Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Do you have guidance for business users of computer-mediated
communications technologies about effective use & best practices? Or are
you still thinking about it?
  

    
Yeah, inquiring Cof P writers want to know!
  

    
I'm working on some beginning and advanced curricula for training people
online. I'm at the -- scraps of good stuff all over the table, plus a
rough outline -- stage.

Didn't I mention the story of the hip-hop in brooklyn mail list from
hell? Simply knowing how to do the basics -- good subject line, knowing
how to use cc: and bcc, not ccing entire distribution lists just to leave
your territorial mark, not forwarding virus warnings and urban
legends. How not to be the kind of cretin who wastes the time of
colleagues and complete strangers.

Then there are the simple benefits we all recognize. "Experts In The
WELL" is an obvious model that some are adopting -- exchanging lore. It
works because there are a sufficient number of people within the
boundaries of the WELL who value the entire group enough to reciprocate a
request from someone they don't know. Now, with reputation systems
beginning to evolve from Ebay, Epinions, Slashdot, it's possible to see
how webs of trust and diffuse reciprocity might combine. But the fun part
is that it only really works if it is fun -- if there is some pleasure in
showing off your expertise, and a lack of fear of asking elementary
questions. 

A well-organized social network can server as an early warning system
where every person is an antenna for every other person.
  

    
Howard, on Electric Minds you had a longish list of virtual communities,
which includes mailing lists and newsgroups as well as conferencing systems.
I realize it's probably out of date, but is it still hanging around on the
web somewhere?

Also, there might be an interesting case study in how the community of
die-hard Amiga users was able to hang together through several years of
corporate mishandling of their favorite platform, primarily through the
use of computer mediated communication of one sort or another.
  

    
I always thought "Experts on the Well" was successful because people like
showing off their knowledge.
  

    
In regards to the earlier question: "Does the Internet make people
happy?" -- more and more, I see the Net as a powerful tool that
amplifies (and sometimes distorts) someone's existing moods, tendancies
and relationships. Kinda like looking into a fun-house mirror -- for
better and for worse.

For example, if a couple is drifting apart, the Net can accelerate
that process by making it easier and more convenient for each person to
connect with others online, and therefore avoid a difficult in-person
situation. And having access to the Net can amplify the
procrastinationg tendancies of a student who's cramming for midterms. 

OTOH, the Net can also amplify the communications among a group of
friends, colleagues, or family members who want to stay in touch, but
finds the overhead daunting. And it can also amplify the ability of a
small business owner to reach a global audience (think eBay).
 
Basically, the Net speeds things up, streamlines communications, and
offers convenient access to people, information and activities. It's a
tremendously compelling medium -- with great potential for both
enrichment and abuse. Being on the Net seems to bring out the best and
the worst in people -- which is why it's an *amplifier*, rather than
something that's "good" or "bad" for people per se.
  

    

I distinctly remember being blown away by the power of a mailing list
for people with ALS (Lou Gehrig's). This was several years ago, and I
was on the list for a while because I was writing a piece for Newsweek.
It was amazing to see how people so geographically from others with
ALS, and physically and emotionally isolated from all the healthy
people in their immediate surround, could eliminate that sense of
isolation through the list. 

So in that case it wasn't an amplifer so much as the most important
lifeline a lot of these people had. 

It was a dramatic example, but it set a tone of optimism for me back
then that has never gone away, even with all the spammers and clueless
idiots Howard has been talking about. And Howard, I sense that same
optimism in you..
  

    
John,

You mean the Virtual Community Center? Something that is still badly
needed. Too bad there is no business model to sustain it. It turns out
that you can't rate virtual communities the way Yahoo rates websites. It
just isn't fair to hit and run. Someone needs to take the time to check
back many times, over a period of days and weeks, to try to get some
flavor of what really goes on. How could someone hope to "review" the WELL
on the basis of a ten minute visit? So it is time and expertise intensive
to do the job. We were also trying to make the reviews somewhat lively in
terms of their writing. Some of our best material came from Wellites doxy
and lizabeth, and Wellite jilld was in charge of that part of Electric
Minds. In any case, there is an
archive: <http://www.abbedon.com/electricminds/html/vcc_landing.html>

Bryan -- the experts' sense of the audience is key. Nobody wants to show
off their expertise to bozos, and people tend to be more motivated to show
off their expertise if they have some expertise that they can make use of
the public good at some time themselves. So I still contend that the
social element to lore exchange is key.

Katie -- yes, I'm still optimistic. Clearly, many people with specific
pressing needs have found lifelines and yes, community, through online
discussions. The reality of their experience should not be denied. I think
it's clear from the new chapter that I've become much more critical of
that optimism. How far can it extend? How far should it extend.

I don't have this morning's San Francisco Chronicle at hand, but it cited
several stories that the reporter claimed contradicted earlier research
that indicated "Internet sad, lonely place." I'd want to put the new
studies under the same methodological scrutiny that the flawed Kraut et
al. and Nie studies were subjected to here in the WELL and elsewhere. I
suspect that the simplistic answer is that (as Amy Jo points out) life
online can help or hinder your social life, depending on your
circumstances, and how you make use of the online world.
  

    
Sure.  You still need to bring community-building and communications stills
to bear, as you do in other places.
  

    
(my third "expertise" in my reply to Bryan should have been "expectation")

(I like the feature that Caucus and WebCrossing have that makes it
possible for users to edit responses within a set interval after posting.)
  

    

Howard, what are your book tour plans, btw?
  

