Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!ut-emx!walt.cc.utexas.edu!ifab750
From: ifab750@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Matthew S. Cohen)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: CALL FOR DISCUSSION:  SCI.VIRTUAL-WORLDS
Message-ID: <21499@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 28 Nov 89 19:10:22 GMT
References: <14547-repost@well.UUCP> <1989Nov16.161429.12549@talos.uucp> <3965@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> <21166@ut-emx.UUCP> <14666@well.UUCP>
Sender: news@ut-emx.UUCP
Reply-To: ifab750@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Matthew S. Cohen)
Organization: University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture
Lines: 69

In article <14666@well.UUCP> bluefire@well.UUCP (Bob Jacobson) writes:
>
>Erik suggests we make this a talk. group.  Do people take talk. groups
(etc...)
>-- 
>BOB JACOBSON, Associate Director, Human Interface Technology Laboratory
>       University of Washington (FU-20), Seattle, WA 98195 USA
>   (206) 543-5075 (voice), 543-5380 (fax)   *   bluefire@well.uucp
>                >> "We can do virtually anything." <<

Bob, you are really beginning to worry me.  If you had read what
I said, you would realize that I am not calling specifically for 
a talk.* group.  I am calling for a re-evaluation of your decision
to put the group in sci.*  I feel that for the group to reach as
many people as possible, it must be in an accessible newsgroup which
does not imply (via its hierarchical header) that anyone would
be excluded from the discussion.  You respond by claiming that 
many people do not take talk.* seriously.  Well, in the same 
vein, many of us do not read sci.* groups because the implication is
that they will be limited to discussions of a techinical nature.

Next, why are you and Howard so damn afraid of the 'cyberspace' label?
Your signature states that you are the associate director of some
laboratory whose title seems to suggest research in the area of 
computer/human relations.  If this is the case then you must realize that
people are afraid over being over-technologicized (sorry bout that word,
it just came out that way).  The problem with calling the group 
sci.virtual-worlds is that philosophers, architects, perception and
cognitive psych's and half the other people you seem to want to attract
to your group will have no idea what the fuck a virtual-world group
residing under the sci.* hierarchy will have to do with their field.
The initial call for discussion seemed to indicate that you wanted to 
include these people specifically.  What gives?  The cyberspace moniker,
on the other hand, resides in that fuzzy area where those who don't know
that they will be interested might be lured in by the name.
The bottom line is DON'T MAKE THE NAME TOO PRETENTIOUS!

The above is the reasoning that was used in calling the May 1990
Conference the 'First Conference on Cyberspace'.  If you read
the Call for Abstracts (which we sent to you personally, Bob) you
would see the same attempt to make the conference available to 
anyone with even the slightest inkling of an idea that might relate.
I only hope that your conference (I think you mentioned it) will
have the same inclusive spirit and will not exclude people for lack
of credentials.  It might be noted that the pioneer fiction writer in
this field, Gibson, knows little about computers and would probably 
never think to read a group called sci.virtual-worlds (a guess on my
part, I have not had opportunity to ask him).  It might also be mentioned
that the person who has done much of the most recent and best recieved
work in the field, Jaron Lanier, also has nothing in the way of professional
credentials.  If a group or a conference excludes people from the outset, 
chances are that it will become nothing more than a field (or an interest
group) masturbating itself for a few days (or longer) until the members
feel all warm and happy inside.  I, for one, would like to see the
group being proposed here become a REAL forum for REAL discourse.
I do not feel that that can be accomplished by being exclusionary from
the outset.

{whoops, do I see your finger reaching for the 'f' (for flame) key, Bob?}
=erik

=============================================================================
erik josowitz | University of Texas SOA | erik@vitruvius.ar.utexas.edu.UUCP
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"Is it live, or is it Memorex?" - television commercial
"The simulation is never that which conceals the truth - it is the
    truth which conceals that there is none.  The simulacrum is true."
-----from _SIMULATIONS_, Jean Baudrillard
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