Sent the first of the two following messages from the past over some
back-stage channels this morning (retrieved while looking for examples of
how x-people express their frustrations and enthusiasms with list dynamics:
going to the archives is always a humbling reminder that "it" has been said
before...) Then, as I was asked to send it on to the list, the pessimism of
the first needs the counterbalancing of the second...
Eva
*****************************************************
Date: Sep 12, 1993
=46rom: Raeithel Arne
Subject: View from Hamburg
To: xorgan
During those five years of participating in the XFAMILY discussions I have
lost many illusions, but also gained some (for me) important insights into
the nature of electronically mediated communication. Today I want to share
some with you XORGANizers, even though I have no clear picture of who you
are.
First, the form of open distribution list with weak moderation that
XLCHC and its side-lists offer, is inherently unstable. It is prone to
sudden bursts of exchange or protracted silence. The dynamics is much more
externally governed (by the rhythm of the academic year and conferencing)
than it is determined by the content of the dicussion threads or by
reaching a kind of consensus. This is most obvious for old outsiders like
me having a different background rhythm; for newcomers it is one of the
most frustrating properties of open lists.
Second, many enduring threads of discussion have been started by
individuals who had strong opinions on some issue. And, conversely, many
silences seem to have been "caused" by strongly formulated notes, some of
them summaries, others "non-fulfillable agendas" leaving so many topics
open that no one even tried to pick up one of them. The exchange visible in
the output of a list is nowhere similar to a small group discussion (even
though most active newcomers are trying this style to begin with), rather
it is more like a series of self-presentations interspiced with
question-and-answer sequences.
The best analogue I have found for this is the rhythm of advertising and
interviews in newspapers, which is also externally governed by the seasons
of the year, and also fueled by strong opinions.
If this is a viable metaphor for XLCHC then it follows that it is O.K.
for the majority of people on the list to just use it as a news medium.
Since there is no pressure for sales/output like in newspapers, Mike's
minimalist strategy seems to be optimum. I am sure that enough persons with
strong opinions will turn up, and enough newcomers willing to play the role
of Awkward Student. ( ".. each awkward response is an innovation" )
( H.M. Collins: "Changing Order" SAGE 1985:14 )
=46or other purposes than voicing one's mind, flashing the news, asking for
help, and exchanging evaluations of a past event (like a conference) XLCHC
seems unfit in the long run. This means also, that there may be a long
plateau in the development of this medium.
Third, the moderation, weak as it may be, is important. XLCHC might very
well fall back to an empty thread (like XWORK was all the time, like XACT
is since this spring) if we do not have a critical mass of self-steered
moderators (old hands at helping new ones in, are most important). For many
who used to contribute like this, the burden became to high, and I am among
them.
My investment into the XFAMILY was in the vicinity of ten hours per week
during teaching periods. Most of this was reading of course, and I have
gained a lot indeed. But I have also realized now that reading other
sources like real journals is more suited to what I wanted to get from the
e-medium: Scientific and scholarly discussion that is enduring and offers
not only new vistas and challenges but also some closures, solutions, and
well spelled out results. Written text is the prime medium for this, and
this means that the volatile nature of electronic text -- it is not a
countable publication, basta -- will for times to come not allow intensive
discussions for loose groups like the XFAMILY lists. So, fourth, I think
that discussing pre-assigned papers will not work (every single attempt
failed, at least I cannot remember the rare exception). Specialised
discussions that really dug a bit deeper than those self-presentations:
they did happen, and I think I know why: A real body of people (at a
certain locale, knowing each other, preparing for a meeting) was the
generative core of the flow of notes, with others from the audience coming
in who felt moved enough by either topic or back-channel prodding of a
moderator.
As regards the Edelman discussion, or Mike's input: I have made up my
mind about these topics very much (some such theory of embodied mind will
be the received view of the 21st century, of course the faculties are
domain specific), so I feel no impetus for discussion. Certainly I don't
want to write another self-presentation. I have enough to do with looking
for my past ones in the electronic archives, forging some real text out of
these pieces...
XLCHC always lived by inputs of scholars visiting the LCHC.
XACT started its life because the Lahti congress was one year ahead,
because there was a widespread need to be prepared and informed. The Moscow
congress has other driving forces which I do not even know of...
I look forward to the XACT discussion with UCSD Comm class(es).
But all these places have receded very much in my own Cyberspace. Hamburg
is just installing and beginning to use its university network. The
percentage of active e-mail users in my departement is expected to rise
above 5 % in the next year...
Cheers from Hamburg, Germany: Arne.
p.s. We have the writing and conferencing season here.
Classes will start near end of October.
*******************************************************
Date: 12 Nov, 1993
=46rom: Raeithel Arne
Subject: Objects and Motives
To: xact
Dear Friends of the XFAMILY,
this is a sunny Hamburg morning, streams of people outside under the rails
of the Hochbahn go look, and buy their meals on the Ise-Markt, or some
flowers for Grandma and the afternoon visit to the UKE (university hospital
Eppendorf). I am sitting before the PowerBook screen, taking a day off
after having delivered an important lecture (important for my own
position)...
I was rethinking how this year's threads in the xfamily (more exactly: in
xlchc, xact, xorgan =3D all that I get) developed. In early September I had
sent out a rather depressed, therefore realistic, picture of what part of
the possibilities of this strange medium "e-listing" where actually to be
had there and then (over xorgan, "A view from Hamburg").
We have all seen since: the xfamily taking one qualitative leap after
another, and the present discussion on Goals, Objects and Purposes is the
best one I have ever seen in any 10 days that I can recall...
