taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (11/19/86)
This article is from <philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka> and was received on Tue Nov 18 13:42:44 1986 It has been widely noted that our society seems to be moving away from literacy, to a more voice and picture oriented way of doing things. Television and radio have replaced newspapers as most people's main source of news, and the phone call has replaced the letter as the communications medium of choice with those not immediately present. Computer networks provide one small area where the trend is currently in the other direction. The question which occurred to me the other day is, is this trend sufficient to eventually provide a genuine large-scale rebirth of literacy? Will nets as we know them ever reach a substantial fraction of the population? I am forced to conclude that the answer is no. The problem is one of the rate of technological development. I believe that within a a few decades, voice and graphics will take over in this arena, as well. This is not long enough for the networks as a written medium to become a really large factor, even assuming this would happen given enough time. So enjoy it while you can. The future promises new and different wonders. Frank Adams ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka Multimate International 52 Oakland Ave North E. Hartford, CT 06108
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (11/20/86)
This article is from seismo!isis!aburt@hplabs.HP.COM (Andrew Burt) and was received on Thu Nov 20 08:32:19 1986 >It has been widely noted that our society seems to be moving away from >literacy, to a more voice and picture oriented way of doing things. > >Computer networks provide one small area where the trend is currently in the >other direction. >Will nets as we know them ever reach a substantial fraction of >the population? Allow me to relate the preliminary results of an `experiment' currently underway here at the University of Denver. First, some background. In our department, which is a combined math and CS dept., we have about 25 people, most of whom can use a computer of some sort. Now, our structure is fairly loose, and often times the department doesn't react to problems until the situation reaches the crisis stage; at which time we hold numerous faculty meetings to discuss solutions. Nearly always these meetings follow this pattern: The chairman states what the problems are and what we need solutions for, then opens the floor to discussion. First person addresses one of the issues for a while. Second person addresses some side issues to what person 1 said (issues which are in themselves meaningful, of course, and need to be discussed, but which are not the main purpose of this meeting). Person 3 addresses tangential issues to person 2's points. Eventually we circle back to where we started, with little having been resolved but everybody feeling better because they aired their pet grievances. At that point we adjourn the meeting due to the lateness of the hour. Analysis. The problems with the meetings are that there are too many issues that need discussing but because of the scarcity of regular times to discuss things before the entire faculty, they don't get discussed. We certainly need stronger leadership during these meetings, but that is not, unfortunately, something that will change. The experiment. It struck me that a USENET newsgroup format would be the perfect vehicle for all these discussions that many people want to discuss, all of which can thus exist simultaneously. Messages with followups, etc. It would reach the entire faculty, without the pressure of running out of time. So I created a local newsgroup for us, made the directory permissions such that only faculty could read the messages, gave accounts on the system to the 15 or so people who didn't have them, distributed handouts on how to use the system effectively and what it was for, and posted some juicy articles to get their blood flowing. In short, it was a recreation of the meeting atmostphere on-line. I monitored .newsrcs. 5-10 people read it regularly. Three or so others have looked in occasionally. Nobody except me ever posted anything. I prodded the chairman to post a short note, hoping the "authority figure" would cause others to get involved. No go. Ten or so never even bothered to log in. Aha, I figured, they don't know if there's anything there for them to bother checking. So I rigged up a printer so that infrequent users received paper notices they had either mail or pending faculty news articles. That is, giving them a definite reason to log in and know it would not be for nothing. One more person got on. A discussion began among students that was germain to the faculty newsgroup, so I had them cross post their messages. 