'Instant Messaging'

When I think of the network society and the various features that define it, one of the first to come to mind is instant messaging. From AIM and MSN in middle school to Facebook chat now, I can't really recall a time when instant messaging wasn't one of the primary ways in which my friends and I communicated. One of the earliest versions of the term that I was able to find was from a classified ads section from a 1963 publication of the Chicago Tribune. Employers were looking for experienced office workers to come in and help solve the 'messaging mess' - the name for what they called the increasing number of incoming phone calls. These people were referred to as 'call management'. I found this quite interesting because I can understand how these phone calls could once have been considered "instant messaging" after the longtime singular use of telegraphs and written mail. 

Chicago Tribune classified: "Classified Ad 56 -- no Title." Chicago Tribune (1963-Current file): 1. Jun 18 1989. ProQuest. Web. 22 Oct. 2013 .

I also found an article in the Los Angeles Times publication entitled, "The Wired Office" from 1988 about how instant messaging is "increasingly enhancing the decision-making processes", a theory that I hadn't thought before to relate t instant messaging but now understand thoroughly. The article essentially minimizes the power of the instant message, clearly not correctly hypothesizing the power to which it would eventually be held (as it is today).

"The Wired Office" - Krier, Beth. "The Wired Office." Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File): 4. May 05 1988. ProQuest. Web. 22 Oct. 2013 .

In the academic database results, all the early version of 'instant messaging' searches pulled up references to electronic mail (email) and the 'instant messaging' that it allowed. For example, this JSTOR article, focusing on the changing communication devices in communities: 

Desmond Fisher

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review , Vol. 75, No. 297 (Spring, 1986), pp. 74-85