Asynchronous Communication

   According to mondofacto.com, asynchronous communication is any act of exchanging information involving a delay between the sending and receiving of the message. Using this definition, we can see that asynchronous communication has been around for thousands of years, in the form of letters and books. If we fast-forward through history to today, the letter is still around, in both old(snail-mail) and new(e-mail) forms, however, asynchronous communication has evolved far beyond the letter and e-mail. Now it includes wikis, blogs, other websites, and so on.

The uses for asynchronous can be found in all four of the major network applications, and many blur the lines between these areas. Examples of asynchronous communication in the field of discovery wikis, web pages, and some blogs. In the field of communication, we find asynchronous communication in blogs, forums, and in social networking sites like Facebook. In Web applications, we see that blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, and podcasts are all designed to be asynchronous. Collaborating in an asynchronous manner is an area that has many available applications, and deserves a closer look. To quote from an article on scialert.net, “People have been collaborating asynchronously for many years using email, newsgroups, bulletin board, web logs and more recently group calendars and Wikis. Riboulet et al. (2002) investigated a new set of tools for collaboration. Many tools have emerged that make collaboration more powerful and convenient. These tools usually integrate existing methods of collaboration and add some new features. Wikipedia has a partial list of collaboration tools. These tools present a wide range of different features. To just list a few, the features include email, announcement, instant messaging, chat, discussion board, Wiki, calendar, file sharing, folder synchronization, tasks, time sheet and Gantt chart.”¹

     In reference this assignment, asynchronous communication is in blog format. Blogs (from web log) are a means of communicating to the world. With few limits in the way, blogs are used in almost every way possible. Some blogs are devoted to a certain topic, like politics, and others, like mine, are whatever the blogger wants to post. Some blogs can be used for communicating to specific people, while others are designed for anyone who will take the time to read them.

¹ J. Xu, J. Zhang, T. Harvey and J. Young, 2008. A Survey of Asynchronous Collaboration Tools. Information Technology Journal, 7: 1182-1187. http://scialert.net/abstract/?doi=itj.2008.1182.1187