Blog #4: Development of Communication Technologies (EOTO)

    Instant messaging was a very important innovation in technology. It is still extremely popular today, and has only gotten bigger in recent years. It is a fairly new development as it was created a few decades ago, but did not gain popularity until about 20 years ago. Instant messaging has had many positive and negative impacts on our society as well as revolutionized the way we communicate with one another.

    The first form of instant messaging was chat rooms online using Internet Relay Chat, or IRC. This was created in 1988 by Jarkko Oikarinen in Finland, then spread globally and gained more popularity in 1989. People used these chat rooms to talk in real time to people which was a huge innovation. The use of IRC drastically increased in 1991 when it was used to communicate up-to-date information on Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Radio and television was cut off so IRC was the only way to communicate and find out what was occurring.

     These instant messages remained popular, but did not become the instant text messages that we are more familiar with today  until a few years later. The very first text message read “Merry Christmas” and was sent in December of 1992. This was sent by Neil Papworth who was a young engineer for the network company Vodafone UK. He sent this message to a coworker Richard Jarvis who received this on an Orbitel 901 (pictured to the right). Jarvis could not respond to the text message yet but this was the first instance of using the technology to receive a message.

A year after its invention, a phone was released that included SMS in order to send text messages. However, you could only message people under the same mobile network as you. In 1999, messaging really took off because you were then able to message people under a different network as you. Instant messaging rapidly increased in popularity as these new network advancements took place. People liked this new technology because they were able to get into contact with people at a faster pace. They could simply send them a message no matter where they were. It improved how we communicate with others around us. It caused major advances in communication locally and worldwide both in a cordial and professional way amongst peers.

Today, instant messaging is the most used form of digital communication worldwide. While it originated in the UK, it is used by billions of people worldwide. Instant messaging has had a huge impact on the world especially in regards to our ability to communicate and how we communicate. It has especially affected the younger generations, since they were raised with it. Many of these younger kids show these affects of instant messaging within their academic work. While it includes many positives, such as faster typing and writing ability, it also comes with multiple negative effects. One of the biggest negative impacts it has is a lack of organization and proper mechanics. These kids are used to texting casually that when they begin to write academically, they use those improper writing skills. They fail to organize their writing into proper paragraphs and cannot correctly use grammar and punctuation. Instant messaging also had impacted people's mental health. The use of instant messaging has lowered their attention span and caused them to show symptoms relating to ADHD. These people are increasing their internet addiction through instant messaging as well as hurting their mental health and abilities.

People have become so reliant on this form of communication that they are lessening their ability to properly communicate without instant messaging. While it has brought many major advances through this form of communication, it has begun to hurt the younger generation. They have become reliant and so used to instant messaging that it has caused them to change how they communicate in the real world.