Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!hlab
From: chalmers@europarc.xerox.com (Matthew Chalmers)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: CyberConf2: A reply
Message-ID: <1991Jun3.023847.4379@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 2 Jun 91 12:17:59 GMT
References: <1991May31.050056.10025@milton.u.washington.edu> <1991May31.
Sender: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu (Human Int. Technology Lab)
Organization: Rank Xerox EuroPARC, Cambridge, UK
Lines: 55
Approved: cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu



In article <1991May31.191915.1712@xanadu.com>, randy@xanadu.com (Randy 
Farmer -- A survivor of the Lost Patrol) writes:

> And let this message be a further invitation for
> more replies to this thread.  I am especially looking for replies from
> literary critics.
> 
> A. Stone and M. Benedict point out that I over-generalized my initial
> argument by breaking the conference into two groups: The software engineers
> and the literary critics.
> 
> I concede the point.  I did this on purpose, to avoid getting more
> specific about exactly which presentations fell into which category.  I
> found I was able to understand the presentations of everyone EXCEPT the
> literary critics. I understood the anthopologists, the artists, etc..
> 
> A. Stone says the software engineers are as bad at communicating clearly as
> everybody else. Again I agree, and thought I pointed this out in my original
> article.  If anyone cares to tell me how *my* presentation might be better
> understood, I'll gladly make changes. Is this true for the literary critic?

I came away from CyberConf2 equally bemused by many of the presentations by
(to carry on the acknowledged generalisation) the literary critics. I think
that the point should be made, though, that one of the sources of confusion
was the difference in presentational style between the two camps. In talking
with the 'social science types' here in EuroPARC it seemed that this
generalisation about the LCs might be true: they usually present papers as
opposed to doing presentations.

To clarify: it seemed to me at the time that the LCs would step up to the
lectern with a fistful of densely typed sheets, and would then read
the text of what was essentially their full paper. In contrast, the SEs would
step up with some comparatively brief slides and would then use these as a
rough guide as to what they wanted to say. It seemed as if the LCs read out
texts which they actually expected the audience to read for themselves at some
later date, whereas the SEs described the work which might also be covered in 
more detail in a paper somewhere and sometime.  I suppose this reflects the
different levels of esteem for (and centrality of) deftness of language use
in the two fields. Each camp also tended to refer to its own
bodies of basic work, bibliographies and 'personal bibles': just babble
to the other camp, of course.

Maybe this situation will diminish as the amount of work presented to mixed
audiences (such as that at CC2) increases, and more lastingly, as the amount
of work *published* within a wider - but still mixed - audience increases.
Still, the culture gap was obvious, and I really don't know whether it might
ultimately be bridged. I hope it will before the SEs slope off towards CHI,
CSCW and SIGGRAPH, and the LCs slope off towards Chiba (wherever the hell that
really is).

Regards,

--Matthew