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| Team Chat |
 Title text: 2078: He announces that he's finally making the jump from screen+irssi to tmux+weechat. |
Explanation
Randall provides us with a – presumably anecdotal – montage of the Internet's changing attitude towards different instant messaging protocols, framed within the context of a team trying to remain in communication while tolerating each others' different tastes.
Although one-on-one "talk" programs date back to 1960s mainframes, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was one of the first real-time group communication protocols, invented in 1988. While it remains the format on which most later apps were based, the convenience and accessibility of other protocols such as AIM and Skype gradually exceeded IRC in popularity. Many users took to the new environments, but others preferred the old and familiar, hence schisms between groups began to grow.
Skype and Slack are both proprietary centralized communication protocols (usually used through their official clients). Skype focuses mainly on voice communication, be it for personal or business use, and own installable client, while Slack relies almost entirely on text communication, focuses on work communication and works completely well in its own web client, even though official desktop and mobile clients are available as well. Slack also features a huge customizability (bots, plugins) possibly inspired by IRC, and its users need to create communication teams, working inside subdomains at *.slack.com. It is possible to connect to Slack via IRC as well, using a gateway feature, if allowed by the team's admin.
Randall here seems to commenting on the persistence of IRC; while generally considered to be ancient software in comparison to newer and still-competing protocols, its endless customizability has led some people to support it above all others.
Extrapolating for the sake of humor, the joke here lies in a particularly uncommon but memorable type of Internet denizen: even in a far-off distant future where the world's technology has led to a superlative messaging network encompassing all people in some supposed, incredible bliss, there is always - in Randall's vision - going to be That IRC Guy.
In the title text, both screen and tmux are unix programs that help you multitask while working in terminal (command line), and irssi and weechat are both communication clients supporting mainly IRC, capable of working in a command line environment. Tmux is a newer and apparently more user-friendly project, complete with handy menus and titles, while screen is something of an industry standard, but relatively difficult to use – you need to know what you are doing or read help before use, otherwise you get lost and frustrated. [1] The same it is with the newer, more feature-packed and user-friendly weechat vs industry-standard, harder-to-use irssi. [2]
Basically, that one guy is a hardcore UNIX geek who doesn't use any graphical user interface, and in 2078 he decides to use a little less inconvenient, yet still command-line-based tools.
Timing of this strip follows the release of irssi version 1.0.0.
Randall has touched on similar themes before in 927: Standards.
Transcript
- [Hairbun holding up her palm toward Cueball. A frame over the top border of the panel has a caption:]
- 2004
- Hairbun: Our team stays in touch over IRC.
- [Megan is looking at Ponytail who is holding up her palm toward her. A frame over the top border of the panel has a caption:]
- 2010
- Ponytail: Our team mainly uses Skype, but some of us prefer to stick to IRC.
- [Cueball is talking with Megan in a frameless panel. A frame at the top of the panel has a caption:]
- 2017
- Cueball: We've got almost everyone on Slack,
- Cueball: But three people refuse to quit IRC and connect via Gateway.
- [A black panel with white text and drawings. The main body of text is above a the singularity, a starburst around a circle with two more broken lined circles around the starburst. To the right another Cueball-like guy floats in space with his laptop computer, typing on the keyboard. A frame, that is white inside, is over the top border of the panel has a caption: ]
- 2051
- Narration: All consciousnesses have merged with the Galactic Singularity,
- Narration: Except for one guy who insists on joining through his IRC client.
- One Guy: I just have it set up the way I want, okay?!
- Galactic Singularity: *Sigh*
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