My little story:
When my wife and I were still dating, she lived up here in Vermont and I was living
down in Massachusetts, about 250 miles apart. So during the week we used AOL's IM to
communicate and saved ourselves a bundle in phone calls, plus we used email. That was
five years ago and neither one of us has used it since, mainly for the reasons Kevin
outlines here.
My question is why is anyone using AOL??!!
Dave
Dave Hardy
Systems Manager/DBA
Vermont Health Care Administration
89 Main Street
Drawer 20
Montpelier, VT 05620-3101
802-828-2914
FAX: 802-828-2949
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> "Kevin D. Clark" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 05/03/01 01:46PM >>>
What do people use instant messaging for anyways?
I tried out chat rooms back in the 80s (anybody remember GEnie?) and
concluded that I hated the style of discussion that went on there.
(I concluded that these mostly consisted of random blurbs of typically
misspelled and grammatically-incorrect text; and superficial
conversations that were mostly dominated by people entering and
leaving each "room". And there were a lot of people in these rooms
that I had no interest in talking to...)
I even played around with IRC for a few hours back in the dark ages.
``More of the same'', I concluded.
And now instant messaging is all the rage. So, I take it that with
instant messaging a whole group of people can
interrupt^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsend you a message at any time, no?
In what situations do people find "instant messaging" to be a more
convenient form of communication than face-to-face meetings, the
phone, email, mailing lists, or Usenet?
Because I just don't get it. For example, in case you haven't figured
it out yet, I like to use email. Why do I like email? Because most
of the people that I choose to converse with take the time to write
decent email that is well-written, succinct and to the point. Because
if I'm doing work-related email, my email is a convenient record of
what is going on. Because I can filter my email and *read it when I
want to*.
I don't think that instant messaging really give me this style of
communication, and I have yet to see any compelling reason for me to
start using this stuff.
Really, this is a serious question. I have a few friends of mine who
are in the same boat as me -- collectively, we all wonder "why should
we use this stuff?"
So...why?
Thanks for any well-thought-out replies,
--kevin
--
Kevin D. Clark (CetaceanNetworks.com!kclark) |
Cetacean Networks, Inc. | Give me a decent UNIX
Portsmouth, N.H. (USA) | and I can move the world
alumni.unh.edu!kdc (PGP Key Available) |
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