sstone@weber.UCSD.EDU (Allucquere Rosanne Stone) (05/31/91)
WORLDS COLLIDE REDUX Allucquere Stone Chair, 2Cybercon Randy has raised a bunch of issues at the same time, without clearly identifying all of them, so I'm going to start off by listing the ones I see. I have no doubt that people are going to come right in behind me and list others, but these are the ones I want to mention first. First is the way Randy describes what he saw and heard at 2Cybercon, which was to divide up the talks into two groups--software engineers and literary critics. This is going to upset the anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, artists, and businesspeople who also presented at the conference. I think their invisibility is not accidental; it's built into the way Randy saw things, and it's important to what I have to say. I find Randy honestly puzzled, but I also think that the kind of analysis that he does in his letter points toward a part of the problem that he doesn't see. Put it this way: I don't think there were two worlds at 2Cybercon. There were many worlds, each with its own approach, each with its own way of speaking. But somehow, everything that wasn't software engineering looked like literary criticism. Why do you suppose this is? (You can tell I've got my back up, because I also presented about 10 minutes of my own stuff. It wasn't software engineering, but if there was literary criticism in it I'll eat the podium. :-) Now I'm just going to talk about software engineers and literary critics for a bit, leaving out the multiplicity of fields and professional languages that were spoken and that Randy either accidentally missed or chose not to see or report. My shtick, if I have one, is code-switching. So I speak most of the languages that were being spoken at 2Cybercon. Barbara Joans, who spoke last, specifically addressed one of the problems of groups that don't see each other equally well. My hit on what happened is similar to hers, pretty much, which is that the SEs jargon (and I include myself in that group) is transparent to SEs; and further, LCs (I'm in that group too) are not trained, as are SEs, to know how to say "Now I'm going to get technical". As a social scientist (yes, I'm also one of them) I see that cultivating jargon is important for any group in order to create group identity and cohesion. I also see that SEs and LCs have different ideas about how jargon works, what purposes it serves, and in particular how to deploy it. And from my vantage point, I would suggest that one of the things I might have done to improve communication was to have better explained to the LCs the extremely wide diversity of the attendees' backgrounds and disciplines, and to have suggested that they also be prepared with a kind of general-language version of their work, as I usually do with my own stuff no matter which jargon it's written in. But part of the problem rests with the SEs just as it does with the LCs, because SEs are so used to swimming in the heady waters of the SE community that communication is just so *easy*, and communicating ideas about computing and graphics is second-nature. This is very much like being a tourist in Mexico and just naturally assuming that people who interact with you are going to do it in English. Remember the "ugly American" and "why don't these natives learn to speak properly?" Let me say that another way: If you *really* want the advantages of interdisciplinary conversation--and I mean REAL interdisciplinary stuff, not just different segments of the same large field--then you are going to have to WORK at it. Because it is not easy. Star Trek to the contrary, talking across worlds is never easy. But if you put out the energy to meet people from *really* different worlds (and for the sake of this argument let's say I mean LCs) anywhere near halfway, you may discover that their ideas help after all. And by work I might mean for openers nothing more strenuous than asking "Could you explain that again, a bit more simply?" Speaking as a codeswitcher--someone who lives in those boundaries I keep writing about--I heard great stuff being said by both SEs and LCs. I also heard frustration. And I also heard arrogance...on the part of some LCs, who assumed that everybody understood them, and on the part of many SEs, who assumed that it was naturally the LCs' job to learn how to speak like "normal people"--which is to say, them. Are the SEs willing to meet the LCs halfway? How do you think worthwhile things are going to happen if BOTH sides don't learn something about the other's jargon? Why *didn't* the SEs use more technical language? Maybe what happened was that the people we are calling LCs were more willing to get seriously down and dirty, and more into the deeply technical side of what they do, than the SEs were. Maybe they expected more from the SEs. Maybe they took the SEs by surprise. And if so, why didn't the SEs take advantage of the moment and say "I don't understand a thing you said?" What was accomplished by not asking and going silently away? Maybe