szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) (12/27/90)
In article <115@intrbas.UUCP> goutal@intrbas.uucp (Kenn Goutal) writes: > >I keep seeing this thesis -- people are more rude on the net than in >'real life' and that this is so because they don't have to physically >face the people to whom they write -- over and over again. About once >a year somebody writes an article about it in /Newsweek/ or /WSJ/ or >someplace, and they usually quote some scholarly work such as the one >your colleague wrote. > >I have been on the net since pretty nearly the beginning, and I don't buy it. >I certainly agree that there are rude people on the net. >What I don't buy is that it's peculiar to the net. I agree. It is a splendid spectacle, these psychologists telling Oprah and the world about how electronic communications cause "abnormal behavior" (with the implication that it is subtly harmful, like VDT radiation :-) Their definition of "normal", of course, comes from their limited world of studying face-to-face relationships. I propose that these folks have been too busy watching TV, with its emotionally soothing violins and laugh tracks, and haven't cracked open enough good books. They don't realize that people have been flaming, insulting, and otherwise embarrassing each other with the written word for thousands of years, and that most of our culture is based on this. Science was born with the written word. Galileo embarassed the Catholic Church by writing down what he saw in his telescope. Face-to-face, under the awesome emotional spectacle of the Pope, he recanted, denying what he had seen with his own eyes. But the printing press had been invented so it didn't matter. Scientists thereafter used primarily writing to communicate the truths of the world they had observed, regardless of who was offended. Many other cultural revolutions were stimulated by writing. Luther and Calvin flamed the Church and started printing native-language Bibles, thereby establishing Protestantism. Jefferson and Paine flamed King George, giving birth to the United States. Marx flamed capitalism (and I mean *flamed*, read the stuff!), winning over for a few years most of our planet to his viewpoint -- long after he was dead. Most recently, Salmon Rushdie flamed Islam, thereby obtaining a death warrant from the Ayatollah. The written word has been and continues to be a valuable means of expression-at-a-distance which can deliver information practically impossible to communicate in a face-to-face or video-channel encounter. Those who recoil at the written word, and insist on touchie-feelie, shallow communications, feel threatened now that e-mail and news have arisen to counter the trend towards sound and video. So sorry for sensitives. Sound and video often carry more emotional baggage than necessary (what net-literates refer to as a low signal-noise ratio). E-mail is becoming such an integral part of many organizations, due to its queueing and high information/bandwidth ratio, that written literacy, as opposed to the "body language literacy" popular in previous years, is now re-emerging as the predominant business skill. That puts psychologists out of business and writers back in business. Which is the way a healthy culture should work. -- Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com Embrace Change... Keep the Values... Hold Dear the Laughter...