From: rita@eff.org (Rita Marie Rouvalis)
Subject: Re: Electronic Literacy
Originator: rita@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 21:04:34 GMT

In article <01GSY539Q2WY0004Y3@camins.Camosun.BC.CA> Peter Montgomery <MONTGOMERY@CAMINS.CAMOSUN.BC.CA> writes:
>One important area of concern I have is the effects of
>electronic media on literacy. In particular I am concerned

	Well, in general, you have to be able to read.  Literacy isn't
quite the term I would use here, but I can't think of better one right
at the moment.

	Have you read Sara Keisler and Lee Sproull?  They've done much
of the cutting-edge work both independantly and together on electronic
communications. I have their books and papers in the office, so I
don't have ISBN's and citations handy, but they're published by the
MIT Press.

	Ellen Spertus has also done some interesting analysis of
electronic communication as it pertains to women.  Her work is
published by the MIT AI Lab.  You may also want to read Howard
Rheingold's essay "Virtual Communities."

>(BTW, Words-L is an interesting example of the immediacy/
>involvement principle in action.)

	Not really.  I don't think you understand the nuances of
electronic culture.  You cannot make blanket statements about how the
quality of discourse is affected without taking into careful
consideration the subtle etiquette, personality, purpose, etc. of the
forum in question.  BITNET is only one network.  Even USENET, which
has tremendous amount of overlap with BITNET is much different.  For
example, your .signature is far too long to be considered in good
taste -- and you would probably be largely ignored because of that
superficial indication of your unfamiliarity with the culture.  You'd
be pegged as a tourist.  If you move from there to the various
commercial services such as CompuServe, America Online, Prodigy, etc.,
you'll find worlds where few of the rules you've learned here apply.
BBS's are another entire culture unto themselves.  This isn't even
taking into account individual discussion lists.

	This isn't Star Trek, Peter.  If you look at and analyze what
has been happening in electronic communications for the past 20 years
(When did ARPA first go on the air? 1969?), you would have a much
better idea of where it is going.  Computers that analyze speech have
been around for about 10 years already.  They have been used largely
with the handicapped so far, but haven't managed to infiltrate the
general marketplace.  Why?  What does that say about where the
technology is going?  We can come up with all the nifty toys we want,
but if people don't want to use them, they are not going to become
commonplace.  I have the capability to send sound and pictures with my
e-mail if I wanted to.  I don't bother.  How long have video
telephones been around?  I seem to remember seeing them hawked on one
of those television shopping shows a few years back.  Yet I don't know
anyone who owns one.

	We prefer text.  Why?  Even in France, where it isn't just the
educated and moderately wealthy elite who have basic telecom (Minitel
is available to all citizens), they use text.

	The Macintosh interface does well, as evidenced by the cludgy
attempts of PC's to mimic it.  But we haven't seen the explosion in
Virtual Reality that everyone was predicting.  Five or so years ago
someone came up with something called Habitat that represented
databases as libraries, etc., and generally made the interface look
like a city.  It never went anywhere.  Even English professors like
Natalie -- going against stereotype -- prefer the command line
interface.

	Once you can explain why all this is, then maybe you can talk
about where we might go in the future.



-- 
Rita Rouvalis                                Electronic Frontier Foundation
rita@eff.org                                                    eff@eff.org
CIS:70007,5621                                                (617)864-0665
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU