rabbit@buster.ddmi.com (Dr. Roger Rabbit) (12/18/90)
In article <1990Dec16.113452.19023@wbgate.wb.com> ss@max.wb.com (Steven Spielberg) writes: >What hostility everyone exhibits here!! I was warned about this by >the computer-type that set this up for me. He explains the mail problem as >follows (I understand none of this because I'm not a hacker): > I know. This place has got to be the most dismal example of rudeness and inhmanity known to man. One of the problems with electronic communication is that you aren't looking the other person in the face and things that we take for granted like vocal intonation and facial expression just isn't there. A colleague of mine wrote his dissertation on just that topic. ("Behavioral Patterns in Electronic Relationships", PHd dissertation, A. Forkner, 1987, UCLA) I personally have been fascinated by the total removal of inhibitions to verbally abuse others that has been exhibited on USENET. USENET does have its many good attributes, but this is NOT one of them. I am firmly convinced the the government has the axe poised to kill it (at least the prevent it from being carried on the govt. funded NSFNet) and this kind of behavior does not help a bit. What scares me is the possibility that this kind of behavior will carry over into real life as more and more people become "tube literate". It would really be scary if we had a bunch of "Joe English"'s running around insulting people and starting riots and the like. >To the fellow who posts the episode credits - keep it up, and to >"Dr. Rabbit", call me at that number that I sent to you via e-mail >and we'll see about getting together. To the rest of you - Ciao. > Will do. (To the rest of the net: Sorry - he doesn't have an e-mail address yet). >Oh, and no one that I know has approached me and asked about USENET, so >the person who claims that I said that I didn't know anything about >USENET is fibbing. > Some people on the net are consummate liars - don't let it get you down. Take Care, R.A. Rabbit -- >>> BAN: Nuclear Power, US Intervention in South America, Toxic Waste >>> (Including dip) Trash Incinerators, Nuclear Weapons, Poverty, >>> Racism, Sexism, Specieism, etc... Write to: Toons for a Better World, >>> 2001 Yatza St., Toontown, CA 90128 E-MAIL: rabbit@buster.ddmi.com
goutal@intrbas.uucp (Kenn Goutal) (12/19/90)
<^_^> 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. There are rude people -- violently rude people -- everywhere. I find a lot of them on the highways, of course, where the conditions of relative anonymity and lack of accountability exist as cited w/r/t the net. But I also find them in stores, at work, in church, on the sidewalk, on the phone, ... I don't think you need to worry about the rude people on the net escaping into the real world and inciting riots etc. They already have! Or rather, more accurately, there are already people in the real world who are violently rude and incite riots or murder or whatever. I think that rudeness is more widespread, more widely tolerated, and more violent than it used to be. I don't necessarily mean over the sweep of history, but like in our lifetimes. There has always been murder, but people didn't routinely murder each other for throwing snowballs, as happens today. People didn't routinely yell "F--- you!!!" at each other on the sidewalk just for imagined slights. People said "hello" to each other on the streets, apologized for making mistakes, etc. Hard to say why this is true, of course. It's all very complicated. There are many factors that have cause this to become more true over time, and they all feed on each other. Increasing violence in the real world begets a market for it in the media, which in turn gives the impression that it is more tolerated, which in turn encourages more violence. That's just one little cycle. It's bound to spill over into the net. I think part of what happens is that people confuse cause and effect. They see that the net itself is new and the rudeness is new, and so when they get on the net for the first time, they think that the rudeness is unique to the net, and that something about the net causes it. I think it's just that we've all gotten used to it already in other parts of our lives, and don't notice it there. There is also a phenomenon of perceived density of violence that is inherent in mass media. It's true but less so for print media, especially in the old days when it took days or months for the printed word to make the rounds of the world. In the early days of electronic media, things still often took the time of a plane trip to get from one part of the globe to another. Nowadays, the entire violence of the planet is concentrated by high bandwidth and fast transmission such that each one of us experiences the whole planet's violence as if it were our own. Yah, yah, of course I'm not *literally* being carbombed in Beirut, or hustled off to Siberia, or starved in Ethiopia, or held hostage in any one of a zillion middle-eastern countries. But I'm *near* it! I hear about -- see, in living color and full motion -- all these things that formerly I had to live near just to hear about. So it is with the net. It used to be we only had to put up with the rudeness generated by the few letters we exchanged with friends, or maybe the occasional graffitus along the side of the road on a rock, or among the people with whom we interacted at the store or wherever. Now we jump on the net, and suddenly we are receiving communications from a much larger community of people, with the requisite percentage of them that are rude. And rudeness often expresses itself in speaking when politeness expresses itself in remaining quiet. So, necessarily, a higher percentage of what we see on the net is indeed rude. This is not to say that the dynamics of the net does not, of itself, induce some certain about of rudeness that would otherwise remain unexpressed. But I'd figure on that factor accounting for maybe less than 5%, more like 1%, of the rudeness that people attribute to the net. -- Kenn Goutal Interbase Software Corporation 209 Burlington Road Bedford MA 01730 617.275.3222 ...!linus!intrbas!kenn ...!uunet!intrbas!kenn
