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From: db@helium.East.Sun.COM (David Brownell)
Newsgroups: comp.groupware
Subject: "Emotions" in Group Software
Message-ID: <4015@eastapps.East.Sun.COM>
Date: 22 Jan 91 20:35:36 GMT
References: <14533@uswat.UUCP> <20965@crg5.UUCP> <616@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca> <20995@crg5.UUCP>
Sender: news@East.Sun.COM
Reply-To: db@east.sun.com (David Brownell)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Billerica MA
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In article <20995@crg5.UUCP> szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes:

> Where the end product does not contain either emotions or sound/video
> -- the large majority of technical work -- groupware that communicates
> emotions, and for the most part sound/video capability, is not useful.

I think this captures the essence of why I disagree with Nick about the
role of "emotions" in the workplace.  Clearly, he's not worked in an
environment that's anything like those I've been in .  It's only a rare
minority of allegedly technical situations that don't have some person
who's got some personal/emotional stake in an outcome.

Those situations may not be pleasant, and it may piss the hell out of
me to need to deal with someone's fear of new ideas or their irrational
attachment to something that blocks progress in a direction I want to
move in ... but it's a lot better to know about those things and be able
to work with them than to not know about them and hence be unable to get
an acceptible outcome.  If our communication's been restricted to exclude
those important nuances, that might increase technical content, but
will (guaranteed!) reduce its overall effectiveness thereby.

I'd like to dedicate this new thread to discussions like how just because
people have chosen technical specialties says nothing about how truly
logical and rational they are ... or maybe about how it's critical to
design so-called "groupware" systems to facilitate real flesh-and-blood
people who are irrational and emotional and aren't about to change just
to make some bloody programmer happy!  (:-)

- Dave
One of the Million monkeys ... see, here's my keyboard!