EDSTROM@UNCAEDU.BITNET (03/10/87)
An observation and a question - OBSERVATION: I have been involved in setting up an electronic bulletin board dedicated to animation and film. The facility is connected to DATAPAC an we pick up the charge so it is free. I had expected that a lot of people would have been interested in using it. Instead, although when directly asked about the concept people seem favorably impressed or even eager, hardly anyone uses it. Access to terminals and modems is not the primary problem here. Even those with the hardware have been reluctant to participate. Looking at the situation from my current perspective I notice that there is not much involvement by artists and people with arts backgrounds in electronic communications in general. For example, there are no real arts forums on COMPUSERVE or BIX and the content of local bulletin boards is heavily slanted towards computer science students/grads and miscellaneous hackers. The only class of user that approaches an artist is the computer graphics type who, quite often, has entered the field from an engineering path. A re-questioning of the bulletin board's prospective users suggests that they are shy, intimidated by or scared of the technology. This seems to go beyond a fear of looking silly with an unfamiliar tool because some of the people would be comfortable with and willing to try an unfamiliar but conventional medium but seem unwilling to touch a computer. There seems to be an irrational element in all of this. Not only do they not object to the concept they seem to agree that its a good idea but they simply do not use it. QUESTION: I have no formal training in communications, my training has been in the biological sciences. I don't quite know how to deal with this situation. I think that the film and animation community can benefit form the use of such a free service but I don't want to crack skulls and twist arms to force people to use something they don't want. I suspect that if they tried it they'd like it. 1) Is this exclusion or alienation of artists from electronic communications a real phenomenon or is it only my imagination or limited experience? 2) If it is real or imagined, is there some way to encourage potential users without brow-beating them? I'd appreciate any help with this problem.
eugene@ames-pioneer.arpa (Eugene Miya N.) (03/10/87)
>Looking at the situation from my current perspective I notice that there is not >much involvement by artists and people with arts backgrounds in electronic >communications in general. ... >I suspect that if they tried it they'd like it. You might think this, but try to imagine the case where they did not. This topic was discussed two years ago in the human-nets-digest (which since appears to have died). At that time I was living with a daughter of two artists. Her father is the art chairman at Claremont and her mother is a distinguished artist in her own right. There are certainly some performance artists like Laurie Anderson who use computers, but you should see her film "Home of the Brave." The artistic community does not think as scientists and engineers do. The basic values they have differ considerably, but they they might use some of the same technological means toward their ends: self-expression. Yes, many are Extremely fearful of our technology (part of the expression in "Home"). Others adopt the technology wholeheartedly (my near in-laws would call the "Commercial Artists" ;-). Much of the artistic community wants to defie labelling and categorization (part of the harm of modern science). Just when you think you understand some people art, they purposefully dodge and change their opinions. This is their way. Well, what can you do? Well, not much right now. Teleconferencing and mail systems are too crude for some of the visual arts. Many artists are NOT verbal people, flaming would only force them further into burrows and Hobbit holes. If you could add visual and audio media this would be a start (Imagine Picasso using RCS to save "Girl before a Mirror?"). You can certainly show ACM/SIGGRAPH slides and video tapes, but this is the commercial art world and strictly visual (like MTV). You can let them play with things like Macs (also helpful, but not enough). By all means, do not brow-beat. It only reinforces some of their negative views of technology. Play it by ear. Don't force the particular use of an application, I saw Scott Kim do some fun things with applications beyond what was intended (in terms of animation). --eugene miya Bay Area ACM/SIGGRAPH
kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Kent Paul Dolan) (03/16/87)
I saw this work, by making a presentation for a high school art enrichment class, a group of people with whom I normally couldn't communicate much at all, being a math major with no art talent. Two friends and I set the class down with three Amiga 1000's, showed them how to get started, then set them loose with Deluxe Paint. Kids that had never touched a computer before were doing commercial quality work (some of them ;-) within 40 minutes, and were unabashedly enthusiastic. So, I suggest getting the proper hardware and software tools to let them do what they know how to do (art) until they are comfortable touching a computer, then ...lure... them into trying your communications package once the initial "If I touch it, I'll break it" anxiety has been overcome. Only problem is ever getting your computers back, once they find out how nice it is to do art on them. ;-) Kent Paul Dolan
grover@potomac.dc.ads.com (Mark D. Grover) (03/16/87)
Some possible explanations (with absolutely no data to back them up) on
limited use of electronic communications by artists:
1) inexperience with equipment, as was hypothesized,
2) inexperience with written media (do scriptwriters react differently?),
3) inexperience reading electronically-authored compositions or
non-face-to-face communication in general,
4) lack of peer interest,
5) inadequacy of electronic media for describing graphical topics,
6) social prejudice against things/people electronic
7) inadequate productivity improvement (related to #1).
