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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: online/offline human behaviour
Message-ID: <348@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 27-Jun-86 18:33:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.348
Posted: Fri Jun 27 18:33:45 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Jun-86 08:24:46 EDT
Reply-To: hplabs!T3B%PSUVM.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Lines: 26
Approved: taylor@hplabs

so indicates that

  (a) the  research on this topic is
      published in very diverse places so nobody
      really knows where to track it down, and

  (b) academic stuff just doesn't get read very much (for
     understandable, if unfortunate, reasons).

  I'd just suggest that people interested in these and related
matters read, for a start, NETWORK NATION, by Roxanne Hiltz
and Murray Turoff -- published in 1978 by Addison-Wesley.
I have yet to read much in the following 8 years on this topic
that wasn't considered, in detail, with empirical
analysis, by Hiltz and Turoff.  Amazingly, even articles in
Harvard Business Review (the notorious recent article
by Sara Kiesler) don't show any recognition of all this prior
research, and talk about these issues as though they've been
discovered or invented for the first time.
We should continue to share our experiences -- they are real
and important --  but we should also do our homework a bit better to
take advantage of the considerable amount of prior study and
consideration of interpersonal aspects of computer-mediated
communication.

Ron Rice