T3B@psuvm.BITNET (08/18/85)
Are there others who would find a newsgroup for human communication issues
useful? I am a professor of Speech Communication at Penn State, trying to
build networks of communication scholars and also link them with workers in
computer (e.g., man-machine) science. Specifically, I would expect the new
group to serve as a forum for the following areas:
(1) Forum for general discussion of human communication.
(2) Newsgroup for human communication scholars (more on this below).
(3) Area where human communication scholars could correspond with those
interested in technologies of human communication. This could be esp.
useful, since a lot of computer communication technology seems to be
proceeding without tapping in to what's know about human communication
from my discipline.
The traditional sub-areas in my field (variously called speech, speech
communication, and communication) include, among others:
Rhetoric Public Speaking Small Group Communication
Language Political Comm. Radio-TV-Film
Small Group Communication Organizational Communication
Oral Interpretation Communication Theory
Drama Speech Science Communication Disorders
These areas and others are studied by both "humanistic" and "social
scientific" methods, and to some extent "natural science" methods.
At this point, there appear to be few members of my discipline with access
to uucp, arpa, or bitnet, but the number is growing, and if the newsgroup
is established it will help me to motivate my colleagues to get on the wagon.
I am convinced from reading both the technical newsgroups and the discussions
of personal and network issues that scholars with training in the history and
human uses of communication can make a real contribution to the areas of
personal and professional interest shared by those already on the net.
If the group succeeds, it could spawn subgroups either for the sub-fields
of communication studies, or to put the matters of professional interest
apart from the general discussion of human communication. To avoid the
confusion of abbreviations, I propose the simple title net.communication
(no 's' at the end, please, since in my area that divides the field of
communication study from the study of its technologies ((though, granted,
not everyone in my field agrees on that, either: cf Annenberg School of
Communications, but UMass Department of Communication))).
-- Tom Benson
{akgua,allegra,ihnp4,cbosgd}!psuvax1!psuvm.bitnet!t3b (UUCP)
T3B@PSUVM (BITNET) 76044,3701 (COMPUSERVE)