Since the mid-1990s, when large numbers of people all over the world began going "online" to explore the Internet (see entry under 1990s—The Way We Lived in volume 5), millions of them have been chatting with each other in the many chat rooms that have emerged in cyberspace. Chat rooms can be described as the contemporary equivalent of the old "party line," the early telephone exchanges in which several customers shared the same number and thus could eavesdrop on one another's conversations. Today, anyone with modem access and a password can enter into a conversation. Choices include any number of general chat rooms for anonymous socializing or special-interest chat rooms to discuss more specialized topics.

A typical chat room can consist of a dozen or more people using their keyboards to enter quick, pithy statements that are displayed in real time on the screen. To...