we all might have been enlightened by a little fast footwork on the part of some of the speakers in the general direction of codeswitching--that is, talking across disciplinary boundaries. I want to emphasize this again: There is really no middle ground of language in which everybody is equally intelligible to everybody else. The unhappy truth is that what looks like a middle ground to one person is somebody else's jargon. In this case it happens to be *our* jargon--fairly well-educated, mildly techie, and dare I add, white middle-class jargon. Which is why everybody else seems unintelligible...and why everybody else sounds like an LC. Put another way, if you aren't one of the faithful then you're an infidel. That's not meant to be nasty, just to point out that that's the way we all usually think. Okay, now listen up. This is your 1991 Chair speaking. I never promised you a rose garden. If you want the goodies, you have to work for them. All of this is new stuff to lots of us-- in particular having so many people from so many *really different* disciplines, with their own jargons, in one room. Randy suggests parallel sessions. Parallel sessions are a great idea, but intimacy and the kind of communication intimacy fosters are more important...to this particular conference. As a partial consequence that means that Cybercon is always going to be small, and again next year more people are going to want to come than we can fit in. That's part of Cybercon's charter, and it is not a decision we made lightly. An interdisciplinary committee is also a great idea. That's why we have a Program Committee. We had a Program Committee for 2Cybercon too. Michael Benedikt, in his reply here, mentioned something about how the committee works, but let me summarize it again. We had people from many disciplines, including several people who are active in the technical end of VR. They read every abstract, and on paper the abstracts looked interesting and challenging and presented no difficulties with language. The committee voted on each abstract, and the total vote determined which papers were presented. As with many things in the cyberspace business, things didn't turn out quite as we'd planned. With participants' reactions to 2Cybercon in mind, as well as our own perceptions of what worked and what didn't, the torch gets passed to the 1992 committee. The 1992 Program Committee has people on it from the industry, from research institutions, from universities; we even have a science fiction author. We have SEs *and* LCs *and* others. (You think you can do it better, eh, Randy? Where were you when I called for the 3Cybercon committee? You could be sweating at this very moment, just like the rest of us.:-)) And we are very interested in suggestions and feedback from the cyberspace community. But please remember that hindsight is always 20-20. We will make more mistakes, guaranteed. That's the fun and the challenge, as well as the pain, of breaking new ground. Next year's conference is not going to be a piece of cake. Good fun is not cheap. Cheap fun is not good. This will take REAL THOUGHT, folks. Editing for language will almost certainly not be enough, and if it is, there is probably something wrong. To reap the bennies of meeting people from widely diverging areas of expertise, widely different experiences, we have to be willing to stretch. That's one of the things that make Cybercon different. Let's get started. ------------------------------------------- That's it. p.s. I noticed William Bricken saying something about what "we" heard at 2Cybercon. That's pretty smarmy, for someone who wasn't there. Zots, Sandy --
galanter@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Philip Galanter) (06/01/91)
I am writing this as someone who was at CyberCon1, didn't apply for
CyberCon2, but looks forward to CyberCon3. There are a lot of things about
the way things are going with Cyberspace that bother me. It bothers me that
there is little discussion of the dangers and downside of Cyberspace. It
bothers me that there seems to be a prevailing "political correctness"
regarding Cyberspace. It bothers me that Cyberspace has been
commandeered by trendy would-be social reformers who didn't get it right
in the 60's, and have now succeeded in creating a PR cliche for the 90's.
But what would _really_ bother would be if we lost the chance for
artists, engineers, writers, anthropologists, etc. to interact with
and reach out to each other, each in their own way.
I understand physics, FFT's, acoustics, etc. but thats not the kind of
language I would choose to describe a great concert. If Cyberspace is to
encompass many forms of human experience, then discussions about Cyberspace
will require many disciplines each with its own language.
I don't see any easy way around this.
One suggestion...I understand the need to limit the number of active
participants, but couldn't there be a second tier of "listen-only"
and "written questions" attendees? I see a growing danger of elitism and
incestuous development with this conference...
