Size Doesn't Matter, It's All In How You Use The Medium (was: Re: [-empyre-] Size matters?)

["Eryk Salvaggio" <eryk@maine.rr.com>]

Thanks Jim,

I don't know if they're unsolvable. Maybe it is unsolvable with mailing
lists as we know them today. Different technologies tend to evoke stronger
sympathies, and stronger sympathy would be the cure for the knock out
punchmanship of online "discussion". This could probably be achieved through
technology, but it would radically change the way we consider "mailing
lists". Consider, for example, phone blogging. The technology changes the
way we use blogs and the way blogs are used- you can't establish that same
snowball of ranting inertia when you're phoning in a blog entry or else it
sounds like what it is; red faced bullying. I'd love to see someone start a
discussion forum focused entirely on Audio based discussions. Maybe that
will be my next grant proposal :) As Charlotte points out, speaking is a
very different dynamic and changes the way we argue and communicate. It
becomes more personal.

The net is always moving toward the personal- that is part of what makes it
more important than any other media, is the sense of access and multiphonic
commentary. But it hasn't always moved toward humanisation. So we have this
cycle where the impersonal technology, developed by men, attracts men to
impersonal technology, constantly pushing the web into testosterone's red
levels. I don't think Hulk Hogan would be found dead taking part in a phone
blog variant of a mailing list, but that would certainly change the way we
communicate when we're there. It would foster a greater sense of community,
too, I suspect, because that's what the human voice does.

The human language developed out of the voice, as a means of communicating
threats to one another; as a means of coordinating the kill. So I imagine
that on an instinctual level we still find a greater sense of empathy with
the human voice. Mathieu writes, "the alternative is that any form of
written intellectual exchange is inherently aggressive", which I actually
think could be true, at least in the masculine tradition of patriarchial
education and intellectualism. The oversimplification I am tempted to use is
that the written language helped us coordinate the kill with others in our
tribe, but written language let us communicate to the opposing tribe about
how much better our kill was than thiers.

-eryk



----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>
To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 5:10 PM
Subject: RE: [-empyre-] Size matters?


>
> well said, eryk. do you consider the problems you mention as unsolvable,
> just the nature of online communications, or do you see a possibility of
> change in these things and, if so, how?
>
> ja
> http://vispo.com
>
>
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