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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: Re: Communications Systems for an Information Age
Message-ID: <1330@hplabsc.HP.COM>
Date: Fri, 20-Feb-87 13:39:27 EST
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Posted: Fri Feb 20 13:39:27 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Feb-87 16:37:49 EST
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I would like to respond to Sue Koch's recent posting on the Office of
Technology Assessment study on Communication Systems.

From what was posted I'm confused about the scope of the study, so some
of the comments below may not apply.  Specifically, is the study
limited to applications of technology to communication?

I have three points.  The first relates to human communication in
general, and the second two apply to items I didn't see in Sue's
outline.  Finally, I hope that OTA will solicit input from
non-technologically-oriented people, since these systems affect them
greatly without much choice on their parts and there are issues
of class and discrimination that they're on the receiving end of.

First, I saw no mention of basic research on how humans communicate
in the first place, with no reference to computers and technology.  By
this I don't mean the *forms*, as Sue listed, but rather the content.

An example:  I've become aware that throughout much of history, human
interactions have been largely value-neutral or negative.  A neutral
interaction might be a transaction in a store.  But people don't tend
to communicate positively - appreciation, constructive criticism,
active listening, etc.  Rather, we tend to get feedback when we've
screwed up, no feedback when we're doing OK, and that feedback is often
a judgement of our worth as people, not a statement that the listener
didn't like our behavior.  Examples of what I consider negative
communication are straight criticism, arguments instead of discussions
(and on the net, flaming), office gossip, many parent-child interactions,
and so forth.

I think the fact that so much interaction is value-laden affects how we
are as people and affects our self-esteem and from there, our behavior,
dramatically.  From it derives aphorisms and behavior that have a
profound effect on our national and personal identities - the example
that comes to mind is, "It's only illegal if you get caught".  Some
people, groups, and philosophies are trying to change this and train
people to communicate positively, but they aren't technologically
oriented and are likely to be missed in any study that focuses on
technology.  And I think that this positive/negative split has
important implications for our future as a nation.

I also hope that the study won't ignore human history - we have much to
learn from the past that is so often overlooked.

My second point is that the outline as Sue presented it contains no
recognition of unwritten communication at all, other than the
telephone.  Body language is said to comprise up to 90% of the content
of an interaction and it is completely lost in any remote interaction
(email, telephone...).

Thirdly, how does the volume of communication affect the quality of
life?  I think it lessens it.  As we have to cope with more
information, more communication transactions, we have to pigeonhole
faster.  When our pigeonholing is of people, those people's lives can
be affected in a major way.  The classic example is in special
education - a person who is categorized as a slow learner tends to
*become* a slow learner.

I hope that the sponsorship of the study by the OTA does not mean that
the human aspects of communication will be ignored in favor of the
technological aspects.  Communication systems are *mostly*
non-technological - the technology is really just the medium and
there's so much more to such systems!  Also, most communication will
continue to occur without respect to technology, even in an information
age.

I also hope that some comparative cross-cultural work will be done -
how we communicate in this country may or may not bear any similarity
to how it's done in other cultures.  For that matter, how people with
access to technology communicate may bear little relation to how it's
done in other classes in our own society.

Barbara Zanzig
{major backbone sites}!tektronix!tekecs!packrat!barbaraz
barbaraz@packrat.gwd.tek.com