Re: KP/Context

Katherine Brown (kbrown who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Wed, 13 Mar 1996 20:15:24 -0800 (PST)

I am picking up on the question of whether and how the wizard helps to
facillitate dfifferent kinds of interaction n the fifth dimension
that push toward collaboration.
If you think of the wizard role as one where some adult communicates
with children asking them about particular games, strategies, answering
their letters,, etc. the whole genre of "wiz writing", that is, writing
like the wiz, is something that one opicks up OC picks up by participating
in the research and implementation work around the fifth dimension
(as an undergraduate in the course, as a reseach assistant, as a person
who reads old wiz mail and figures out how the wizard is "different" from
traditional authroity figures, and tries to build on this tratdition
by using devices like homor, the alternation of gender pronouns in
self-reference, building mystery into the act of being the wizard while
trying to engage the chidld. THe wizard is also not always right, nor
is the wizard always wise. Having a slippery identity is very wizardly.
In terms of how the wizard can function at the level of supporting and mediating
adult-adult communication over electronic mail lists, the wiz has often put
in an appearance (under the avatars Proteo, Golem, VOlshebnik, Sunwiz, Maga,
Wizardedss) to mate metacommunicative commentary about the workings of
research, the obligations-outstanding that the wiz notices between collaborating
sites (e.g. Hey SanDIego, don't you owe us a fieldnote?) . THe wiz and the
use of the role of wiz is also a shadowy business a the t the elevel of adult-adult
communication. Often, people think they know who was impersonating the
wiz, and thus, whose agenda the wiz was fronting, and then they find out
that they wete wroneg. The wiz ins interested in two things mainly, seeing
information exchanged between and among collabotrating sitses, and helping
people in the system to be resoponsible to and helpful to weach other.
Otheres with experience of the wizard can and should chime in here....
perahap the s the wizard itself may make an appearance on xmca. THat would be
a miracle....
Katherine Brown
LCHC/UCSD
servant of the Wizard