Phil
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==============================================================================wex@pws.ma30.bull.com (Alan Wexelblat) (06/05/91)
Pardon me for jumping in late here. I haven't seen any of the preceding articles and Sandy doesn't directly quote other people, so I can only get her sense of what they said. First, some background: I've been at Cyberconf 1 & 2; I'm the book that resulted from the first conference and I'm on the program committee for the third one. (Does that mean I know anything at all? No, but it looks impressive as heck in print. :-) In article <1991May31.050056.10025@milton.u.washington.edu> sstone@weber. UCSD.EDU (Allucquere Rosanne Stone) writes: First is the way Randy describes what he saw and heard at 2Cybercon, which was to divide up the talks into two groups--software engineers and literary critics. This is going to upset the anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, artists, and businesspeople who also presented at the conference. An old joke: There are two kinds of people in the world, those who think the world can be divided into two kinds of people, and those who don't. I will let Randy speak for himself, but let me tell you why I tell people there were SE's and LC's there. The dividing line for me was text versus ideas. The SE's were those who wanted to talk about the ideas of cyberspace, inspired by Gibson's book or Kreuger's or something else. For us (and I freely admit to a bias well on the SE side), the important thing is that there is an interesting set of ideas here -- a way to see the world and maybe change it. The LCs on the other hand, were concerned wtih the text. Gibson's text was paramount. It was dissected, deconstructed, analyzed, taken as a metaphor, criticized, used as inspiration, etc. The important thing is that there is a literary text which can be compared to other texts, that projects a kind of future, that can inspire new ways of thinking, etc. [...] somehow, everything that wasn't software engineering looked like literary criticism. Why do you suppose this is? Because the LCs were constantly talking about Gibson and his text. Most of the SE talks didn't mention Gibson at all, let alone NEUROMANCER. My hit on what happened [...] is that the SEs jargon (and I include myself in that group) is transparent to SEs; I'm surprised to see you in our group, Sandy. I wouldn't have bet on that. Personalities aside, I think our jargon is, in a sense, more transparent. That's because we're on the techno bleeding edge and that edge has (in this century at least) had a disproportionate effect on the evolving language. How many people knew what a "hacker" was before Robert Morris hit the front pages? Or before the rise in BBS popularity. Nowadays, I bet you can stop 10 random people on the street of any major city and all will know the word (even if they have different definitions). But that's not to defend our (SE's) pig-headedness. See below... [...] explained to the LCs the extremely wide diversity of the attendees' backgrounds and disciplines, and to have suggested that they also be prepared with a kind of general-language version of their work [...] That might have helped. But I'm not sure it's possible. I have some LC background, and I know how hard a time I have explaining stuff like philosophy in non-technical terms. I have to do it all the time with computers (as, I suspect, do all SEs), so it's a bit easier. I think SEs are just more used to talking to general audiences. But part of the problem rests with the SEs just as it does with the LCs, because SEs are so used to swimming in the heady waters of the SE community that communication is just so *easy*, and communicating ideas about computing and graphics is second-nature. Truth. My opinion is that the LCs (and by this I mean all the non-techie types) made greater strides than the SEs at the conference in terms of putting up with our kind of talk. They went more than half-way, if you will. We SEs more or less sat in our own corner and expected the world to come to us. The other problem we have is that too few SEs can cross the line. Too few of us have LC background/training. There is a significant part of the LC community that has SE credentials (and more every day). And I also heard arrogance...on the part of some LCs, who assumed that everybody understood them, and on the part of many SEs, who assumed that it was naturally the LCs' job to learn how to speak like "normal people"--which is to say, them. Guilty as charged. I guess it comes from the society we live in. It rewards us SEs these days much more than the LCs, both in terms of money and prestige (and power, for that matter). We've got the world in the palm of our hand; it's a little hard not to feel like gods and goddesses. Now I'll make the most biased statement I can think of: from the extreme SE point of view, it looks like we're doing work which will shape the world for decades, both in personal and global terms. What are you doing that compares to that? Why should we pay attention? Even the Soc/Anthro people usually can only analyze in retrospect. It's rare that they can deal with modern culture in any way. Sandy is something of an exception. Why *didn't* the SEs use more technical language? Because we're used to getting called on the carpet for it. Plus, we want our stuff to be as widely understood and used as possible. I know LCs who are happy if they produce a paper that can only be understood by 1000 people in their particular specialty.
eliot@phoenix.princeton.edu (Eliot Handelman) (06/09/91)
In article <1991Jun6.150900.11787@milton.u.washington.edu> wex@pws.ma30.bull.com (Alan Wexelblat) writes: ; We've got the world in the palm of ;our hand; it's a little hard not to feel like gods and goddesses. Now I'll ;make the most biased statement I can think of: from the extreme SE point of ;view, it looks like we're doing work which will shape the world for decades, ;both in personal and global terms. What are you doing that compares to ;that? Why should we pay attention? Because everything is more fun with an intellectual pedigree.