IRC

Space

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a public chat space. It consists of channels of conversation or rooms that one can enter. They are ongoing and one can tune into or out of them as they please. As one enters, they can see who else is in that room. In the figure below, the column on the right lists the current visitors to that room. Everyone sees the same thing. They see what each person types as well as what they type. The notion of a shared space here is evident in the shared screen as well as the listing of everyone who is around. One can even see the names of lurkers or people that listen but do not speak.

IRC is a distributed chat space. Many servers are around for people to connect to the various spaces. When one first enters the system, they choose a server to connect to and are presented with a list of rooms or channels to enter. The name of the room often suggests the subject matter of that space. One can choose to exist or chat in several rooms at the same time.

IRC began as a purely textual interface. Once someone launches the interface, the interfaces are extremely easy to use. What is often harder to assess is proper behavior in the different rooms. Much of IRC ettiquette is discussed in information manuals or IRC Primers.

Newer clients have incoporated colors to denote private conversations, behaviors, emoticons, etc. but the primary motivations and structure are unchanged.

Time

IRC is a synchronous interface similar to ICQ and Zephyr.