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Internet Relay Chat turns 30—and we remember how it changed our lives
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) turned 30 this August.
The venerable text-only chat system was first developed in 1988 by a Finnish computer scientist named Jarkko Oikarinen. Oikarinen couldn't have known at the time just how his creation would affect the lives of people around the world, but it became one of the key early tools that kept Ars Technica running as a virtual workplace—it even lead to love and marriage.
To honor IRC's 30th birthday, we're foregoing the cake and flowers in favor of some memories. Three long-time Ars staffers share some of their earliest IRC interactions, which remind us that the Internet has always been simultaneously wonderful and kind of terrible.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:49AM (4 children)
I remember a little farther back when we left messages for each other, via phone lines, using ancient devices called modems, on even more ancient platforms called BBS. You knew were someplace fucking hot if it actually had the ability to talk to other people logged into the same BBS at the same time!
It wasn't like today where just anybody could sign up. You may have been able to connect, after war dialing the board for 3 hours, but being approved on the board was a whole other issue. They debated the coolness of your handle, and what stuff you might provide for the board. In other words, were you a noob or a hooked up courier? First time I experienced IRC, it was like being in some advanced form of heaven for geeks. They were BBS on steroids, that allowed you to talk while downloading files.
Thing is, IRC is still a very cool and efficient way to communicate, and it can be secure. At least they tried with the SILC protocol, but that fell out of favor to the cooler new kids like Signal, Telegram, and the paste eating Skype.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @01:13AM
Don't forget the acoustic coupler, UUCP, bang paths, and waiting days for your messages to arrive.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday October 17 2018, @12:21PM (2 children)
I chatted on arbornet.org's "party" chat program (in the 80s when arbornet was a UNIX System III Altos called m-net), and then naturally transitioned to IRC. I've been at this a while, and the biggest change I've noticed between IRC in its more-popular period (during the 90s and early 2000s) and IRC now is that last letter, the C for chat.
Then, any large channel--whether it was large merely because many people joined or large because it was formed around something popular such as a place or product--had a lot of chat. People talking (or at least typing). Conversation. Active participation. Even small channels were composed of part chatters and part lurkers.
Now, almost any channel, large or small, is very, very likely to be composed of lurkers and bots. A conversation might spring up here or there between a tiny percentage of those on channel, but it will die back out pretty reliably. Sure, there are channels somewhere that are exceptions to this, but that's the difference--they're now exceptions and not the rule.
For example, right now, I am one of over a thousand(!) in the #debian channel on freenode. It's been pretty dead. Over a thousand people (+bots) sitting here, not chatting. It's like it's transitioned into "Internet Relay Lurk".
Do we have less time now? Do we as a society no longer speak unless our contribution will be especially valuable? Or is IRC just not "gee whiz cool" anymore? I dunno. I mean, surely some of us have extra time, as evidenced by posts on sites like this one. There's no shortage of varying opinions. And I, for one, still think IRC is very cool.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 17 2018, @01:12PM
naw, the people running and using IRC from the old times, fighting against "the man" have morphed into "the man".
IRC is now mostly run by "the man".
if you are careful to not upset "the man" running the #chan, then sometimes, in cracks or crevices you can discover the old spirit of
IRC but be very careful not to mention anything remotely connectable to "the man".
if you are lucky you get slapped with a "off topic" but mostly if that happens you're on the blacklist anyway and with all the MAN-datory registration, chances are slim to non that you'll get to grow roots in any IRC nowadays.
nothing lost, really, humor, which was the fertilizer of any good IRC chan (humor is never off topic) is in short supply anyways...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Thursday October 18 2018, @12:36AM
For me, I just no longer have the time anymore to hang around randomly chatting on IRC. Real life started getting in the way. Before Uni I could hang around all day on IRC, then when I went to uni (and got a part time job to pay my way), IRC time went down, but due to odd lecture hours I could still hang around at 3am on IRC like I used to. Then the biggie, a "proper" job. Suddenly I had to be out the door at 7am to be at work by 9, to finish at 6 and be home by 8, then by the time I made and ate dinner, etc... it would be 10pm and I would be shattered. IRC was banned at work, and after a long day staring at a computer screen, the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was stare at the computer screen some more. Plus could not stay late, because had to wake up early for the daily grind.
It isn't so much that just IRC suffered, my entire online presence has. My personal website was last updated in 2012, and even that post back then had an apology for it being many years since the last update. I don't hang around my old forums, I don't play games anymore. The only sites I really visit and contribute to are soylent and theregister, and even then, my recent chattiness is due to being bedridden after an injury, with not much else for company but the laptop. Usually I just read the articles/comments, and do the odd mod.
Also, when I did get on IRC in recent times, in some chatrooms, I actually got told off for "off topic" chats (With a "friendly" reminder of what the channel topic was about). Once upon a time having an off topic conversation (Sometimes at odd hours in the morning) was fine, as long as nobody was doing an on-topic chat at the same time.
At some point, busybodies took over the chatrooms, and as ops they could ban/kick you, so you kept your mouth shut unless you had something on-topic to say.
Interestingly, before I left fb, I started seeing the same thing on their groups. I would get told off for not being on topic, or because I replied to a thread that was older than the admin thinks is right for a good "curated" page. Quite frankly I told him to get stuffed, as the thread was of interest to me, even if was "yesterdays thread". I got banned, and shortly after left fb too (and don't regret leaving one bit).
The best IRC chatrooms (in the sense of the "old IRC" I remember from my youth), were in private IRC servers off the main IRC network. I used to hang out on such IRC servers, which were bustling with all kinds of conversations, including ones completely irrelevant to the channel topic (minus a few strict channels, but there were for support or other important stuff). Which reminds me, Soylent has an IRC server. I think I might pop in when I am next free and see how things are there.
IMO to help have a chatty channel, (a) for IRC admins/channel creators, don't allow many channels on the IRC server (forces more people together, increasing the likelyhood of a conversation breaking out), and (b) for IRC users, don't be members of too many channels. If you are monitoring 100 different channels, you will be spending more time monitoring them then interacting with whoever is on each channel.