Francoise Francoise Herrmann fherrmann who-is-at igc.org
http://www.wenet.net/`herrmann book
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interdependent forces were seen constantly at work to create and
sustain the existence of a virtual communicative space: technology
and language use. This chapter is an examination of the
relationship between these two forces; it is an examination of how
language use is constrained by the use of technology and
conversely, how technology is accommodated in creative uses of
language with both processes resulting in the creation of a
communicative space where language use and technology are no
longer the same as off-line. This description of a dialectic at
work is captured at the formal level of language use, that is in
the ways in which language is used to reduce ambiguities that a
virtual physical/time space can create at both being and doing
levels of activity.
The virtual space (Where and what is "there" here?)
When the X-lists were re-structured in May 1994 and the
technological system to support communication changed to a
Listserver program, the first message posted to the new
lists displayed the subject header "Anyone here??". This
message read: "Hi- This is my first message to the "new" xlist.
Who else is here? What topics are at the head of the list for
discussion? ". This first day, (May 5th, 1994), in the life of
the new lists, also prompted an unusually high flow of
communication (30 messages) and the expression of many different
conceptions of "here", the virtual space.
There was "here" as in "Somewhere up North..." inserted at
the Zip Code level of an address in Canada, in the
sign-off of a message. There was "here" as in "I'm here";
"here" as in "here in michigan"; and an impressionistic
"here" as in:
"Hello, anyone there? I'm here. These are interesting messages
from members if the previous lists. We are all generally at the
same places using the same machines. But our voices remind of
movies where space ships crash on other worlds and the crew
members check for others who survived. Or it reminds me of a WWII
parachute drop in the middle of the night where members of the
troop softly but intently ask if others made it to the drop zone.
The idea of Lotman's semiosphere applies here, perhaps. We have
changed our addresses but not our location or language. Our
initial messages to each other suggest that we have moved to
another location. We are distributing content and process in a new
sphere. Strangely the content and process of the past are archived
in semiosphere at a place named Weber with the address of
pub/list. In the future a person may enter this semiosphere and
interpret it. Well I'm here and this is interesting."
Finally, there was also "here" as in the subject header "a new
beginning" followed by:
" Just to say that it is amazing sitting here working in the
evening sun in Denmark and witnessing the birth of a
communication space, while at the same time speculating on a
position paper written by M.R: 'Supporting social dimensions in
large information spaces', and revising the presentation of local
research group on artefact mediation of learning in work and
education. What a world is this?"
A message subsequently referred to as "The evening sun" message,
which was echoed in several ways as in the following two posts:
"Hello Ellen C!. How lovely. While you sit in the evening sun I
sit in the morning gloom that this coastal area of southern
California produces this time of the year. It cannot be accidental
that my mind is on introducing a group of undergraduates to the
notion that human nature is created in communication while at the
same time you are thinking about its technological leading edge.
And along this leading edge (leading where?) new forms of
discourse, new inter-human relations are "afforded"...."
"[...] Hi. Just felt a need to see where I am - where my messages
go, and so on. This is a lovely morning in Sweden, and I ought not
to be reading mail - that's a form of Thesis Avoidance, I
suppose....
Similarly, when the xpractice list was created as a 1994
x-mas gift to re-group all the authors of the chapter for
the 1995 Handbook of psychology, an early message read:
"Hey- ho out there in xpracticeland. Anybody here?" Thus,
a virtual space comes into being via the messages that are
posted on-line, a place of convergences, confluences and
synchronicities. A place of wonder and to wander, a place
that is really nowhere, and yet alive and vibrant through
language use and the technology that enables it.