Re: self-descriptions
Douglas Williams (dwilliam who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Sat, 27 Sep 1997 17:35:05 -0700 (PDT)
At 07:12 AM 9/27/97 +0000, you wrote:
>At 21.05 +0000 97-09-26, Russ Hunt wrote, referring to the selfdescription
>
>So you are quite right: the entrance ritual doesn't really fit the setting,
>as our practices in the informal settings serving as templates for this
>collaborative projection are NOT to step in through the doorway,
>interrupting the conversations by shouting out our CV and errand.
>"Embarrassment" is the effect of a mismatch between a requested behaviour
>and expectations projected by the setting.
>
>
>Basically I reacted as if Ellen had stepped into the coffee room where I
>was immersed in a conversation, mistaking me for the person who takes the
>application forms for our courses... so to her un-prefaced question I
>snapped a sarcastic counterquestion. Mutual rudeness... instead of
>acknowledging she was trying to have a conversation with the listserv.
>
>Eva
True enough--but then you would know implicitly what everyone's "errands"
and CV's were in a department, whereas in an artificial coffee room (I like
that--one of the old Usenet "conversation" sites took place in an imaginary
bar over cocktails; another in a hot-tub; a coffee-house seems so much more
civilized... dare one say, Habermasian...) all of that almost-unconscious
knowledge about each other has to be recreated in rather clumsy fashion. I
think that this is just a structural impediment of computer-mediated
communities. It doesn't really work--I agree with everything you say--but
without it, everyone is a disembodied voice. This is one of those nasty
cruelties of abstract communities--but still nicer than a tax audit.
Doug