"The daily practice of electronic communication is shaped by over-familiarity with one's own computer system, and a tendency to assume that - as with much more established forms of communication - everyone is operating within compatible and similar systems. When in doubt, seek to communicate in ways that are readable and effective for all users, regardless of their particular systems." (Allen, n.d.)
 

Humans all share a common set of 'hardware' that we utilise in face-to-face communications in the physical environment. Each participant has a set of communication 'tools' that we can easily recognise in the other participants. There are facial expresisions, gestures and spoken words, which are coloured by voice tone and inflection, pauses and colloquialisms (Fielding, 1999). We all have these things 'in-built ' into us - they are our hardware so to speak. If we come across someone who has some variation in their 'hardware' i.e. hearing-, visually-impaired or from another country that doesn't share our language, all participants will generally compensate in some way.

When communicating over the internet however, an individual has an additional set of hardware to work with. The key difference here is that not everyone has the same set of computer hardware and/or software. This is something that the majority, if not all, internet users will be able to recognise. Quite often people are aware that their friends may have different screen resolutions and internet speed connections. But if we explore this a bit more the fact is the differences do not end there. There are differences in how we view or emails (online, within a software package, as HTML or text-only), the programs we use to chat to people (MSN Live Messenger, Yahoo Instant Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger all offer the fuction of adding friends who use different instant chat programs, and then there are other programs such as Digsby that go further and incorporate Facebook chat and online email notifications). As for browser software - the latest market share data from Net Applications shows that so far this year Internet Explorer users account for ~68%, while Firefox users account for ~22%. That can be interpreted as, out of every five people you know who use the internet, one is using use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.

Now one may think "So what if they use a different screen resolution/connection speed/email or chat client/browser? We are all looking at the same thing..."

Well that may be, but the use of different hardware/operating systems and software has an impact on the effectiveness of internet communication. The differences between the systems individuals use to communicate over the internet impacts upon personal and professional productivity (Booth, 1989).

But what about compensating for these differences? Since these differences are generally not conciously taken into account by the average internet user, as they are not readily seen (hence the invisibility of difference), this factor of internet communication is likely to pervade internet use for much time to come. its consideration however, is within the domain of effective web developers who are responsible for the design of the tools we use to communicate via the internet.

Further Reading
Site 1: Booth, P.A. (1989). An Introduction to Human-computer Interaction. Psychology Press: Milton Park, U.K. 268pp./Link/

Booth's introduction to Human-Computer Interfaces provides a good overview of the issues caused by difficulties in between users and their hardware from a historical point of view. Its not just a simple issue of not being able to read a friend's email because they did all this fancy stuff in HTML. There are wide reaching implications for productivity.
The greater part of the text focuses on the human-computer interaction as opposed to human-computer-computer-human interaction however its a worthwhile read in terms of becoming familiar with the issues in how we communication with computers and thus the internet.

Site 2: Title/Link/
Evaluation, significance/usefulness/relationship, credibility...

References
Allen, M (et al). (n.d.), Internet Communications Concepts Document, Curtin University of Technology.
Anon. (n.d.) Browser Market Share Report by www.netapplications.com. http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0 Report generated Thursday, February 05, 2009 10:49:12 PM
Booth, P.A. (1989). An Introduction to Human-computer Interaction. Psychology Press: Milton Park, U.K. 268pp.
Fielding, R. (1999). Human Communication and the Design of the Modern Web Architecture. In Proceedings of WebNet World Conference on the WWW and Internet 1999 (p. 7). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.
 

Concept 17: The impact of text-based and real-time chat.

"Communicating in real-time with text enables a form of 'authoring of the self' that is similar to the processes of face-to-face speech but which is much more amenable to authorial control, experimentation and reflection. Further, text-based communication carries with it the possibility for multiple, differing conversations occurring simultaneously, relying on the ability of the human brain to deal with text much better than speech." (Allen, n.d.)
 

Discussion & Reflection

Further Reading
Site 1: Title/Link/
Evaluation, significance/usefulness/relationship, credibility...

Site 1: Title/Link/
Evaluation, significance/usefulness/relationship, credibility...

References
Allen, M (et al). (n.d.), Internet Communications Concepts Document, Curtin University of Technology.

Concept 20: Active communication generates identity awareness.

"One can only generate awareness of one's membership of an email list by posting messages; others' awareness of your identity will enable them to include you in their discussions and enable you to play your part in the community that is the list" (Allen, n.d.)

 

Discussion & Reflection

Further Reading
Site 1: Title/Link/
Evaluation, significance/usefulness/relationship, credibility...

Site 1: Title/Link/
Evaluation, significance/usefulness/relationship, credibility...

References
Allen, M (et al). (n.d.), Internet Communications Concepts Document, Curtin University of Technology.
 

Concept 21: Threading

"Threading is what makes discussion groups - either Usenet news groups or, for example, this unit's discussion group - so valuable for enabling complex inter-flows of communication to take place in a manner that allows us to see the pattern of conversation and response." (Allen, n.d.)

 

Discussion & Reflection

Further Reading
Site 1: Title/Link/
Evaluation, significance/usefulness/relationship, credibility...

Site 1: Title/Link/
Evaluation, significance/usefulness/relationship, credibility...

References
Allen, M (et al). (n.d.), Internet Communications Concepts Document, Curtin University of Technology.