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (12/19/90)
> Real technical discussions again instead of net political BS; will > wonders never cease! I spoke too soon. I'll try again in a month. ;-( Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew) (12/19/90)
rabbit@buster.ddmi.com (Dr. Roger Rabbit) writes: > In article <1990Dec16.113452.19023@wbgate.wb.com> ss@max.wb.com > (Steven Spielberg, supposedly) writes: > >What hostility everyone exhibits here!! I was warned about this by > >the computer-type that set this up for me. He explains the mail problem as > >follows (I understand none of this because I'm not a hacker): > > I know. This place has got to be the most dismal example of rudeness and > inhmanity known to man. One of the problems with electronic communication > is that you aren't looking the other person in the face and things that > we take for granted like vocal intonation and facial expression just > isn't there. [...] > > I personally have been fascinated by the total removal of inhibitions > to verbally abuse others that has been exhibited on USENET. [...] It's not purely a Usenet phenomenon; it's a problem encountered on many bulletin boards. I know a number of people who have a Jekyll-and-Hyde existence; in real life, they are polite and friendly (even a little shy), but on bulletin boards they are opinionated, intolerant and frequently rude. I've talked to such people, and they often say that they have difficulty visualizing that they are interacting with a real person. Question: What can we do to solve the problem? Has anyone researched solutions? One possibility which springs to mind is that the discussion software should display a picture of the author alongside each reply. Would people find it easier to 'connect' if given such a visual cue? Another possibility is that the problem is one of mindsets. My first introduction to electronic discussion systems was at the age of twelve, when I started writing one :-) It did get used a little, and was a great place for me to try out ideas... Perhaps those who are introduced to Usenet (and similar systems) at an early age will adjust to it more readily, in the same way that younger people are more able to adjust to the tones of electronic music whilst older listeners dislike them because they are so unfamiliar. Maybe sociopathic behaviour on Usenet will peak and then diminish as new generations of users arrive. > I am firmly > convinced the the government has the axe poised to kill it (at least the > prevent it from being carried on the govt. funded NSFNet) and this kind > of behavior does not help a bit. Imminent death of the net predicted! Panic panic panic! :-) > What scares me is the possibility that > this kind of behavior will carry over into real life as more and more > people become "tube literate". It would really be scary if we had a > bunch of "Joe English"'s running around insulting people and starting > riots and the like. Never been to New York? Er, seriously though, I think it's more likely that real life will start to impinge upon Usenet. Once the net is an everyday thing that people are comfortable using, their behaviour will (I think) begin to change for the better. > >To the fellow who posts the episode credits - keep it up, and to > >"Dr. Rabbit", call me at that number that I sent to you via e-mail > >and we'll see about getting together. To the rest of you - Ciao. Personally, I can't believe that the real Steven Spielberg would give up so easily, nor that he would be willing to dismiss thousands of net readers simply because a few people flamed him in an alt group. > >Oh, and no one that I know has approached me and asked about USENET, so > >the person who claims that I said that I didn't know anything about > >USENET is fibbing. > > Some people on the net are consummate liars - don't let it get you > down. Many people in real life are liars, too. Many people in real life are hostile and ill-mannered. That's not a good reason for trying to abandon real life. > Take Care, > R.A. Rabbit > >>> BAN: Nuclear Power, US Intervention in South America, Toxic Waste > >>> (Including dip) Trash Incinerators, Nuclear Weapons, Poverty, > >>> Racism, Sexism, Specieism, etc... Write to: Toons for a Better World, > >>> 2001 Yatza St., Toontown, CA 90128 E-MAIL: rabbit@buster.ddmi.com Yeah. Love the "Followup-To: misc.test" in the header. Tres amusant. mathew. -- Mantis Consultants, Unit 56, St. John's Innovation Centre, Cambridge. CB4 4WS. mathew@mantis.co.uk \\ "CP/M is to metric as cockroaches are to a Timex watch" ukc!ibmpcug!mantis!mathew -------------------\\ - booter@catnip.berkeley.ca.us
lee@rocksanne.uucp (Lee Moore) (12/21/90)
Xerox is pulling the plug on all non-technical mailing lists. Higher management
has decided that they cause trouble and that they take up too many resources.
