IRC is the Ham Radio of the Internet
Jumping into the Church IT IRC channel today, it occurred to me that IRC is the Ham Radio of the Internet. Here is why:
- You have to be old to remember it’s good-old-days.
- It doesn’t come with any training at all.
- Has it’s own etiquette and cultural norms, which you only find out by doing the wrong thing publicly.
- Signing off and on isn’t easy… the commands aren’t self-evident.
- Finding your friends is hard.
- It is used in emergencies when more traditional communications are down.
- You fire a message and can’t forget… you have to wait for a response before moving on to other things (unlike Skype or Google Chat which will obnoxiously make noises at you).
There has been a lot of noise recently about Twitter as communications platform for the future. I don’t mind the projectionists prognosticating about Twitter killing other mediums, but one thing that bothers me is that unlike Ham Radio and IRC, Twitter isn’t built on standard protocols or an open network.
Don’t get me wrong, my 2,050 Tweets shows I am a real supporter of the thing, but I don’t think I’m going to depend on Twitter during a government overthrow, during a hurricane on a satellite phone, or in the midst of a battle. Twitter just isn’t dependable or open enough yet, and if it were I would imagine our military would have jumped on it before we got to it.
Department: Applications Development, Best Practice, Research & Development, Telecommunications
Disagree:
1. Young folks with interest in science and technology do enjoy amateur radio (yet the percent of cable-tv-bitten-brains increases daily hence the problems in the western world EDU system)
2. Amateur radio ONLY works (is enjoyable) after solid training. License is required! (What’s an antenna? Feed line? What frequencies can you use? Propagation? Repeaters?)
You perhaps meant ‘CB radio’?
Fine points Del. Glad someone has finally been disagreeable on my blog. It is welcomed!
1. I am not sure that I said they didn’t enjoy it. I myself enjoyed it as a kid thanks to a neighbor man who still does it today. In fact, when we were able to speak to someone outside of our Country on a clear night, it was a pinnacle moment in my pursuit of technology. Still, one can’t help but feel it is now outdated, a throwback, and losing it’s popularity. That isn’t to say it doesn’t have more users now than 20 or 50 years ago, it may very well be the case… but it is only because of population expansion not it’s technological advancement.
2. I think you have proved my point. Ham Radio requires training and yet you can’t get it from simply reading a one page instruction manual. My point was that it isn’t as simple as just turning it on, reading some prompts, and then getting after it. Ham Radio and IRC both require mentoring by a friend, extensive reading, and a testing of sorts before you are rubber stamped in those communities.
With the above, please don’t hear me as disparaging of Ham Radio. I love it all! Amateur radio has a special place in our history, and if a war ever finds it’s way to us again I suspect we’d need something like it as an ad-hoc, citizen-ran infrastructure piece.