Let's Talk About Chat

I like to talk. And talk and talk. I've talked myself out of trouble; I've talked myself into trouble. Talked until I was hoarse in the throat and blue in the face. I talk to my daughter in person--and hope she's listening--and talk to my friends and folks on the phone. I figure there's no way to talk that I've missed.

But I nearly let one kind of talk slip by me: chatting on my home computer. Sure, I use e-mail all the time--I bet you do too--for keeping in touch with friends and business associates. But e-mail, for all its promise of instant access, isn't really so instant. You send mail, then it sits in the recipient's mailbox until it's read. Maybe she sends a reply that day, maybe not.

But chat--the generic term given to online conversation that takes place in real time--is something else entirely. When you chat using your PC or Macintosh, the text you see scrolling on your screen has been typed by other "talkers" just a heartbeat before. What you type shows up on others' monitors just as quickly. You can carry on a real conversation with someone in the next town or on another continent--and you don't have to worry about ringing up long-distance charges.