Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!decvax!decwrl!hplabs!hplabsc!taylor
From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: Re: Communications Systems for an Information Age
Message-ID: <1331@hplabsc.HP.COM>
Date: Fri, 20-Feb-87 13:43:57 EST
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.1331
Posted: Fri Feb 20 13:43:57 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Feb-87 16:38:01 EST
References: <1290@hplabsc.HP.COM>
Sender: taylor@hplabsc.HP.COM
Distribution: world
Organization: UW/NW VLSI Consortium, University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 37
Approved: taylor@hplabs

I would like to make a few comments which touch on Sue's interests, 
but do not address any of the "real" issues which she is more probably 
interested in.

First of all, I (and many people just like me) do not consider that 
communication is a very good description of what goes on with most
communication activities on this planet.  Take for example the popularity
of "flaming" on the net, oftentimes personal attacks, and usually 
communications of ideas in contrast, but rarely with the impetus towards
teaching and helping to reach common consensus of idea through assuaging
of thought.  You find extremely sparse instance in any realm of 
communication wherein the singular idea is met to develop and attain a
polarity which is fully comprehensible.  Quite the opposite: people share
their own ideas, their own views, (or more often, borrowed ones), for
various reasons but seldom with a view to accomplishing a singular 
solution to problems and difficulties.  While I except the news in this 
regard, this very popular unilateral symptom of most discussion seems to 
be epidemic, but really has nothing to do with the means of communication, 
excepting in one instance, and this is my point, that the ground rules 
for communication in the "Information Age" are not set in sympathy with 
the doctrines of equality which the people should have observed, and to 
which all leaders should subscribe.    By this I mean that the first 
basis of all communication should adhere to the same goals of education, 
which by some doctrinare means observes a willingness not only to teach, 
but to serve.  

While it appears obvious that the full means, culturally and 
psychologically, available to achieve this  goal, are ensconced in the
mind/body of the "system" (as it were), there is a common and acceptable
level of mendacity characterizing all of our endeavors, which, I suspect,
harbors entirely different values and perhaps (I will not deny the possibility)
an entirely different psychology as well.  It would seem therefore that a
discussion of the means of communication and its reflection OF the
participants should focus constantly on the rules of communication as
they are understood by the participants, i.e. what is to be accomplished?

Tony Marriott