ROPER_D@FARRAND.BITNET (Don Roper) (07/06/87)
Role of Telecommunications in Intellectual Dialogue and Social Change
Don Roper Dept of Economics Univ of Col
I would like to put forward some ideas about the importance
(or lack thereof) of telecomm in hopes of getting feedback from
others interested in the subject. A subtitle of this short essay
might be "I know why I'm here, why are others here?"
Many pundits believe that there is a social revolution
contained in the "home" computer -- a revolution that could be as
great as the one following the invention of offset printing. We
are now supposedly moving into the Information Age. I tend to
think that the info component of the revolution is exaggerated by
those who are enamoured by the hardware -- by the capacity of
storage and staggering baud rates. Many families have
encyclopedias on their shelves -- a fairly well organized source
of info -- which they don't often read. If we raise the
accessible info level from megabytes to gigabytes, is Joe Sixpack
going to avail himself of it? Speculators in commodity futures
lust after more info, but is that going to somehow raise social
consciousness? Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see
the revolution here.
But I do see a revolution in communication. "Information"
and "communication" are obviously related, but I think the
latter category provides a better focus. So what is the essence
or core of any communication revolution? Since I'm an academic,
I'm looking for an upgrading of intellectual dialogue. If one
compares telecomm with academic journals and books, what's the
difference? My current view, to which I'm interested in others'
reactions, is that the impact on intellectual output will come
from faster turnaround time in publishing.
Contrast the contents of wood pulp communication versus
verbal comm. By verbal comm I mean talking at a conference or
over the phone or over cocktails, etc. The wood pulp turnaround
time, especially in journals and books (I'll come back to
newspapers in a moment), causes behavior which is socially
unproductive even if privately rewarding. It causes, I think, a
defensive mode of communication. When communicating through wood
pulp, you must anticipate the readers reactions much like a chess
player must anticipate her opponents reactions several moves
ahead. With verbal comm you can take more risks because, if the
person misinterprets what you are saying, you can make immediate
corrective responses. The result of the defensive mode of comm
in wood pulp with long turnaround time is obscuity and convoluted
argument. Just think about the amount of info per unit of time
that you can get from an academic author if you talk to him
versus if you read his material. He might not want to take the
time to explain the whole article verbally, but the insights that
you can get in a few moments of conversation are typically much
greater than what you can glean from a few moments of reading the
article.
Well, how about newspapers? There we have rapid turnaround
time but the intellectual quality is usually inferior to books
and journals. The articles are certainly less obscure than books
and journals. I think of essays through telecomm as being much
like newspaper articles (similar turnaround time) but providing
retrival and storage that we don't have with newspapers. Once
retrieval is in place, think about the inducement to greater
editorial quality. Letters-to-the-editor peter out after a
couple of rounds because we can expect readers to have stored
back issues of the newspaper. If readers have easy access to
previous issues (as they do with social dialogue through
telecomm), newsspapers writers will have to be more careful to
join debate -- to speak to issues rather than sidesteping them.
In summary, I think we can have social dialogue that has
more intellectual con a few moments of conversation are typically muchat is less obscure and more supportive of risk taking than
what is found in academic journals and books. At least this is
the story that I tell myself about why I'm putting so much energy
into mastering this new technology. Why, other than the pure
enjoyment of playing with this new and rapidly changing
technology, are others here?haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU.ucsc.edu (99700000) (07/08/87)
There's an interesting article on this subject in the current (July) issue of Atlantic, talking about the Mitel system in France and its social results. [anyone read it and willing to summarize for us? -- Dave]