40 messages have to date been posted to the group. I remain the only faculty member to actually post anything. Some people came to me in person to discuss my positions, which are the same ones I espoused during faculty meetings, and their discussions were no riskier than what they would have said during such a meeting. Yet they would not post. I am considering closing this experiment, which has been going on now for three months. Thoughts on the matter. I talked with a few people about their inhibitions. The strongest case people made was that they didn't like typing in what they had to say. It was far easier to utter it aloud than it was to write it down. Admittedly, writing has a more permanent quality to it than speaking, yet these are all well-trained thinkers who should at least have the open-mindedness to try the system. After all it's the CS department! Relating this to the article saying that computer networks are the only sign of reversing the trend of more graphical and vocal communication, I maintain this is not so. Even in a CS department (and we're a decent department, content-wise) half the faculty are loath to write down their thoughts (let alone try a system different than the one they're most familiar with). This is basically a sad story for all of us. We the netusers realize the great power of the net, but until we change the mindset of the rest of world networks will never reach their true potential. -- Andrew Burt isis!aburt / aburt@isis.cs.du.edu
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (11/25/86)
This article is from hoptoad!laura@hplabs.HP.COM (Laura Creighton) and was received on Sat Nov 22 21:59:14 1986 Andrew Burt writes: >Allow me to relate the preliminary results of an `experiment' currently >underway here at the University of Denver. > >[text removed] > >Analysis. > >The problems with the meetings are that there are too many issues >that need discussing but because of the scarcity of regular times to >discuss things before the entire faculty, they don't get discussed. I think that your analysis may be wrong. My father is chief of his department, and here is what he has figured out about meetings. His meetings used to sound like yours. I am going to assume that the reason your meetings do not work are the same as the reasons why his used to not work, and work from there. If I am wrong in my analysis, though, all of this is irrelevant to you. The problem is not that there are too many issues. The problem is that too many people want to be heard. And they want to be heard because they want to show off in front of their friends and because they can't stand to not have the last word, and because they feel that they *have* to say something -- and the end result is that everybody yammers at meetings. Meetings are where people get together and yammer -- not where problems get solved. The problems get solved later, when somebody who really has a problem, gets really angry at the status quo, and goes off and fixes his problem and forces his solutions down everybody else's throats. Since this is hard work, the problems don't usually get solved much. When you gave the professors the chance to use a newsgroup, you shone a spotlight on your real problem -- the professors don't want to fix the problems, they want to yammer. And while there are those of us who yammer on the net all the time, net yammering is different from yammering in person. And both of these are different than problem solving. What you want to do is to get to the problem solving without the yammering -- right? There are lots of books which talk about how to hold a good meeting. So far, I have yet to be able to keep order in a meeting where people want to yammer -- and I have tried real hard. My father says that it is impossible, and that I should stop trying. He has been at it longer than I have, but I haven't given up yet. What he does it hold meetings to solve problems at very inconvenient times -- he has a meeting every morning at 7:30 am with somebody or somebodies. The only people who come to those meetings are people who really and truly care about the problem. All the people who don't really care all that much, but would come anyway to an 11:00 meetings are still in bed. This cuts down the amount of yammering drastically. And things get fixed. Laura Creighton ihnp4!hoptoad!laura toad@lll-crg.arpa
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (11/25/86)
This article is from allegra!ulysses!north@hplabs.HP.COM (Steve North) and was received on Fri Nov 21 21:17:30 1986 You ran the experiment but you don't understand the result. The key is this: computer networks bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. Students who are meek and mild manners flame wildly on the net. Meanwhile the chairman of the dept. or someone else that projects a Presence and knows how to control a meeting or read the look on his audience's faces is deprived of his position and non-verbal information. "The potential of the net" is a joke. It's mostly a lot of noise and a waste of time. I mean it's great to archive bug fixes from net.unix-wizards (bug fixes we would never just install in our kernel because we don't really know WHO these people are and if they know what they're doing anyway) but why choose a narrow-bandwidth, impoverished medium like glorified electronic mail when you can meet face to face? I've done my own experiments (accidentally). -- Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus!
