View source for Talker

{{short description|Internet chat system}}
A '''talker''' is a chat system that people use to talk to each other over the [[Internet]].<ref name="hahn">{{Cite book |last=Hahn |first=Harley |title=The Internet Complete Reference |publisher=Osborne McGraw-Hill |year=1996 |isbn=0-07-882138-X |edition=2nd |pages=[https://archive.org/details/harleyhahnsinter00hahn/page/498 498] |quote=A TALKER is a multiuser talk facility that is easy to use and is devoted primarily to conversation.  You connect to a talker by using telnet ... The word 'talker' is a descriptive  term. For example, some talkers are muds, while others are BBSs; there is no strict definition. If it's easy to use, and you connect in order to talk to other people, it is a talker.
 | url-access = registration
 | url = https://archive.org/details/harleyhahnsinter00hahn/page/498
 }}</ref> Dating back to the 1980s, they were a predecessor of [[instant messaging]].
A talker is a [[communication system]] precursor to [[MMORPG]]s and other [[virtual world]]s such as ''[[Second Life]]''. Talkers are a form of online [[virtual world]]s in which multiple [[user (computing)|user]]s are connected at the same time to [[online chat|chat]] in real-time. People [[Login|log in]] to the talkers remotely (usually via [[Telnet]]), and have a basic text [[Interface (computer science)|interface]] with which to communicate with each other.

The early talkers were similar to [[Multi-user dungeon|MUD]]s with most of the complex game machinery stripped away, leaving just the communication level commands – hence the name "talker".<ref name="internetculture">{{Cite book |last=Ito |first=Mizuko |title=Internet Culture |publisher=Routledge |year=1997 |isbn=0-415-91684-4 |editor-last=Porter |editor-first=David |edition=pbk. |pages=89–90 |chapter=Virtually Embodied: The Reality of Fantasy in a Multi-User Dungeon |quote=These combat-oriented MUDs stand in contrast to non-gaming 'talker' MUDs or educational or professional MUDs. |author-link=Mizuko Ito}}</ref> ew-too was, in fact, a [[LPMud|MUD server]] with the game elements removed.

Most talkers are free and based on [[Open-source software|open source]] software.

Many of the online [[metaphor]]s used on talkers, such as "rooms"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Levine |first=John R. |title=More Internet for Dummies |publisher=IDG Books |year=1997 |isbn=0-7645-0135-6 |pages=197 |quote='''Talkers''' are for talk only, with no games, no monsters to fight, no quests, and no bizarre rules to learn. All you do is talk and make new friends. Talkers are much like IRC, except that rather than join a channel, you move into a room. |author-link=John R. Levine}}</ref> and "residency", were established by these early pioneering services and remain in use by modern [[3D computer graphics|3D]] interfaces such as ''[[Second Life]]''.

==History of talkers==
===Early Internet talkers===
In the school year of 1983–1984, Mark Jenks and Todd Krause, two students at Washington High School in [[Milwaukee]], wrote a software program for talking among a group of people.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Brandon De Hoyos |title=The Early Messengers |url=http://im.about.com/od/imbasics/a/imhistory_2.htm |access-date=2008-03-14 |archive-date=2008-09-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080903000244/http://im.about.com/od/imbasics/a/imhistory_2.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> They used the [[PDP-11]] at the [[Milwaukee Public Schools]] (MPS) central office. After searching around the PDP-11 files and directories, Mark found the PDP-11 program [[Talk (Unix)|talk]], and decided that they could do better. The system had approximately 40 300–2400 [[Bit rate|bit per second]] [[modem]]s attached to it, with a single phone number and a [[Hunting (telephony)|hunt group]]. The talk program was named TALK and was written to handle many options that are seen in [[IRC]] today: tables, private messages, actions, moderators and inviting to tables. Another talk server called NUTS,<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.ogham.demon.co.uk/nuts.html |title=NUTS home page |access-date=2018-02-20 |archive-date=2018-11-04 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181104033335/http://www.ogham.demon.co.uk/nuts.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> which stood for Neil's Unix Talk Server, was released in 1993 and became fairly popular on Unix systems. Its command system was broadly based on the Unaxcess BBS and being room based it took a lot of inspiration from MUDs too. The source code was given away and became the basis of a huge number of variants and rewrites during the 1990s.

''Cat Chat'' was the first Internet / [[JANET]] talker, created in 1990.{{R|tmc}}

===Talker hosting===
In 1996, talker.com was formed, the first server to sell space for talkers, later giving it the name Dragonroost.  The server had over 90 talkers on it at one time, during the mid-1990s boom of talkers. A number of other hosts started up as alternative hosting companies to talker.com. Talker.com ceased hosting any other talkers besides its owners' on September 28, 2009.<ref>{{Cite web |date=March 8, 2010 |title=Dragonroost Talker Server |url=http://www.talker.com/}}</ref>

==See also==
*[[Instant messaging]]
*[[Internet Relay Chat|IRC]]
*[[ICQ]]
*[[Multi-user dungeon|MUD]]
*[[Online chat]]
*[[LPMud]]
*[[talk (software)|Talk]], a Unix text chat program
*[[Telnet]]

==References==
{{Reflist|30em|refs=
<ref name="tmc">{{Cite web |title=Introduction to MUDs |url=http://www.mudconnect.com/mud_intro.html |website=[[The Mud Connector]] |quote=Talkers began in 1990 with the program "CatChat" at Warwick University which, ironically, used an LP MUD driver and had snoop capability.}}</ref>
}}

==Further reading==
* {{Cite book |last=Thomas |first=Angela |title=Youth Online: Identity and Literacy in the Digital Age |date=July 2007 |publisher=Peter Lang Publishing |isbn=978-1-4331-0033-8}} - an ethnographic study of youth online, analyzes textual interactions, including at Middle Earth-related talkers

==External links==
{{Wiktionary}}
*[https://h2g2.com/edited_entry/A1010106 BBC h2g2 (wikipedia-style) Article on talkers]
*[http://www.cheeseplant.org/~daniel/pages/cph.html Cheeseplant's House History], of some historical significance.
*[http://www.pgplus.org Playground Plus Code Base]

{{MUDs}}
{{Computer-mediated communication}}

[[Category:Online chat]]