Many misunderstandings about the quality of Internet discussions have also been brought on by attempts to apply traditional media concepts to this new medium. Our official culture is striving to force the new media to do the work of the old. We approach the new with the psychological conditioning and sensory responses of the old. Words, as we use them in speech, fail to express what we really mean once they are deprived of the subtleties of the non-verbal cues that we assume will accompany them.
Language is neither as fixed nor as precise as it is in writing for print.