Therefore, I will try to explain my personal view of
* the category of activity
* as mediating between the subjective and the objective "pole"
---(also called dynamical "moment", not yet temporal "moment"!
----in the Hegelian and Marxian traditions)
* of the "unity" of humans (a diverse, yet unifiable process)
* with a myriad of counter-processes.
Activity mediates (is the soul of) the whole web of transactional processes
* between humans
* and their LifeWorld.
---(Lebenswelt, the humanly possible version of an Umwelt, see Uexk:ull,
----several phenomenologists and anthopologists,
----and in psychology: Kurt Lewin).
It is not easy to see this, because it pre-supposes having done a rational
de-centring on human affairs. Humans talk and think "about" Humans in thus
reflecting the dialectical process between those poles, there is no way
around this self-distancing move. But people differ in how to do it with
feeling and with reason, and especially they differ in answering: To what
end it should this lead ? What is it good for ?
Goal talk, on the other hand, is centred talk. A "we" must be defined, a
social subject or community, for goals to be able to ground the sense that
the individual actor finds in pursuing them. Actions and the goals by
which they may be distinguished from each other (yielding types of action)
cannot be divorced from the actors that keep hold of "their" goals. Actors
use the (mostly discursive) symbols as direction reminding tools (Jay
Lemke said this very succinctly) to hold steady their intended course of
action.
Activities (patterns of transaction between humans and lifeworlds) are held
together by greater powers than what intending individuals and the best
means for remembering can muster together. They reproduce and proliferate
independently of individual actors (as an example, think of the activity of
a horsesmith shop in medieval England -- many movies exist to help you do
that). The stream of "objects" produced, transformed, and re-produced by
such "shop systems" or other communities of practice is intended to be
exchanged with other goods from other shops or communities, therefore all
objects have "value" (two forms may be distinguished: abstract exchange
value, in $$ preferably, and use value for the one who takes the good into
his or her or their possession).
To produce value in a certain material form is the motive of all human
activities. This is Alexei Leont'ev's discovery (=3D unvealing) of the
"external" determinant of human conduct. "Material" in the first sentence
of this paragraphs centrally means "bodily realized", "living", "soulful",
"sensous", as well as "made of stuff", "molded into a form", "educated into
a certain function". Thus the motive is "external" only to human
individual actors, but never external to the unit of humans with lifeworld.
This could not be the case, it is simply impossible because of the genetic
path of developing these categories (also called: it is ruled out under our
axiomatic definitions).
The really hard problem, after this easy flow through a dialectical
discourse about God (das verhimmelte Gemeinwesen) and the World, is for
today's researchers to distinguish types of activities and their
corresponding array of objects-with-value (or -with-Quality, as defined by
Robert Pirsig in his soul-moving novel "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance").
I cannot solve this problem in general. Nobody can. But in the dicussion on
distinguishing the activity level and the action level (a raging debate
this is, for nearly twenty years in my own experience) some clear markers
have surfaced to stake out the claims a bit better. The following cannot be
exhaustive therefore, it just lists what seems to me important now, and
here. (The Ise-Markt is more quiet meanwhile, will close down in 90
minutes).
(1)
Any activity system exhibits closure; there is a definite self-defined
borderline, across which goods are exchanged by $$ value or comparable
symbolized media of social exchange (Marxist social theory, I have not read
enough of English language literature to be confident in picking out
individual books or authors). There are other interesting borderlines, e.g.
take the rule of Ed Hutchins: "Draw the limits where the propagation rate
of symbolic states across media is lowest".
This kind of closure I have called "reproductive closure" in my 1981
dissertation (out of print meanwhile, have to write it anew anyway).
In many cases there is also a corresponding closure of the "shop talk" of
the community members; this would then be a criterion to speak of a special
"semiosphere" of that community (see Lotman's article in Soviet Psychology
vol 27, 1981).
(2)
Each community of practice or closed activity system (open to exchange of
goods, but otherwise self-reproducing) uses a pattern of operational means,
often quite "sociosyncratic", i.e., seeming queer and non-rational to
outsiders who come as alien observers first time to see, "how they do it
differently than we".
The operational means are another level of human social conduct entirely.
If we draw lines from actors to the means they are using in an image (or
comic strip) of the ongoing actions, these lines go "down" and "inside"; in
the following sense:
* down in a goal hierarchy of "command" of "higher centers",
and "autonomous realization" by lower "functional systems";
* inside as regards the awareness of a personal or social actor,
less well observed and observable by her, him or them, more
and more trustable, intuitive and natural.
Means reproduce and proliferate independently from both the actors that
deploy them in their course, and the activity systems (a fortiori, simply
because this level is further off, in the sense of "upper" and "outer").
Only in rare cases is it possible to characterize an activity system by
exclusive use of certain (then non-proliferating) means. These are exactly
the rare cases that money-capital is hungry for. Patents (as explained in
the paper that Chuck Bazerman offered recently) are a societal tool to make
this situation stable -- long enough for innovations to get a chance
against the overweight of established market powers.
(3)
You may ask actors (persons, too, but preferably groups) for what their
motives and objects are. A good lead question would be: What needs are
fulfilled with the goods that you are making?
Leont'ev explains (Yrjo Engestrom has given references late last night)
that a full personal motive is generated (or emerges by itself) WHEN A NEED
MEETS AN OBJECT (or vice versa).
To be sure, the observer may see objects and motives where the natives
don't see them. This is a good sign! -- for progress of research. The
natives might learn more of "what makes them tick", and the observers some
of the shortcomings of their eye-glasses and measurement techniques...
--- --- ---
Ise-Markt is closed now. If you didn't buy any of my quality goods, it is
your fault, although you might have good reason for not doing so.
Cheers to California,
Arne.