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (11/25/86)
This article is from Alexander Dupuy <dupuy%amsterdam@columbia.edu> and was received on Tue Nov 25 08:54:15 1986 Steve North writes: > ... "The potential of the net" is a joke. It's mostly a lot of noise and a > waste of time. I mean it's great to archive bug fixes from net.unix-wizards > (bug fixes we would never just install in our kernel because we don't really > know WHO these people are and if they know what they're doing anyway) ... While there are certainly a lot of people on the net who don't know what they are doing (vis the "bugfix" last year to prevent cat from writing stdout), there are also a number of people with more experience and knowledge than most $200/hr consultants, people like Chris Torek, Henry Spencer, and Guy Harris (to name only a few), who provide advise and bugfixes to the net for free. After reading the net for a few months, names like these become familiar, and from the quality of their postings, their expertise becomes obvious. While I wouldn't install a kernel patch from them sight unseen (they are human, and can make honest mistakes; and they tend to run heavily modified kernels :-) I have found their postings far more useful and informative than the information which one can sometimes extract from so called "technical support" hotlines. @alex [it sounds like we're moving back into the information filtering discussion, with an emphasis on knowing the source of information. I think it would behoove us to approach the problem from that direction... -- Dave]
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (11/26/86)
This article is from sdcsvax!sdcc18.UCSD.EDU!ee161aba (David L. Smith) and was received on Tue Nov 25 23:15:52 1986 Steve North writes; >You ran the experiment but you don't understand the result. The key is this: >computer networks bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. >Students who are meek and mild manners flame wildly on the net. Meanwhile >the chairman of the dept. or someone else that projects a Presence and >knows how to control a meeting or read the look on his audience's faces is >deprived of his position and non-verbal information. "The potential of the >net" is a joke. It's mostly a lot of noise and a waste of time. Either you're being satirical (you forgot your smiley face then:-)) or you're missing the whole point. The reason this narrow bandwidth medium is better than a face-to-face meeting is *because* it brings everyone down to the same level. A silly idea shows up as a silly idea and people are less embarrassed about shooting down a silly article than to stand up in front of this great person and tell them to their face what a stupid idea it is. The computer screens us, hides our physical flaws and allows us to present our ideas for what they are worth. The only things we can be judged by are our ideas, our spelling and our grammar. Slow thinkers and fast thinkers are more normalized in a non-real-time discussion since an argument can be looked over, polished and even disgarded with non the wiser. Presence projecting is great. That's how we elect our politicians and look at the mess we're in now. Maybe we should make them post to the net (and no ghost keyboardists, either!) David L. Smith UC San Diego sdcsvax!sdcc18!ee161aba
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (12/02/86)
This article is from hplabs!well!hlr (Howard Rheingold) and was received on Wed Nov 26 12:12:23 1986 Steve North comments; >computer networks bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. >..a narrow-bandwidth, impoverished medium like glorified electronic mail >when you can meet face to face? There are instances in which one might choose to use a narrow-bandwidth bandwidth medium like glorified electronic mail, for precisely the reasons you cite as disadvantages: Sometimes it is valuable to allow the meek, mild, generally quiet members of the group to speak up, flammage and all. And sometimes it is valuable to keep the Chairman of the Department in his place, without blasting his Presence all over everybody. An interesting article by Sara Kiesler, sociologist at Carnegie-Mellon, appeared in the January-February issue of _Harvard Business Review_ on the subject of "The Hidden Messages of Computer Networks." Kiesler conducted some experiments and noted the differences in decision-making styles between face-to-face meetings and online meetings of the same groups of people. The object is to use an appropriate communication medium for the task at hand. A key sentence from Kiesler's article: "The real payoffs, as well as the social issues, will come from the way the technologies loosen up communication."
