Joy of Access: Users

“The only two activities where the participants are called users,” went a conversation at an Internet Engineering Task Force meeting, “are drugs and computers.”

Computerized discussion groups are as addicting as any recreational drug. Humans are designed to need communication; under normal circumstances, this need is offset by an inability to communicate with more people than you can see and talk to at one time. The net provides untold millions of people in your bedroom, and provides an even greater rush to a healthy human than a tobacco fiend’s morning nicotine fix.

Users on the net are identified by electronic mail addresses, similar to normal addresses. Each “e-mail” address consists of a user’s “username” and the host computer’s “hostname”, separated by an ‘@’ symbol. Often, the “hostname” is actually the organization’s domain. The United States president’s e-mail address is “president@whitehouse.gov”. The e-mail address tells you what “area” of the net the user is from.

In order to talk to individuals on the net, you need to know their e-mail address. You’ll find people’s e-mail addresses by looking at the messages they send to you, or the messages that they send to discussion groups.

A person’s e-mail address is their identifier on the net. In general, no two e-mail addresses are alike. Either the username is different or the domain/hostname is different. (This is the net. There are no hard rules. Even this rule can be broken.)