that the
user has some technical skill. Essentially there is nothing that one
IRC user can ascertain about another - beyond the fact that they have
access to the Internet - that is not manipulable by that user.
Our conventional presentation of self assumes that we cannot change
the basics of our appearance. Physical characteristics, although open
to cosmetic or fashionable manipulation, are basically unalterable.
What we look like, we have to live with. This is, however, not the
case on IRC. How an IRC user 'looks' to another user is entirely
dependant upon information supplied by that person. It becomes
possible to play with identity. The boundaries delineated by cultural
constructs of beauty, ugliness, fashionableness or unfashionableness,
can be by-passed on IRC. It is possible to appear to be, quite
literally, whoever you wish.
The anonymity of interaction in IRC allows users to play games with
their identities. The chance to escape the assumed boundaries of
gender, race, and age create a game of interaction in which there are
few rules but those that the users create themselves. IRC offers a
chance to escape the language of culture and body and return to an
idealised 'source code' of mind.
The changes that a user might make to his or her perceived identity
can be small, a matter of realising in others' minds a desire to be
attractive, impressive, popular:
*BabyDoll* Well, I gotta admit, I shave a few lbs off of my
wieght when I tell the guys on irc what i look like..
However, the anonymity of IRC can provide more than a means to 'fix'
minor problems of appearance - one of the most fascinating aspects of
this computer-mediated fluidity of cultural boundaries is the
possibility of gender-switching. While secondary characteristics such
as hair colour are relatively easily changed in 'real life', gender
reassignment is a far more involved process. This aspect of computer-
mediated communication has had little attention given it. Sproull and
Kiesler note that "unless first names are used as well as last names,
gender information is also missing", but do not discuss the
implications of this.(32) IRC destroys the usually all but
insurmountable confines of sex: changing gender is as simple as
changing one's nickname to something that suggests the opposite of
one's actual gender. It is possible for IRC to become the arena for
experimentation with gender specific social roles:
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