Re: Of interest to at least some

Ana Marjanovic-Shane (anchi who-is-at geocities.com)
Mon, 20 Apr 1998 18:07:02 -0400

Eva,

This did get through!
I was wondering at the silence on XMCA and was already about to inquire what is
going on with my mail server. But your voice came like a nice ray of light...

Why are we doing all this?
I don't know about others. For me, I know that there is something very exciting
in reading and thinking and exchanging thoughts about "all this". I was
re-reading Yrjo's papers yesterday and I have so many things to ask and to say. I
was very sorry to have to go before I had a chance to talk to him.

And you are right it is an incredible experience to be in the same room with the
people whose written and silent voices we hear every day year after year...

The "Cultural-Historical Activity Theory Pre-session Institute" was a very
important meeting I think. I got so many ideas and questions and just to have a
chance to discuss all of it "in-vivo" was, at least, for me very stimulating.

I thank everyone who participated there in any form and I hope we will continue
this in some form. I will not come to Denmark this year to ISCRAT, so this was I
think one of the most important meetings this year for me.

I am listening for other voices again
Ana

Eva Ekeblad wrote:

> A lot of silence on the xmca...
>
> I think they had some procmail problem...
> ... and back home they put in a spam filter on the ped.gu.se SMTP...
> so I had to learn something, too
>
> Eva
> Re-sending:
>
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 16:15:55 +0200
> To: xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
> From: Eva Ekeblad <eekeblad who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
> Subject: Of interest to at least some
> Cc: eva.ekeblad who-is-at ped.gu.se
>
> At 11.52 -0400 98-04-16, Bill Barowy wrote:
> >"How long can a thread last on nothing?"
>
> The list has been kinda quiet after that... unless it is the ped.gu.se POP
> server playing selective tricks on my message reception. The Gothenburg
> SMTP server is plain refusing to send anything today, that's why I'm trying
> the weber path instead, a bit uncomfortably.
>
> Now, the xmca is usually pretty quiet when it's AERA time: a lot of the
> list population unplug from this cyberplace and go to meet face to face, in
> circumstances of noise, glaring light and/or oxygen deprivation. For me,
> who went to the "Cultural-Historical Activity Theory Pre-session Institute"
> Saturday-Monday and then participated very peripherally by hanging around
> illegitimately on a few sessions Monday and Thursday it was a pretty
> magical experience to see all these people who I have known for years
> through their written interactions materialize in the same room with me,
> being very recognizable, especially as soon as they got into talking.
> Convinced me even more of how the way(s) we perform ourselves in written
> interaction bears out in a different medium the way(s) we perform ourselves
> in the body and voice...
>
> The experience was very different from one I had last year, when I saw for
> the first time in fifteen years (in some cases twenty) the fifteen or so
> young women I went to art school with back in the late sixties-early
> seventies.
>
> THAT produced a strange oscillation between recognizing them from as they
> were THEN and relating to them as they were NOW: seeing in one moment these
> middleage women, with whom I was now exchanging the ToCs of some rich life
> experiences (as if they were new acquaintances) and seeing in the next
> moment these girlish faces and bodies I had known so well for four crucial
> years, but OH so worn by time and life... what has HAPPENED to us (while I
> was sleeping in the cave)??
>
> Going back and forth between the past and the present like this was very
> uncomfortable in the beginning of the afternoon, but as the evening went on
> the two takes eventually merged.
>
> Seeing the xpeople required much less adjustment, as cyberprojection merged
> into copresence.
>
> Now... the conference should also be written about, but I'm not too clear
> on what to say...
>
> Eugene, on lunch break, reminded me that I used to be the one to keep asking:
> Why are we doing this?
>
> And the whole thing (with notable input from Mary Bryson and Charles
> Bazerman) reminded me also that the question: Who are we doing this for?
> is even more important to ask.
>
> Eva
> wondering if this gets through

--
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| Ana Marjanovic-Shane               |
| 151 W. Tulpehocken St.             |
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| Phone: (215) 843-2909              |
| Fax  : (215) 843-2288              |
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| anchi who-is-at geocities.com                |
| http://www.geocities.com/~anchi/   |
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