Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) is an important new form of human communication made possible by links between personal and mainframe computers, modems, and telephone lines. It transpires in "cyberspace," an abstract, disembodied space consisting only of information and electronic pulses, in which the ordinary coordinates of physical space and time are suspended. Although the technology of CMC has existed for 20 years or more, only in the last five years has "the Net" (for "network"or "network of networks") become a meeting place for millions. Remarkable new forms of "virtual culture" are now developing in this intensely social domain of human interaction.

Cyberspace is dominated by the Internet, a vast web of interconnected university, commercial, military, and science networks. The Internet developed out of ARPANET, a network created in the late 1960's and early 1970's by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the United States Department of Defense. While its origins would suggest that cyberspace is a highly centralized virtual environment, whose resources can easily be mobilized by governments and other institutions for purposes of social control and even repression, in fact, the emergent culture of cyberspace is strikingly anarchic and frontier-like.

At the present time, CMC continues to be mainly typed and textual, as it was in its early days, though graphics and even sound and video clips are increasingly being incorporated into material made available on mainframe computers around the globe. The technology for video conferencing--oral, computer-mediated face-to-face communication including visual images in real time--already exists, though it is still prohibitively expensive, and is not yet widely used.

Interpreted broadly, the term CMC includes not only person-to-person and person-to-group communication, but also person-to-remote-computer contacts, in which individuals read or download documents from remote computers. Global computerization is breaking down the traditional distinction in print culture between the solo-authored, decontextualized written text and the face-to-face personal conversation. Thus, within minutes or hours of examining a document via the World Wide Web, a system of links between digital files of text, sound, or graphics, effortlessly accessed on any mainframe computer on the globe, a person can contact its author(s) by electronic mail (email) and begin a dialogue. In this article, however, only direct person-to-person and person-to-group communication will be discussed.

There are two main forms of CMC--non-synchronic, and synchronic. Basic, private email resembles ordinary letter-writing: the sender composes and sends the message at a time separate from that in which the recipient receives or reads it. However, whereas ordinary mail, disparagingly but playfully called "snail mail" by hackers and other initiates into computer culture, takes days to arrive, email arrives in seconds or minutes.

Group communication based on the basic email mode includes listserv discussion groups, Usenet newsgroups, and do-it-yourself bulletin boards (BBSs) run by hobbyists, especially children and teenagers. Thousands of such groups are in intense daily interaction. Electronic groups discuss topics ranging from (1) the professional or academic (Anglo-Saxon studies, astronomy) to (2) the recreational (e.g., StarTrek, vampires) to (3) issues requiring group support (single fathers, dieters). Listserv messages posted to a central mainframe address are automatically distributed to the personal accounts of all other subscribers. In some groups, a moderator edits and distributes messages in batches. In the case of Usenet newsgroups and BBSs, individuals read postings stored on a mainframe or a personal computer, rather than receiving them in their individual accounts.

Synchronous modes of CMC enable individuals simultaneously logged on to to "chat" by typing. For instance, just as face-to-face speakers hear their interlocutors formulating their messages as they are spoken, when the "talk" function is activated on the UNIX computer, two individuals can read each other's contributions while they are being typed. More sophisticated forms of synchronous communication include Internet Relay Chat (IRC), MUDs and MOOs (Multi-User Domains, Multi-User Domains/Object-Oriented), and the CB (Citizens' Band) Channel on Compuserve, a commercial online service. The single most popular chat mode is IRC. At any hour of the day or night, 1000s of persons, mainly young, male students, are logged on. Individuals divide up into channels with names based on geography ("russia", "england"), professional interests ("unix," "mosaic") or playful fantasy and themes of popular culture ("hottub," "startrek"). MUDs and MOOs evolved from the computer game Dragons and Dungeons. They are real-time, collective role-playing fantasy games of long duration, in which individuals develop elaborate fictional personae, often of the opposite sex, and interact in virtual "rooms".

Pioneering researchers on CMC in the late 1970's and early 1980's focused primarily on its instrumental aspects. Early research was concerned with the effects of the new medium on organizational functioning, for instance, on efficiency and on hierarchical relationships. Many perceived the medium as cold, anonymous, and lacking in "social presence," because of "reduced bandwidth," and the absence of non-verbal cues such as facial expression. Alongside this ongoing research tradition are newer approaches focusing on the linguistic, playful and expressive aspects of CMC, and therefore of greater interest to students of semiotics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, folklore and anthropology.

