I've enjoyed the discussion of synchronicity because our work suggests that it is a powerful factor in the communication strategies that people adopt. The complexities that you all have been describing have led us to define synchronous communication as interaction in which messages are produced with the expectation that they will be processed and responded to immediately vs. asynchronous communication in which it is anticipated that there will be unpredictably long delays between the exchange of messages. A factor that seems to account for many of the differences we observe in these environments is the contiguity of context in synchronous communication, where people can rely on a common ground and can alert each other reasonably quickly if there are any relevant changes in the context. In contrast, asynchronous communication opens up the possibility that massive changes can occur in the context between exchanges, and we have been struck by the fact that many epistolary conventions such as dating letters and indicating the writer's location are also providing contextual features. Even the choice of a salutation is not only reflecting the relation between writer and receiver, but also reassuring that this relation still holds. Of course, there is still much to be said about the differences among communication environments that are all synchronous according to our definition. I thought you folks might enjoy this quotation from an especially perceptive participant in a study (cited below): "the line-by-line nature of MOO communication smoothes out most minor lags in communication that can be a major part of the impression you form of somebody. A MOO friend whom I've known face-to-face for a number of years tends to be very soft-spoken and thoughtful in real life, but on MOO this is invisible; there's no volume control and, given typing speeds, multitasking and other factors, the pauses for thought are buried amidst the delays of the medium. On occasion I've been on conferencing systems (like UNIX "talk") that are character-by-character. There's definitely a different impression in this sort of communication; the lags in your typing are visible and apparent, and if you're a decently fast typist you have no opportunity to reflect on your words before sending them, no opportunity to see them on the screen and reconsider them." Jacobson, David. (1999. Impression Expectations and Offline Experiences in Text-based Virtual Communities. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 5 (1). Available: http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol5/issue1/jacobson.html Meanwhile, the poor fellow who started all this discussion still needs some sources, and the problem is that there are so many places to look, but this bibliography of chat studies definitely focuses on a synchronous environment: http://www.chat-bibliography.de/ Finally, people who are interested in a study that compares people solving the same problems in face-to-face, synchronous cmc, and e-mail can write to me or wait until the book comes out: Condon, Sherri and Claude Cech. "Discourse Management in Three Modalities." In Herring, Susan, ed. Computer-Mediated Conversation. Hampton Press. Cheers, Sherri -- Sherri L. Condon, Ph.D. The MITRE Corporation 11493 Sunset Hills Road Reston, Virginia 20190-5214 Phone: 703-883-5522 E-mail: scondon@mitre.org