Message
Message in its most general meaning is an object of
communication, it is something which provides information and can be this information itself. Therefore its meaning is dependent on the context, the term may apply to both the
information and its form.
More precisely, in the
communications science, a
message is
information which is sent from a
source to a receiver. Some common definitions include:
* Any
thought or
idea expressed briefly in a plain or secret
language, prepared in a form suitable for
transmission by any means of communication.
* An arbitrary amount of
information whose beginning and end are defined or implied.
*
Record information, a
stream of
data expressed in plain or encrypted language (
notation) and prepared in a
format specified for intended transmission by a
telecommunications
system.
* In the specific
Actor model a
message is similarly an Actor itself that is sent asynchronously from one Actor to another.
* In languages such as
Smalltalk-80 and
Objective-C an instance of a class method is called (confusingly) a
message.
See also:
Instant messaging,
Message Oriented Middleware*
Smoke signals - Ancient (short distance only)
*
Carrier pigeons or
Homing pigeons
*
Wind-power shipping (hence the name) "In 1800, it took 2 years to send a message from London to Calcutta. You wrote a physical letter and entrusted it to a wind-powered ship that sailed down the western coasts of Europe and Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope, back up the eastern coast of Africa, across the Arabian Sea, etc. -- with, presumably, stops in just about every port (yes, they had multi-hop message transports back then)." [
1]
*
Semaphore - Limited use
*
Telegraph - (late
19th century)
*
Telephone - (late
19th century-early
20th century)
*
Steamshipping "By 1914, it took 1 month to send a message from London to Calcutta. The
Suez Canal had opened, and steamships powered their way through the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, and thence to India. Big improvement."[1]
*
Radio, (early
20th century)
*
Television - (mid
20th century)
*
Airmail (1950s or 1960s?) ~ 1 week.
*
Overnight mail - became popular and affordable in the 1980s, made the international messaging only two days.
*
Text messaging - (1990s) Messages sent through cellular phones.
*
Electronic mail (~1994) - delivery times of 10 minutes, based on number of hops, frequency of manual retrieval, etc.
*
Instant messaging - Message travels at average 100 milliseconds, almost always less than a second. Often shorted to "IM", sometimes in combination with the type of messenger (YIM is yahoo instant messenger). People enjoy messaging others through many types of mail including: regular mail, e-mail, online messaging services
# "Brief history" section adapted from
Peter Saint-Andre "The Need For Speed"#
Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms#
Federal Standard 1037C
