13 Aug 2002

Tue, 13 Aug 2002

The Problem IS the Tools

Dave Winer and I were discussing his article on Trackback this weekend. I had written a piece on Saturday explaining a few of my points. Ray Ozzie wrote a piece yesterday which makes some interesting points. Finally, Bill Kearney makes some curious comments on my piece which sparked a discussion with a friend of mine. Among Bill's comments was the following:

The reality in physical discourse has these issues handled with a variety of gestures, cues and other expressions that help steer things along in a productive fashion. Unfortunately these cues are largely missing in online environments. The end result is often quite messy. The problem isn't with the tools, it's with the participants and not just the folks with opposing views.

My friend Craig Maier, who teaches communication at one of the local universities, had this to say on the subject:

Actually, my argument would be that the problem IS the tools, in a sense. Communication is always mediated (the human body, with its gestures and vocal fluctuations, is a medium like any other), and media always influence what is said. "The medium is the message," as Marshall McLuhan would say, though I am not certain that his radical perspective is correct all the time. Media influence the choice of messages (you wouldn't want to read Charles Dicken on the web, for instance) and they also influence how the message is stated. Media affect communication, and communicators need to understand the limitations of the particular message channel they are using.

The Internet has a significant degree of orality to it. The concept comes from Walter Ong. The web is a dynamic, shifting environment like the world of oral speech. Conversations change on a dime. At the same time, though, the web also communicates through written words, and in this sense it is a highly literate medium. The discourse is disembodied, and because there is no one to ask for clarification, interpretation of particular texts may be difficult and even impossible in some cases. This makes it difficult for discussion groups to treat "sacred cows" or "touchy subjects" in a way that respects all the parties concerned.

Another problem is that the standards for quality conversation on-line are often privatized and left unstated, and a free-for-all atmosphere may not be conducive to productive conversation.

Finally, disenchanted weighs in on the debate:

But that compromise has been largely fixed by some inventive minds, and the line between personal site and public debate space will continue to be blurred in the future. First of all, anyone who wants their rebuttal pinned to an objectionable screed can simply point theirs to the other's, and search engines like Blogdex will discover the link and make it possible for a reader to find both sides of an argument, even if one party is being lazy or uncooperative and won't provide a link back to the guy who's contesting their arguments. Some who are more willing to stand up to critique provide a way to attach a response to the same page (our Linkback feature for example, or the improvement on it called “TrackBack”), but partly driven by the need to express, and partly by the thrill of democratizing the Internet, more features for threading and reading arguments and rebuttals will keep coming to web browsers and dedicated search engines.

Who knows where it'll all turn next. Regardless, these are halcyon days.

Posted at: 18:46 | permalink

Jeff Szymona's got a Movable Type Blog

More Movable Type blogs coming online by the day. This time, it's my friend Jeff Szymona.

Posted at: 07:11 | permalink