IRC as a World-Changing Medium

khaladan writes "Wired has an interesting article titled Chat Room That Built the World that talks about the power of developers helping each other on IRC. The article covers the case of #winprog on EFnet, where people such Justin Frankel (creator of Winamp), John Johansen (DVD Jon), and Shawn Fanning (of Napster fame) have come to chat, hang out, and get help. Many from Microsoft visit the channel as well. Ben Knauss calls it 'innovation in its purest form, without ego, money or fame as its goal.'"

Comments

What's the biggest use of IRC these days? Botnets!

[MROD]

Long ago, in a time before Adware there once was a wonderful medium called IRC.

People used to talk inanely for days on it and, as long as you could find a server which was on the right network, wasn't full and hadn't split itself from the rest of the IRC network you could happily chat with your friends on #dl-bar or #gb or whatever (until someone decided that their ego was too great and booted most of the residents off it).

Today, however, the dreaded robot revolution has arrived. Hords of robotic critters are being controlled by a few, evil people in attempt to make money and destroy the world. That's where IRC is these days. There is no signal left, it's all noise and automatic control.

Re:well, I doubt it will be like that anymore

[Ilgaz]

IRC got excellent features fighting against lamers too. Kick, Ban... If it doesn't work, I bet some operators hanging on such a old channel, g-line will happen.