Re: dissent e-community/Dichotomous thinking

Gary Shank (shank who-is-at mail.cc.duq.edu)
Thu, 15 Jan 1998 08:51:24 +0300

You might want to take a look at my multiloguing paper from EJVC in 1993.
you can find a copy at my informal web page at

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5260

gary

shank who-is-at duq.edu

>> I agree with Francoise's point that right now, until we ("we")
>>create more descripitve terms, analysis of CMCommunities vs.
>>F2F communities is stuck in _oralcy-literacy_ dichotomies. As for
>>myself,
>>I wish to toss in my hat against these terms for CMC, as it would, it
>>seems
>>to me, quickly devolve CMC into a branch of deconstructionism. Rather,
>>there is a significant oral component to CMC (witness, all the
>>"laughing"
>>online) which the oral/literate dichotomy cannot explain.
>>
>>D S Hendler
>
>Aha!! Another gratuitous dichotomy! Not only that, a left-over
>dichotomy that didn't even work very well when it was formulated! Now
>that telecommunications are here, it has even less relevancy.
>
>I very much agree with D.S. On-line communities and communications are a
>whole different breed, if not species, and the only serious way I can see
>to research them is to start with old-fashioned "natural history" style
>observation without trying to impose previous categories.
>
>Now that I think of it, my own post of a few days back about how to
>operate in an e-community grew out of just such a confusion. I had split
>things up into "oral" and "written" and was trying to figure out which
>category xmca is in, when the obvious answer is, "neither." Trying to
>define it by saying what it isn't, is not going to work either because it
>still involves referencing the old categories.
>
>This reminds me of one of those awful positions in chess where all your
>important pieces are pinned and you have nothing and nowhere to move.
>Short of dumping the chess board on the floor (called the "Ebert defense"
>where I come from, after one of its most emotional proponents) how do we
>get out of this impasse?
>
>Rachel Heckert

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omnis mundi creatura
quasi liber et pictura
nobis est, in speculum,
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