More interesting, though, is the realm of synchronous communications. I say more interesting because synchronous communications model situations in cyberspace that occur in real life interactions. Asynchronous forms of communications in the form of mailing lists or newsgroups don't even attempt to offer any kind of human interaction. They are much more like the community bulletin board or a letters the editor section of a newspaper.

Synchronous communications, on the other hand, are just like any party or chance meeting on a street where two or more people who may or may not know each other engage in a real-time conversation where the words that one speaks will make an impact on the immediate conversation. In these situations, people have to make use of what they know about real life interactions and make them work in a text based environment.

We will also see why current implementations of these types of interactions do not work very well for intense conversations.