Fwd: Re(2): Rules not to call me a dummy

From: Martin Owen (mowen@rem.bangor.ac.uk)
Date: Thu Feb 24 2000 - 12:19:50 PST


The development of electronic spaces for the creation of meaning is a
non-trivial activity.

A list space is possibly one of the simplest. This in a sense is its joy.
It is part of your regular flow of email traffic and is managed and used
in the same way as regular email. You require lttle work in managing the
technical process in which list mail gets to you or in the way you can
contribute to list mail.

However it is also its weakness. Messages on lists are technologically
undiscriminated. Whatever genre you are using, it is encapsulated in the
same form of electronic environment. If you are being social, political,
academic, playful, serious... they are all in the same message stream. In
the social creation of knowledge and understanding it is likely we need
these mulifaceted genres in helping us come to know each other and the
messages we are trying to put forward.

In face to face environments we naturally adopt different genres in
different environments with the same people. The seminar room and the
coffee lounge provoke different responses. In a list the arrangement of
furniture and the walls reamin the same irrespective of the kind of
message that is being created.

This puts particular strain on this mediation system. Irony, for instance,
is partcularly hard to use on lists... because if I use irony, your
ingnorance and me and the context in which I am using irony may be lost...
you may easily take me literally. Sarcasm, doubly so.

This is especially the case in the use of the word "dummies" in an
electronic context. The word was chosen for a series of titles designed to
provide overviews of specific software (and later hardware) items. The
publications are, if anything, not for the cognitively challengend as they
are often terse executive summaries for those with a high level of assumed
knoweldge who rapidly need to get up to speed on some issue where they may
not have time for an exhaustive literature review and study. The title was
deliberately chosen for humorous irony. If you are not in on that secret
then buying "XML for Dummies" may be a big mistake.

Nevertheless a list is an effective tool for communication between
individuals who need to talk on issues of common interest. How do we cope?
 If in "the social creation of knowledge and understanding it is likely
we need these mulifaceted genres" we must expect there to be messages
which are relatively social in nature alongside the closely argued
academic essay. The nature of the human behind those messages is essential
to the process of coming to know (Y/N? discuss).

There are varities of technologies, mediation and moderation systems that
can now be used in the computer mediated co-construction of knowledge. The
possibility of designing specific technologies optimised for different
kinds of discourse is with us. To what extent these new technologies are
subconciously applying rules through the perceived affordances of the
system make it more likely we act in one way rather than another is an
interesting question which I think activity theory can help us address.

In the end we are talking about language and its infinite rich complexity.
And it can all be done on a list.

It requires tollerance, patience and the ability to discriminate the
intention of the writer by the language they are using. I feel we are, in
the main, capable of that.

Martin Owen



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