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From: shackelf@tlab2.cs.unc.edu (Douglas Shackelford)
Newsgroups: comp.groupware
Subject: Re: Audio & Video Needed for Group Support?
Message-ID: <535@borg.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 18 Jan 91 19:28:05 GMT
References: <14533@uswat.UUCP>
Sender: news@cs.unc.edu
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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In article <14533@uswat.UUCP> markabel@uswat.uswest.com (Mark Abel) writes:
Stuff deleted...

>
>Although one can coerce single channel interaction systems like e-mail into
>providing socio-emotional information (e.g., smileys :) ), a richer
>set of interaction media that includes two-way video, quality audio etc.
>is almost certainly much better to convey this sort of information.  In
>short, why limit ourselves, especially when full multi-media communications
>solutions will be here in the 1990's?
>

Something that has always been interesting to me is that the
smiley ( :) ) is in some sense a humor equalizer.  That is,
everyone does the smiley in about the same way.  It is hard to
misunderstand a smiley, whereas, more complicated facial and
speech behaviors can be easily misinterpreted.

In some ways this is related to compact disc technology.  By
digitizing the sound, we can eliminate the background noise.
I wonder if an advantage of the smiley is that it helps
to reduce the noise that is inherent in any human conversation.

--Doug Shackelford
shackelf@cs.unc.edu    "When I drink alone, I prefer to be by myself"