A quantitative analysis of usage in Computer-Mediated Conversation (CMC).

While commentators as ‘early’ as 1984 were predicting that the “organizational, social, and personal effects of computers will be deeply felt”, they could only speculate on the strength of its impact. As this account was being written, at the end of 2001, the effects of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) were fast overtaking our poor ability to measure them. There are many ways to communicate through computers: Usenet newsgroups, mailing lists, and message boards, which allow users to discuss specific topics with each other. (The term CMC allows for the possibility that some methods of communication, e.g., “chat rooms”, will not meet the definition of ‘mail’. The most popular method of CMC is e-mail. For those who have internet access, CMC is often their preferred choice of indirect (i.e., non face-to-face) communication, thanks to its speed, efficiency, and flexibility. Perhaps for these reasons, e-mail has already overtaken the telephone as the primary means of business communication.