electropolos - communication and comunity on irc.txt

黑客培训教程

  
                         **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