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From: greenwoo@mizar.usc.edu (al greenwood)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: psychology of computer use.
Message-ID: <14656@oberon.USC.EDU>
Date: 13 Jan 89 03:12:57 GMT
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Reply-To: greenwoo@mizar.usc.edu (al greenwood)
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
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>  That is, Computer Communications causes users to become more
>polarized.  If you disagree with someone, it will be more violent over 
>computer channels than in person, and if you agree with someone you will
>more quickly become confidants.  Computer communications, be it real-time or
>e-mail, lacks the dampers that society has imposed in most other forms of
>communications.  This has lead to such extremes as the flame-wars we are all
>familiar with to a friend of mine who recieved a dozen long-stemmed roses from
>a gentleman she met via BITNET' Chat the day after they met.
>

Oh most definitely, I have strong reservations about that "one" study, and am
planning to run one that demonstrates the above interactions. (sometime...)
The question is what is causing this lack of inhibition.. lack of sight,        anonymity, a form of deindividuation..  Are these dampers something outside of 
us that the computer will not transmit... or are they internal rules for
our interactions which we for some reason ignore or dont apply to the computer.

A friend suggested that the tenuous link with reality that computer comm. has
contributes to this. (I mean where exactly is this conference located, and how
we imagine others to be...) Nobody imposes rules on a fantasy..