The good people at AOL may never have thought that away messages would become the antagonistic, cathartic, informative tool of the 21st century. AOL dominated in the time of the 14k modem, when I was but a wee lad in elementary school. At this time AOL charged by the minute so any thought of leaving the Internet on seemed pernicious to ones financial health. So you simply shut off your net connection and computer when you were done. The dichotomy today is that one is consistently and continuously connected to the net 24 hours a day 7 days a week through the computer or hand held devices. My inclination is to affirm that as increases in connectivity occur, through the net & its assets, dis-connectivity in individuals increases as well. This concept has been illustrated by Jean M. Twenge, author or Generation me. However, a more thorough thought experiment will be done examining it's relation to Away Messages, Freudian & Skinnerian concepts and why away messages have become the informative plethora of noxious material.
The consistent connectivity to the Internet enables users of not only AOL/AIM but also yahoo, msn, gtalk and other various instant messaging programs to always have there computers on and there away messages up. Away messages have become so popular that a search in google for "away message" returned 112,000,000 results. A search for "really cool away messages" returned 3,830,000 results. Some websites such as www.iconator.com has begun to rank the quality of away messages. Other sites such as www.awaymessages.com and www.aimawaymessages.com are dedicated to producing unique and creative away messages for you to use. But whats the point? Why not shut off your computer and save the planet from global warming! Are we just to lazy to wait for windows to boot up after shutting down? Are we to lazy to shut down the the instant messaging client? Or is it that we get satisfaction from leaving up this often prattle. If we are leaving them up is someone then reading them? What is the risk/reward of the away message economically, socially & emotionally? This will be answered in Part 2 of Away Messages, Freud & B. F. Skinner Have What in common?
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