Digital writing is strikingly dynamic and playful, and even speech-like. Ordinary email is frequently experienced, paradoxically, as a form of "talking." CMC challenges currently held beliefs among folklorists and students of rhetoric, oral literature, and the history of literacy about the uniqueness of oral culture. They have assumed that its key features are dependent on the personal, face-to-face interaction of individuals, e.g., a storyteller and his or her audience. Oral culture is believed, for example, to be agonistically toned, whereas writing, subject to processes of decontextualization, supposedly neutralizes this component of human interaction. Yet even in ordinary email, both private and person-to-group, we find a striking tendency to sudden flare-ups of anger and insult, known in cyberculture as "flaming."

Descriptive studies of the language of email identify "oral" features (e.g, slang, expressions such as "well" and "o.k.", fragmentation and a tolerance for misspellings that resemble the dysfluencies of ordinary speech); "written" features (e.g., ellipsis, as in note-taking, lists); and uniquely digital features, including the use of "emoticons," known popularly as "smiley" icons, composed of typographic symbols on the computer keyboard, e.g., :-) read sideways for a smiling face, citation of portions of a message from one's correspondent while replying (as a means to supply context), and stylized signatures including graphics.

A selection of types of play with writing and typography is displayed in Chart 1. Devices such as multiple punctuation and eccentric spelling seek to imitate intonation in speech. Capital letters are interpreted widely on the "Net" as shouting, and are therefore usually discouraged. Written out laughter and third-person descriptions of oneself, marked off by asterisks (*grins*) resemble conventions of comics. Other features are play with the spacing of letters, and verbal and/or visual puns like the one shown in Chart 1. Except for smiley icons, third-person descriptors, and stylized signatures, discussed below, all these devices are familiar from the writing of children and even of teenagers and adults writing personal letters. To some extent, then, this new medium releases people to write in an expressive manner which was suppressed in the past by the schools when training children in the basic practices of essayist literacy.

Some researchers argue that the language of CMC is an emergent new register of English. This language is in a state of transition from the norms and practices of print culture to those of emergent computer culture. It reflects much confusion on the part of writers, who bring to basic email and discussion groups experience with many pre-CMC genres of oral and written communication, including the face-to-face conversation, the telephone conversation, the business letter, the personal letter, the telegram, the postcard, the ritual greeting card, and the intra- office memo. In comparison with paper-based written messages, the text of the electronic message carries a particularly heavy semiotic burden. Aspects such as the shape and size of paper or handwriting are not available to supplement the linguistic channel.

Email messages automatically come with a memo-like, computer-generated header, which includes the sender, date, and subject line. This is a generalized use of the traditional intra-office memo. Whereas in the intra-office memo, no personal greeting was considered necessary, and writers proceeded directly to the body of their message, email writers-- mainly communicating globally and not just within organizations-- often add personally chosen greetings and other openings, though practices are far from standard. If a greeting is to be used, should it look like the "Dear X" we associate with a written letter, or the informal "Hi, how are you doing?" of a personal conversation, or something new and different from both? Or should we learn to do without it altogether?

Stylized signatures are files specially created and stored by writers, inserted at the end of each message, as desired, and containing not only addresses, telephone and fax numbers, but also a specially designed graphic image or logo, and even a proverb or other pithy saying. In part these signatures are meant to restore something of the trace of the unique individual which is lost when the handwritten signature is no longer possible. It is evident that, despite their intangibility, digital signatures partially resemble ancient and medieval seals, as well as modern business cards. While they individualize a message, in their present state they cannot fulfill the legal function of authentification.

Synchronous, descriptive studies of the language and generic features of email messages do not suffice to identify the sources of confusion as individuals adapt to the new medium, or to document the crystallization of emergent new norms. Diachronic studies are necessary, to answer such questions as: how are practices in private email and related modes crystallizing over time? To what extent is the communication style of today's initiates like that of the pioneers of email technology in the 1970's? Are newcomers merely initiated into a pattern already set by pioneers, or have important changes occurred? In what ways are the lines of demarcation between the decontextualized "business letter" and the contextualized "personal letter" becoming blurred in the new medium, and why is this happening? Does the medium encourage more rapid movement toward a personal, expressive style between a given pair of business correspondents than would happen in extended exchanges of pre-CMC business letters? To what extent are such developments also the product of a general cultural trend toward a preferred oral style of writing?