I find only explanation #5 directly related to the parties being artists.
Mark D. Grover Advanced Decision Systemslato@ihlpm.ATT.COM (Katherine A Lato) (03/19/87)
This is a well-known phenomena - documented in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" [by Robert Pirsig -- Dave] The above mentioned book examines the "fear, distaste, distrust, whatever" that some people have to using technology. I don't recall any concrete ideas for combating it, but the book is useful. I'd suggest an extremely easy tutorial that slowly shows the interesting things that can be done with the bulletin. It sounds like the people you want to hook with not be lured with logic, grab them with the fun and challenge (but make it non-threatening) Hope it helps. Katherine
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (03/24/87)
Kent Paul Dolan writes: >Two friends and I set the class down with three Amiga 1000's, showed them >how to get started, then set them loose with Deluxe Paint. Kids that had >never touched a computer before were doing commercial quality work (some of >them ;-) within 40 minutes, and were unabashedly enthusiastic. Funny you should bring this up. Nancy Blachman, my officemate, and several others just took some Mac's to a meeting to interest young girls in computers and other things hi tech (gross over simplification here), and they did not receive the same enthusiasm. This was in San Jose. Maybe it was their age, maybe something derived from those gender/sex difference studies, they don't know. It wasn't because the Macs were black and white, things like that. --eugene miya NASA Ames Research Center
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (03/24/87)
Katherine A Lato mentions "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" in a recent posting about how to get people to use communications systems... In my high school (Foxborough MA) the two "computer science" teachers lured teenagers into the computer classes by having them visit the computer room during their free study periods. They had single player and multiplayer computer games setup for them. Many students would willingly take the computer courses because they had been introduced to it as being fun. Some of them were rather disappointed later that computers can also mean frustrating work, but at least they can now form rational opinions about computers and what they represent. I have spent some years tutoring and advising people with technical and nontechnical backgrounds here at BU, at my high school, and at the various jobs I have held. It has never been my opinion that everyone should be a hacker, but I feel it is important that people should have some small exposure to the innards of computers in order to better appreciate the outtards (sic). The place to do this is in high school or even before, not in college. As a non medical major I have not been required to take Biology or any other lab science at BU. But I was required to take that sort of thing in high school so now I can read magazine articles about cancer, AIDS, and whatnot with a reasonable level of comprehension. The same philosophy should be applied to computer education. The average citizen does not need to know the specific differences between Emacs and XEDIT, but it would be nice if s/he at least knew the difference between an editor and a compiler. Just as I know the difference between a virus and a bacteria from 10th grade Biology. Computer education for children is making good progress. While it seems that computer illiteracy today is an insurmountable problem, the next 30 years will show a tremendous drop in "computer illiteracy", as the next generation of users (and software) matures.
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (03/26/87)
gordon@bu-cs.bu.edu writes: >Computer education for children is making good progress. While it seems >that computer illiteracy today is an insurmountable problem, the next >30 years will show a tremendous drop in "computer illiteracy", as the >next generation of users (and software) matures. I have two daughters, in sixth and ninth grades, and naturally I want to give them as good a head start as I can. I have an IBM PC at home, and they both can navigate through WordStar enough to write papers, short stories, notes for school, letters, etc. I was thinking of offering them a "summer school" course in more advanced computing. I'd planned on giving them an introduction to C, which I figured would go a long ways towards explaining the difference between an editor and a compiler... I'd be interested in any comments or suggestions on such a plan, especially any ideas on the "best" way to teach kids a language like C. (I had thought of teaching them BASIC, but heard that it could cause permanent brain damage...) I figured I'd try to build a spelling checker with them, which would teach something about databases, files, i/o, etc., and leave them with a tool that they could sorely use. Matthew McClure International Technology Development Corporation