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From: szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo)
Newsgroups: comp.groupware,news.misc
Subject: Re: Goodbye.
Message-ID: <20812@crg5.UUCP>
Date: 27 Dec 90 03:39:34 GMT
References: <1990Dec16.113452.19023@wbgate.wb.com> <214@buster.ddmi.com>
Reply-To: szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo)
Organization: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc
Lines: 79

In article <214@buster.ddmi.com> rabbit@buster.UUCP (Dr. Roger Rabbit) writes:
>In article <1990Dec16.113452.19023@wbgate.wb.com> ss@max.wb.com (Steven Spielberg) writes:
>>What hostility everyone exhibits here!! I was warned about this by
>>the computer-type that set this up for me. He explains the mail problem as
>>follows (I understand none of this because I'm not a hacker):
>>
>
>I know. This place has got to be the most dismal example of rudeness and
>inhmanity known to man. One of the problems with electronic communication
>is that you aren't looking the other person in the face and things that 
>we take for granted like vocal intonation and facial expression just 
>isn't there. A colleague of mine wrote his dissertation on just that 
>topic. ("Behavioral Patterns in Electronic Relationships", PHd dissertation, 
>A. Forkner, 1987, UCLA)

There is nothing new here.  People have been writing letters since
the post-Renassaince spread of literacy (and before).  During some
periods, writers went out of their way to say things like "your humble
servant" to placate the reader if there was offense.  At other times,
people wrote flames and just expected that was what letters were like.
Ever read Mark Twain's letters?  I have never seen a flame on the net
to match Mark Twain's.  Ditto for Voltaire, Swift, Erasmus, and many other 
letter-writers who have added immensely to our culture.  

If anything, people on the net go out of their way to change phrasing
and even drop whole subjects, to avoid offending people.  This is even
more true in the business arena, where e-mail is part of the everyday
relationship.  People who use the "Mark Twain mode" in e-mail have 
been known to be fired, demoted, etc. because they made the mistake of
using an at-a-distance literary style to attack the guy in the next 
cubicle! :-)  BTW, I am not referring merely to flaming, which is often
harmless, but the distribution of any information which is embarassing
to some of the readers.  The latter often gets the writer in more
trouble than flaming, in my experience.  On the other hand, it is one
of the biggest benefits of the net (and of the written word in general)
to be able to state the truth even when it is embarassing.  This is
rarely done face-to-face.


>I personally have been fascinated by the total removal of inhibitions
>to verbally abuse others that has been exhibited on USENET. 

I have been fascinated by the opposite -- that in some newsgroups 
cliques form in which the people personally know each other, and 
are thereby less likely to flame or even politely disagree with each 
other, while still flaming those they have not met.  Because news does 
not communicate much emotion (unless one is a *very* skilled writer), a 
night at the pub is worth much more than pages of news articles in forming 
and cementing a relationship.  "A beer is worth a thousand words" (you 
heard it here first! ;-)


>USENET does
>have its many good attributes, but this is NOT one of them.

I humbly disagree.  I think it is a wonderful thing to have a forum
where people can "attack at a distance" without all the emotional baggage
and posturing that goes along with a face-to-face conversation.  The 
truth is often embarassing, and the net is often the only place to tell it.
 

>I am firmly
>convinced the the government has the axe poised to kill it (at least the
>prevent it from being carried on the govt. funded NSFNet) and this kind
>of behavior does not help a bit. What scares me is the possibility that
>this kind of behavior will carry over into real life as more and more
>people become "tube literate". It would really be scary if we had a
>bunch of "Joe English"'s running around insulting people and starting
>riots and the like. 

IMHO, the emotional manipulations of TV "sound bites" do a lot more
to encourage irrational opinions and rioting than the net.  The net
has the potential of bringing people with wildly different points of
view, all over the world, into at least a modicum of mutual intellectual
understanding.

-- 
Nick Szabo		szabo@sequent.com
Embrace Change...  Keep the Values...  Hold Dear the Laughter...