Feenberg 1989

[see: The written world: On the theory and practice of computer conferencing]

I really liked this paper. It was one from the Digital Environments course. I am just going to pull out some of the very interesting points.

Physical presence is supposed to be a guarantor of authenticity: you can look your interlocutor in the eye and search for tacit signs of truthfulness or falsehood - where context and tone permit a subtler interpretation of the spoken word.

Many ordinary individuals possess a compensatory 'literary' capability to project their personality into writing destined for the computer screen.

CMC involves a small yet real personal risk. Silence (lack of response) means failure. The technology which means rapid exchange is possible makes unusual delay a sign of rejection or indifference since there is no mechanical excuse for silence.

In CMC we have command over all the signals we emit. Thus the use of writing makes possible elaborate identity games. Identity becomes a product of the communication, rather than an initial given.

On online group's history is entirely in text.

As soon as we enter a room we orientate ourselves to the tacit cues of the conversation we are about to join. The same happens online - as exemplified by the variety of online personas we may choose to adopt.

In textual communications the speaker is no longer identified with his/her own words but uses them for effect (i.e. the retrievable vs the repeatable). The distillation of text from authenticity - away from, and separate to, the authro. The author is not physically associated with his own words. There is a detachment, a separateness, a lack of ownership of the words.