Path: utzoo!attcan!cmtl01!matrox!uvm-gen!uunet!lll-winken!ames!oliveb!pyramid!octopus!avsd!childers
From: childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: psychology of computer use.
Message-ID: <424@avsd.UUCP>
Date: 26 Jan 89 00:25:55 GMT
References: <8901092247.AA05892@multimax.encore.com> <312@gloom.UUCP> <14616@oberon.USC.EDU> <5333@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <14656@oberon.USC.EDU> <6254@eagle.ukc.ac.uk>
Reply-To: childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers)
Organization: die Edelstahlratte
Lines: 82

In article <6254@eagle.ukc.ac.uk> pk2@ukc.ac.uk (Paola Kathuria) writes:

>In article <14656@oberon.USC.EDU> greenwoo@mizar.usc.edu (al greenwood) writes:

>>>[...] Computer Communications causes users to become more polarized.

I disagree. 

I think that much of what passes for human-to-human communication is on the
level of 'what's on TV tonight, honey ?' and 'wow, how much did you pay for
that rad new car' and 'what's your sign, I'm a Libra' - that is, noise in
place of signals. Idle chatter to keep from facing the awful void between the
ears that intrudes when one doesn't 'occupy' oneself.

If someone was so dedicated as to type up all of this so that we could read
our own words back, we would be nauseated at the lack of depth revealed.

But in order to keep people from thinking about what we say, we have learned
to enhance our speech with mannerisms ostensibly 'understood' to be clearly
associated with certain states of mind we wish to communicate.

Thus is it that people will offer the most incredible excuses for their lack
of thought ... because they are in the habit of covering it up with a facade
of muscular contortions approximating an apologetic smile or the like.

This doesn't work over the network. With email, you have to communicate solely
through abstract symbols, there is no other unofficial channel for influencing
the interpretation. People whom are thrown onto these relatively sparse
resources for the first time are in for an unpleasant learning period.

People whom are attempting to understand you have nothing but words to go on.
They are quite enough, used properly. If you are interested in communicating
yourself and another is interested in understanding your communications and
you both speak the same language, there is nothing to keep you apart.

If, au contraire, people whom are used to misusing - abusing - language in
order to *avoid* being understood encounter circumstances like these, there
is little they can do to avoid being what they want least - to be completely
understood, in depth and detail.

I'm not bashing art or emotion, understand. I'd hope nobody will make the
mistake of categorizing me as coldly intellectual. But those are separate
topics. I've never had any trouble expressing emotions with words, given the
necessary time and support from others. I'm bashing rhetoric, the supposed
effort to communicate emotion, usually at the expense of meaning, usually
disguised as thought.

>>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 ... ?

Common sense. It's hard to ignore your gut reactions ...

>is still a sizeable portion of just-okay people in the middle.  My feelings
>are that having done away with handwriting, fashion, looks, voice,
>mannerisms and even gender, all one is left with is the context and what
>is said to build up an idea of someone you are communicating with.

Indeed.

>Most importantly, I believe people are more honest over this medium
>because nothing will embarrass them but their own regret; there is no
>feedback unless someone purposefully replies (I'm comparing this with
>silences over the 'phone, a look that passes over the face).  Because
>of this I value it because it forces us to accept people for who
>they are inside rather than base any model on the conventional, and often 
>misleading, first physical appearance.

Indeed.

>---* Paola Kathuria       pk2@ukc.ac.uk   or   com0pk@cms1.leeds.ac.uk 
>... whose paradise is a bag of jam doughnuts and a can of squirty cream.

-- richard


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