The lack of depth you point out is the dominant feature of online discussion, at least in every online forum I've experienced over the past 28 years. (Some people have told me it's _my_ personal problem and not a feature of online comm at all. I ignore them, of course. [grin]) I think the reason for the shallowness of the interaction is because people can be (mis-)quoted, verbatim, and have their own words thrown back at them. Very few people listen to what the writer is _trying_ to say. They just listen to what they infer from the writing.
Listening to what the writer is trying to say involves things like 1) paraphrasing what they wrote by writing it anew in one's own words, 2) reading and responding to a post's gestalt, rather than some fractioned piece of it, and 3) reading what's being written with a coherent _model_ of the writer. And these things, dominant in face-2-face communication, are difficult and expensive for online comm. If any one person invests too much energy in exploring another person's opinion, they a) can appear to hold that opinion themselves and b) can dynamically be convinced of that opinion, perhaps without realizing it. In f2f, that happens smoothly and naturally ... then after a few days, the different opinions either smush together or spread apart. But (without recording equipment) nobody can effectively add friction to the process by quoting the other before or after any incremental evolution or refinement of their opinion. (And, of course, most people end up with a fuzzy-headed "sameness" or "otherness" sense of the opinions of the other people, without any real, crisp, distinctions at all.) Hence, in online comm. (without a robust offline substrate) we find that most people emphatically assert their individuality and focus on contrast rather than comparison. If, however, a group of people who have robust offline relationships augment their conversations with online comm, the dynamic is much more cohesive.... except when the sporadic "foreigner" pokes his head in with contributions that lack the more robust context. ;-) That's just my opinion, of course. Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 09/14/2009 09:22 PM: > I think our discussions on this list have tended to lack depth, in > the sense that everybody has their opinion but has grave difficulty > representing with any fidelity the opinion with which they disagree. > > > that I was characterizing the discussion as a whole, not the > contributions of any one of us. In short, we all should be mad at > me, not any one of us. Clear as mud, right. I apologize if anybody > felt singled out. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