Playfulness flourishes particularly in the synchronous modes of CMC, which in effect become textual playgrounds. Individuals play with language, writing, and the computer keyboard, as well as with their own identity, the frames of interaction, and even with the commands of the computer programs which make their interaction possible. There are important affinities between computer-based, spontaneous playfulness and real-world, written genres such as graffiti and comics, on the one hand, and with face-to-face genres such as charades, carnivals and masked balls, parties, shows, and improvisational theater, on the other. Yet most of what happens consists only of typed, interactive text--letters and typographic symbols on a computer screen--created by geographically dispersed persons who cannot see one another and who may never meet. In real-world carnivals, masks and costumes liberate participants; here, the ephemeral, non-material medium, the typed text, and the prevalent use of nicknames provide the mask.

In synchronous modes, writing becomes performance: participants invite others to pay special attention to how their messages are packaged. Typed, on-line improvisation sometimes reaches virtuoso heights, with participants handing out compliments to one another. In Chart 2, highlights from a textual virtual party observed on IRC, two persons, nicknamed and , simulate smoking marihuana, using both words and emoticons. These nicknames successfully disguise the gender of the players. In the first example, simulation is mainly verbal, with smiley icons used supplementarily to express emotion. Thus, types "thanx dude *puff* *hold*," and later winks ( ;-) ), pleased with his own improvisation. In the second example, icons are mobilized to represent the various stages of smoking pictorially. Thus, in the last line, , inspired by his improvisational partner , has graphically represented the entire sequence of putting a roach into one's mouth (using an icon based on the letter "Q," in which the tail of the "Q" represents the cigarette), inhaling and holding the smoke in one's lungs, exhaling, observing the curling smoke (represented by the sequence of s's; note that the repeated letter "s" also represents the sound of smoking itself, and that "s" is the first letter of the word "smoke"), and finally, the smile of pleasure resulting from the inhaled smoke. Participants' delight at their performance was no doubt enhanced by the knowledge that they simulated an illegal, counterculture activity. The juxtaposition of fantasy with high technology, as illustrated by this example, produces a distinctively post-modern form of communication, a disembodied play of signs often without obvious or unequivocal referents (e.g., the masked identity of the players in this case), distinguished by a style of playful rebellion and irreverent subversion.

Although improvisational performance predominates in synchronous modes, there are also experiments with scripted performance. A group calling themselves the Hamnet Players is experimenting with online theater on IRC, virtual cast party included. They have scripted outrageous parodies of "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," called "Hamnet" and "PCbeth," respectively, juxtaposing Shakespeare's canonical plots and poetry with clever puns, speed-writing conventions, obscenity, and IRC computer jargon. At a signal from the artistic director, persons already "in disguise" in their regular IRC "nicks" (nicknames), don the "costumes" for their stage roles; that is, they change their "nicks" to the names of the characters they are about to "play." The performance is semiotically most interesting and most complex when players improvise on their scripted roles. Their aspirations go beyond having fun; they seek to develop a new form of performance art.

In its many varieties, CMC is generating new forms of popular culture. Even asynchronous electronic discussion groups of a relatively non- controversial character develop their own ambience and cultural practices. Some combine virtual communication with occasional real-world encounters, such as clambakes and potluck suppers. Of course, this is greatly facilitated if the majority of group members live in close geographical distance of one another, as is the case for the WELL, a pioneering virtual community based in San Francisco. But even members of geographically dispersed groups are known to make an effort to meet in person. Moreover, some groups concretize their virtual communal experiences with the design and wearing of group T-shirts. With respect to the synchronous modes, dozens of electronic "pubs" and "cafes" have crystallized, with "regulars" setting the tone for new forms of virtual conviviality. Real-world cafes are installing computers and modems so that customers can log on to virtual cafes or check their email while drinking coffee.

In the coming decade there will be extensive research on the long-term social implications of CMC. Among the many issues to be studied are the following: what criteria can we use to evaluate the quality of "community" in cyberspace, and the effects of extended participation on individual well being? Are low-risk virtual relationships being substituted for real-world relationships, or are people enriching their real-world experiences with new forms of sociation? While social isolates may escape into cyberspace, instead of cultivating real-world ties, friends and family can now keep in touch on a daily basis at low cost. Thus, this medium might prove to strengthen weak, extended family ties, among geographically dispersed persons who kept in touch in the past only by the occasional letter or telephone call, supplemented by infrequent reunions at holiday or birthday times. It is already clear that cyberspace is not an entirely benign place: sexual harassment, racism, deception, molestation of children, etc., are common and difficult, if not impossible to control. It remains to be seen whether we can contain such problems and, at the same time, preserve the openness of the emergent culture of cyberspace.

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