I was chatting with Erik Thauvin and he asked me if I used IRC.  However, I was a bit embarassed to admit, I knew what the acronyms stood for, however I had never actually used it.  I heard it about it back in graduate school when a couple of other students wanted to implement their own version.  However, I had also had the impression that it was a big time sink.

IRC is like a chat room but with more listeners at a given time.  Not everyone really speaks, in fact the vast majority are lurkers.  This got me thinking of the inefficiency of it all.  See with blogging I've been averaging 534 unique visitors a day, however if I wanted the same kind of audience for IRC, I would have to be online 24 hours a day. Now, Erik, who's rumored to require only 3 to 4 hours of sleep a day, can do that, however I need my daily dose of 8 hours of sleep.

The Hive Mind is asynchronous.  You don't have to be in the same place or even in the same time to be able to converse.  It's also the preferred mechanism for software integration.  I've blogged about this before, and its the basis of my claim that web services as it's currently envisioned is a flawed concept.

Now, ever since freeroller added comments, a new richer channel of communication has been opened up for this blog.  So, if you're a frequent reader, please make your thoughts known.  The Hive Mind will be better as a result.