This November, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass) Information Technology department will be installing several analog chat rooms throughout its campus to better adapt to ever-evolving technology. “We [want] to be ahead of the times,” said Robert Wilson, a technical assistant. “The fact is that people these days aren’t satisfied with Facebook, texting and instant messaging. In this new hyperconnected world new ways of communicating with friends and family are being sought out every day.”

The chat rooms are intended to provide places for students to interact with peers they may not have already friended on Facebook or contacted via other online communication tools. “We want these analog chat rooms to be an opportunity for increased communication in the student body,” explained Wilson. He went on to explain the limitations of digital chat rooms, citing, most notably, the necessity that users must already have the contact information of other users they may wish to communicate with. “In this new space students will literally be able to strike up a conversation with anyone at any time, regardless of Internet connection or knowledge of Mac or PC operating systems.”

Similar chat rooms have very recently been installed in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., Princeton University and New York University. These programs have had limited success, with the exception of the chat room in the Library of Congress, which was shut down due to noise restrictions. “We learned a lot from the pilot program in DC. We looked at the reasons it failed and have made the necessary adjustments to Amherst’s plan,” Wilson said, adding, “though there are some potential issues which require further study.”

Applying these previous experiences to UMass, Wilson also expressed his reservations about the program, stating, “One of the major issues we will be confronting is that these analog chat rooms are not protected by our current firewall.” Students sharing files will have no protection against viruses aside from any precautions they take on their own. The IT department’s official guidelines state that students using these chat rooms should not accept files from users with whom they are unfamiliar. For students, a significant advantage of file sharing using an analog chat room as opposed to digital is that it offers protection from copyright laws. The Recording Industry Association of America has never successfully prosecuted a case of analog file sharing. “There is no technology out there that would allow them to track this sort of thing,” noted Wilson.