Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!sequent!crg5!szabo
From: szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo)
Newsgroups: comp.groupware
Subject: Re: "Emotions" in Group Software
Message-ID: <21017@crg5.UUCP>
Date: 23 Jan 91 20:12:43 GMT
References: <14533@uswat.UUCP> <20965@crg5.UUCP> <616@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca> <20995@crg5.UUCP> <4015@eastapps.East.Sun.COM>
Reply-To: szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo)
Organization: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc
Lines: 54

In article <4015@eastapps.East.Sun.COM> db@east.sun.com (David Brownell) writes:

>... 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.

I don't think I have ever worked in a situation where people did *not*
have personal and emotional stakes in the outcome.  It simply does not
follow, however, that communicating those emotions will increase the
quality of the technical outcome.  Furthermore, if one did need to
communicate emotions, the bandwidth of computer and even video 
communications is several orders of magnitude below face-to-face contact 
and spoken language, and personal contact will be much preferable to 
emotional groupware in nearly all instances.


>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. 

This assumes two things:

* That your definition of "progress" is in fact the correct one and
  that all you need to do is emotionally convince your fellows that
  you are right.
* That people with the correct technical solution are more emotionally
  convincing than those with the incorrect solution.

I see no relation, unless it is negative, between the ability to 
emotionally persuade and the correctness of one's technical solutions.
If the communication sticks to the technical task, instead of spending
brain and communications bandwidth on emotional persuasion, the technical
outcome will likely be superior.


>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 reach quite the opposite conclusion.  The "nuances" soak up bandwidth.
They do not contribute to the communication of the technical information
or resolution of the technical problems.  If emotional nuances and 
deciphering of the nuances are excluded, the technical solution will
be superior.  


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