Greetings Economists,
Collaborative tools (for example NetMeeting from Microsoft) give
direction to a metaphorical whole of the mental processes on e-lists. That
is that collaboration processes force upon people working together to
produce something that needs to be clear about their emotional connection,
and physical pointing (making gestures) to what is of interest in the
process of producing collaborative (joint attention) brainwork.
June 13, 2001 NYT
Web Tools That Work: Making Meetings More Efficient
By SUSAN STELLIN NYTs
...." International Data estimates that companies spent $175 million last
year on what is called visual conferencing applications, meaning the
data-sharing portion of online meeting services, not including telephone
calls. This is expected to increase to nearly $400 million in 2002,
according to the research company."
Doyle
The deep presumption in written word production is that it is enough to use
words to describe human thought. The movement of gestures that accompany
words have little influence upon "rationalist" intellectuals in public
expression. Yet gesture is very important in face to face work processes.
Without some means to indicate gesture collaborative software applications
have profound ambiguities. In other words significant collaboration as
opposed to the loose reply back and forth we see now on most e-lists, forces
upon the work process, the need to clarify gesture or pointing to interests
external to ourselves, more clarity about attentional interest in directing
the senses to specific content. Hence the importance of the theory of Joint
Attention emerges in everyday brainwork processes. I will broadly sketch
some aspects of collaborative tools for e-lists.
What is collaboration?
Collaborative groupware allows people to work on the same document at once
from distributed locations. Why does Interest emotion and gesture matter?
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:m0155RyfzlU:www.lotus.com/lotus/researc
h.nsf/7d8eed7083b8a9d8852563bf005f6244/e247da8c7c347e74852566f1006ca904/%24F
ILE/PeopleflowFinal.pdf+Joint+Attention+%22Collaborative+work%22&hl=en
excerpt from a Lotus company sponsored paper on "Joint Attention" in a law
office legal communication process,
"First Cathy has annotated the document. Then Cathy and
Hal situate themselves at a table so that they can both see
the same section of the document (and the annotation
containing the `alternate' representation) at the same time .
The use of gesture is critical. When Cathy says "... when
we get to here... " she gestures to the sections and pertinent
clauses (see figure 2). This assures visual coordination
between the two authors. Finally, the discourse is used to
explain and amplify the meaning and context of the
communication -- the textual annotation of the document,
conversation, and gestures that helped them coordinate
their attention -- to completely propagate this new,
emergent representation."
Doyle
Much technical development occurs within the disabled community long before
the mass commercial development of various products. For example, the head
mounted eye pointer or mouse has been in development since the seventies for
a variety of reasons, but in practice mainly for disabled people.
http://www.stanford.edu/~clmsoup/EyeTracking.htm
eye tracking report at Stanford - disability issues involved are sketched in
the web site content.
Doyle
These days the phrase, "Interest and Emotion Sensitive Media", refers to a
range of devices including the head mounted eye mouse that incorporates
efforts to convey "emotion" and interest through research upon gaze directed
cursor control (see the phrase "Midas Touch Problem" for similar topics).
Theoretically the significant part of a head mouse is the capacity to
measure Interest and Emotion in human gaze in relation to neglected or
unrealized areas of communication. But to understand adding interest and
emotion to what an e-list does we need to theorize what matters in using
interest and emotion in collaboration. To do that we need to broadly
understand "joint attention" or the process of shared production of human
culture.
Head mice cost from $2,000.00 to $30,000.00. One wears that device and
looks at a monitor and moves the cursor with the gaze of one's eyes. Words
do not well express emotions;
http://www.cs.ucf.edu/~morelos/prospectus/Chapter2.html
Doyle
chapter on emotions in a web site devoted to on-line education. Hence the
acknowledgement that brain production requires emotional content in
learning.
Therefore the groupware would have web based graphical production, motion
pictures, and audio in order to clarify and use the additional content
necessary for joint collaborative work on e-lists. See the current changes
in the XP OS of Microsoft due in October in which collaborative processes
move front and center through computer "telephony".
NetMeeting:
http://www.zdnet.com/eweek/stories/general/0,11011,2768483,00.html
"June 12, 2001
Microsoft Is Ready to Supply a Phone in Every Computer
By JOHN MARKOFF New York Times staff
Microsoft's new Windows XP operating system for PC's goes further than ever
before in commandeering the capabilities of the most widely used desktop
tool in America: the telephone. "...
"Weaving improved versions of features Microsoft already offers, like online
video meeting software and Internet voice chat, and integrating them with a
more sophisticated version of the company's identity system, known as
Passport, Microsoft asserts that it will transform the very nature of the
telephone."...
"The company began putting voice features in its operating system as long
ago
as 1996 with its Net Meeting program, with the idea of making voice, video
and data collaboration possible. Now it will take that technology and
integrate it with its Windows Messenger software and the .Net Passport
service, creating a single consistent mechanism for using the computer as a
telephone in Windows XP."...
Doyle
Collaborative work is really the direction that left distributions lists
must follow in order to develop a left analysis of the current economy and
organizing workers. Otherwise individuals (and individualism as a cultural
practice) spend their time with lengthy discourses with little or no
consciousness of the need to work together, or that these tools can better
produce "joint attention" through a focus upon non word processes that
accompany human speech production hence leading to an acknowledgement that
face to face communications have unexplored elements in Marxist thinking
about brainwork. Hence giving new directions for organizing the working
class.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor