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (12/02/86)
This article is from seismo!mnetor!lsuc!dciem!msb@hplabs.HP.COM and was received on Mon Dec 1 10:16:33 1986 > The computer screens us, hides our physical flaws and allows us to present > our ideas for what they are worth. The only things we can be judged by are > our ideas, our spelling and our grammar. Our ideas and our *presentation*. The latter includes not only spelling and grammar but also composition and text format decisions. Mark Brader [a fine distinction, but important. Akin to the problem that a lot of people have with so-called `book club' editions of books - they are on cheaper paper and aren't smoothly cut after being bound (leaving the sheets slightly different widths) - when they say they aren't as "nice" as "real" books. The presentation is quite important... -- Dave]
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (12/02/86)
This article is from seismo!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka@hplabs.HP.COM and was received on Mon Dec 1 10:21:50 1986 Steve North writes; >computer networks bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator. >[...] the chairman of the dept. or someone else that projects a Presence and >knows how to control a meeting or read the look on his audience's faces is >deprived of his position and non-verbal information. This is a great oversimplification. The skills required to be effective in net discussions are different from those required for meetings, but they do exist. Skill in argumentation is valuable, more so than for face to face meetings where force of personality often outweighs force of argument. The lack of non-verbal information is offset by the potential to take more time to consider arguments, both one's own and those of others. Finally, it is simply not true that position is irrelevant. A net message from the head of the department is still identiable as from the head of the department, and receives correspondingly more weight. It is not surprizing that those who are skilled and experienced at running face to face meetings, and unskilled and inexperienced at running net discussions, should find face to face meetings more effective than net discussions; but this doesn't really prove anything. In any event, the net can do things which are not possible for face to face meetings. The maximum number of effective participants in a discussion is larger: about 20 vs. about 8. Net discussions can involve people for whom face to face meetings are not practical, because of distance. It is absurd to think that the net will ever supercede direct meetings; this does not mean that it is useless. p.s. re 7:30 meetings solving problems vs. 11:00 meetings filled with "yammering": I suspect this difference is due entirely to the number of people at the meetings, not to only those really concerned showing up. The "night people" in that department, for whom getting up for a 7:30 meeting is a real inconvenience, not a minor schedule adjustment, probably feel annoyed at being left out of the decision-making process -- and rightly so. Frank Adams ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka Multimate International 52 Oakland Ave North E. Hartford, CT 06108
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (12/05/86)
This article is from well!mandel@hplabs.HP.COM (Tom Mandel) and was received on Fri Dec 5 03:11:52 1986 On the matter of this [computer conferencing] being a narrow-bandwidth medium: It seems to me that while it is obviously true that this particular medium is relatively limited, it alone is not the issue. When considering matters of human communication, it makes more sense to look at all the available media together and then ask the question about "bandwidth." I would say that every new medium -- and especially two-way media -- *increases* the existing range and overall capabilities of human commmunications. Every single medium, even face-to-face (where power relationships can play a major role), has distinct advantages and limitations. Taken together, however, the communications environment is getting much richer, not narrower.
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (01/13/87)
This article is from Denny Page <hpfcla!dsndata!denny> and was received on Mon Jan 12 21:24:34 1987 In reply to Steve North's comment: > ... but why choose a narrow-bandwidth, impoverished medium like glorified > electronic mail when you can meet face to face? I think that the use of bandwidth here is very misleading. Electronic group discussions certainly do not fall under the category of 'narrow'. The electronic medium actually provides a very high potential bandwidth. This is one of it's great advantages over group meetings. Face to face, in a group, you can't comprehend and respond coherently when 2 people are talking to you at the same time. Not only is the potential bandwidth low, but the consumed bandwidth is very high. In an electronic group however, many persons can provide opinions and information, all at the same time, which you are free to work with at your leisure. Thus, the consumed bandwidth (both the group's and each individual's) is usually rather low. While others are composing responses to this, I will be doing a great many other things... Electronic discussions can also provide a much greater convince to the individuals within the group. At this moment, I am enjoying the sounds of Gustav Holst - The Planets. It helps me to think. I doubt however, that I would find the people in my office caring to listen to Holst during a software meeting. It's 2200 right now. I live in the boondocks. If Computers & Society were an 'in person' meeting, do you think that we could all decide on a time? On a location? On the music? :-) All this is not to say that personal meetings do not have purpose. They are indeed very useful, in that they provide a much better basis for personal relationships. They are enjoyable. When it comes to group efforts however, they aren't as efficient. Personal Presence (Seeing) is important. Viewing just doesn't get it. The Solarians failed to realize this. :-) Frank Adams continues the discussion by saying: > ... The lack of non-verbal information is offset by the potential to take > more time to consider arguments, both one's own and those of others. It also allows you time to cool off. :-)