peterr (05/08/83)
Thank-you to all people who sent mail to me regarding the creation of a newsgroup to discuss issues involving psychology and computer science. I received 20 votes in favour and none opposed. Some interesting comments were made, and I hope the following summary does justice to them. Firstly, arizona!gary mentioned that net.psych might receive postings related to psychic phenomena and dciem!mmt felt that it might contain discussions of interpersonal psychology not directly related to computer science. Thus, a new name is needed, and net.cog-sci (Cognitive Science) seems to fit the bill, as cognitive science seems to be the field closest to the intersection of computer science and psychology. yale-comix!mwolf commented that cognitive science material should go in net.ai rather than net.psych; perhaps the name change will solve this problem. In any case, cognitive science is inter-disciplinary and once you let in another field, more will join, with the result that net.ai, net.philosophy, and net.cog-sci will overlap, but the first two have definite areas of concentration, reducing the problem somewhat. Secondly, several people mentioned specific issues to be covered: uw-beaver!mager: psychology of human interaction over networks ihnp4!pcl: university programmes in "CS and Psychology" ritcv!mjl: graphic design of programs, evaluation of pointing devices In summary, there is support and material for a newsgroup to discuss, as its description might read, "psychology and cognitive science applied to the design of non-AI computer systems". I'd be grateful if someone would create such a group and post a notice that it has been created to net.news.group. Thanks. peter rowley, U. Toronto CSRG, ...decvax!utzoo!utcsrgv!peterr P.S. Thanks go to utcsrgv!(willy,ralph,roderick,perelgut), mhb5b!gsp, uw-beaver!mager, qucis!browse, ihnp4!pcl, watmath!jamcmullan, ritcv!mjl, arizona!(gary,rogerh), utcsstat!grant, dciem!mmt, and yale-comix!(mwolf, feist,douglis,debenedi,rhunter) for their votes and comments.