John December, from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, states, "Communication on the Internet exists with in developed social and cultural traditions (ascusc)" It is because of this that different people want different things from their tools of communication on the internet. Because of this I've tried to discuss some different forms of internet communication. Each form is different, and hopefully there is information regarding some form of communication on this site that every culture and tradition will find interesting and helpful when dealing with the internet.
The invention of e-mail servers has given people the ability to correspond with one another on an almost instantaneous basis. Once an e-mail is sent from one computer, it takes little, to no time at all for another computer to access the new e-mail. The first e-mail server that was invented was done by a man named, "Ray Tomlinson in 1971 (inventors)." Tomlinson originally made the email server for the government. This was just the beginning of email. Following this many other companies came out with similar programs that allowed their users to access e-mails. Today, it doesn't matter which company a person uses to send and recieve e-mail because all e-mail servers are able to recieve and send messages to one another.
After the invention of Email there was a great consumer need for a program that would allow them to talk to others online without having to write lenghty emails. This is when instant messaging first came to be used. Today, many people communicate using instant messaging. Bob Woods, for internetnews, stated that today, "Nearly 40% of the active U.S. -based Internet-using population at home logged onto one of the public instant-messaging networks at least once in the month of May (internetnews)."
When the public realized that they could now chat and correspond with others from different parts of the nation, the idea of on-line dating came into play. People could now choose from a set of criteria and choose a possible mate from thousands that were also looking for love. Much to the dismay of newspaper's dating services, the internet now has a firm grasp on the dating community. This has allowed many people to meet and form relationships that would probably not have ever known about eachother.