That haven't offered any proof of the latter claim because the tools
to monitor our mail system doesn't exist. (The Xerox mail system
is very diffuse and hard to monitor.) The net may not be dieing here
but all the fun parts are.
Lee
not that Usenet is not widespread in Xerox and therefore is not covered
by this edict.
--
Lee Moore -- Xerox Webster Research Center -- +1 716 422 2496
UUCP: {allegra, cornell, decvax, rutgers}!rochester!rocksanne!lee
Arpa Internet: Moore.Wbst128@Xerox.Comszabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) (12/27/90)
In article <214@buster.ddmi.com> rabbit@buster.UUCP (Dr. Roger Rabbit) writes: >In article <1990Dec16.113452.19023@wbgate.wb.com> ss@max.wb.com (Steven Spielberg) writes: >>What hostility everyone exhibits here!! I was warned about this by >>the computer-type that set this up for me. He explains the mail problem as >>follows (I understand none of this because I'm not a hacker): >> > >I know. This place has got to be the most dismal example of rudeness and >inhmanity known to man. One of the problems with electronic communication >is that you aren't looking the other person in the face and things that >we take for granted like vocal intonation and facial expression just >isn't there. A colleague of mine wrote his dissertation on just that >topic. ("Behavioral Patterns in Electronic Relationships", PHd dissertation, >A. Forkner, 1987, UCLA) There is nothing new here. People have been writing letters since the post-Renassaince spread of literacy (and before). During some periods, writers went out of their way to say things like "your humble servant" to placate the reader if there was offense. At other times, people wrote flames and just expected that was what letters were like. Ever read Mark Twain's letters? I have never seen a flame on the net to match Mark Twain's. Ditto for Voltaire, Swift, Erasmus, and many other letter-writers who have added immensely to our culture. If anything, people on the net go out of their way to change phrasing and even drop whole subjects, to avoid offending people. This is even more true in the business arena, where e-mail is part of the everyday relationship. People who use the "Mark Twain mode" in e-mail have been known to be fired, demoted, etc. because they made the mistake of using an at-a-distance literary style to attack the guy in the next cubicle! :-) BTW, I am not referring merely to flaming, which is often harmless, but the distribution of any information which is embarassing to some of the readers. The latter often gets the writer in more trouble than flaming, in my experience. On the other hand, it is one of the biggest benefits of the net (and of the written word in general) to be able to state the truth even when it is embarassing. This is rarely done face-to-face. >I personally have been fascinated by the total removal of inhibitions >to verbally abuse others that has been exhibited on USENET. I have been fascinated by the opposite -- that in some newsgroups cliques form in which the people personally know each other, and are thereby less likely to flame or even politely disagree with each other, while still flaming those they have not met. Because news does not communicate much emotion (unless one is a *very* skilled writer), a night at the pub is worth much more than pages of news articles in forming and cementing a relationship. "A beer is worth a thousand words" (you heard it here first! ;-) >USENET does >have its many good attributes, but this is NOT one of them. I humbly disagree. I think it is a wonderful thing to have a forum where people can "attack at a distance" without all the emotional baggage and posturing that goes along with a face-to-face conversation. The truth is often embarassing, and the net is often the only place to tell it. >I am firmly >convinced the the government has the axe poised to kill it (at least the >prevent it from being carried on the govt. funded NSFNet) and this kind >of behavior does not help a bit. What scares me is the possibility that >this kind of behavior will carry over into real life as more and more >people become "tube literate". It would really be scary if we had a >bunch of "Joe English"'s running around insulting people and starting >riots and the like. IMHO, the emotional manipulations of TV "sound bites" do a lot more to encourage irrational opinions and rioting than the net. The net has the potential of bringing people with wildly different points of view, all over the world, into at least a modicum of mutual intellectual understanding. -- Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com Embrace Change... Keep the Values... Hold Dear the Laughter...
dgil@pa.reuter.COM (Dave Gillett) (01/04/91)
In <20812@crg5.UUCP> szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes: >There is nothing new here. People have been writing letters since >the post-Renassaince spread of literacy (and before). During some >periods, writers went out of their way to say things like "your humble >servant" to placate the reader if there was offense. At other times, >people wrote flames and just expected that was what letters were like. One of the first major uses of the printing press, in Europe, was a massive flame war between Luther and his friends and various Catholic theologians. Flame wars are at least as old as print, and are probably a necessary side-effect of literacy. (Literacy is, of course, virtually a prerequisite for democracy. The poster that Nick was responding to commented about rumours of a government move to kill the net, and this would be entirely in keeping with the general assault on literacy being waged by the government and its backers.... Follow-ups to alt.conspiracy?) Dave