    
Book tour? MIT Press? I somehow doubt that a book tour is being arranged,
since the pub date is next week and nobody has contacted me. I didn't
expect a trade-book-style publicity campaign for this. I'm happy that they
are sending out review copies and are selling into college and technical
bookstores. I think we have a chance that my readers will find it by word
of mouth.

Book tours. You feel like a discarded tissue if your publisher doesn't
send you on one, and you feel like a discarded and well used tissue if you
do get sent on one. As you know, it's a grueling enterprise. As I recall,
it means you get a fax when you arrive at your hotel. At 5 the next
morning, you get up and grab whatever kind of stale bagel and coffee is
available at that hour and head for the airport for a morning flight. Your
escort picks you up at the airport. They have chicken salad sandwiches and
coffee. You spend 12 hours saying the same thing at a jillion radio and tv
stations, newspapers and magazines. The publicist books you in bulk -- the
more appointments on your daily fax, the better, and a 12 watt college
radio station gets the same time as a national newsmagazine. You end up at
your hotel room at 10 that night, lay out your cleaner clothes for the
next day (two weeks into this, you start washing underwear and socks in
the bathroom), get up at 5 the next morning, rinse, repeat.
  

    
I just learned that Wellite jswatz wrote about the new study in NYT. Does
anyone have a link?

I love his lede: "THE Internet might not be such a sad and lonely place
after all." (riffing on the headline for Amy Harmon's article some months
back about the Kraut et al study).

Couple of short quotes:


     The World Internet Project of the U.C.L.A. Center for Communication
Policy surveyed more than 2,000 American households and found that, on
average, those surveyed said the Internet increased their contact with
others, including family members. More than one in four said they had
online friends they had never met in person, and 12.4 percent of people
who had made friends online said that they had gone on to meet online
friends face to face.

     Family life has benefited as well, according to the study: Nearly all
users (91.8 percent) said that since being connected to the Internet at
home, members of the household had spent about the same amount of time or
more time together. Nearly half of users said they spent at least some
time each week using the Internet with other family members. "People do
not go online at the expense of their personal lives," said Jeffrey I.
Cole, director of the U.C.L.A. center.


(I'd like to hear about the methodology and statistical analysis from
someone who knows more than I do about methodology and statistical
analysis. Donna Hoffman comes to mind. She tore into the Kraut study on
those grounds, as I recall.)
  

    
> <http://www.abbedon.com/electricminds/html/vcc_landing.html>

Thanks!

It was just the directory index I was referring to.  I'd forgotten that
the items in that list linked to reviews (wasn't really shopping around
for additional virtual communities when I discovered it...).
  

    
That link is 
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/26/technology/26SURV.html

(Note: you have to be a subscriber to the online edition of the Times in
order to read the article, but I think subscription is free.)
  

    
They do rent the email list, so if you have a nome de spam, use that one.
  

    
 You can just use the name and password cypherpunk/cypherpunk.
  

    
Here's an interesting excerpt:

"What does get squeezed out of the Internet users' lives, apparently, is
television. Web users reported they watched 28 percent less television
than nonusers."
  

    
The optimist and online-lover in me wants to believe that Internet usage
(and I don't know yet whether they distinguish between surfing and
communicating to any fine degree) cuts into usage of mass media rather
than into ftf interpersonal relationships. Which is why I want to reserve
my approval until I hear more from experts about the sample, statistics,
measures, etc.
  

    
More on the study

New Internet Study released by UCLA:
Article about:
http://www.latimes.com/business/20001026/t000102193.html

Study:
http://www.ccp.ucla.edu/ucla-report.pdf
  

    
More coverage:
http://freep.com/money/tech/net26_20001026.htm
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,19694,00.html
  

    

   The methodology is pretty well laid out in the study, which is available
at the URL above. It's a survey, but a very big one, and conducted on a
random sample of the population. So many of the sources of bias that creep
into other surveys that are conducted online are avoided. Also, the survey
includes non-internet users, which gives you a little better comparison than
surveys and studies that don't look to the other side. Most interesting, the
UCLA crew intends to follow all of these people over several years' time--a
horeendously difficult task, but one that they believe they can undertake.
That will get around a problem found in many studies conducted over time:
that the "they" changes.

    So there are a lot of solid aspects to this work. On the other hand,
there are known problems with telephone surveys. Self-reported data gets
fuzzy, researchers say, when it comes to quantifying the ways that people
spend their time, and when it comes to potentially embarassing topics,
people tend to lie. So the researchers tried to figure out the topics that
might be most unreliable and eliminated those.

    But again, don't take my word for it; I just typed up the story.
Disintermediate!

   http://www.ccp.ucla.edu/ucla-report.pdf
  

    
I don't want to pose as someone who has a deep understanding of either
experimental design methodology or statistics. Even at that, it was clear
that the Kraut et al study was making big claims on the basis of some
rather thin research -- round up a couple hundred people who don't have
computers (already a skewed sample), give them computers and Internet
access, test them at long intervals of months and years, don't include a
control group. Many of them were adolescents. Maybe natural angst having
to do with becoming a teenager was involved. Maybe they discovered the
world outside Pittsburgh made their own lives look depressing. Maybe they
thought they would try social interaction and peeked into a chat room full
of middle aged men pretending to be young women, and vice versa. 
  

    
One problem with research into the effects of social behavior online is
that it ought to be interdisciplinary for best results, IMO. Over the
years, I've noted that social psychologists, sociologists, political
scientists, even historians, tend to have small pieces of the puzzle, but
are generally unaware of how they fit with other pieces. Universities and
funding institutions haven't been terribly encouraging to
interdisciplinary research.

Unrelated to life online, I know that Denise Caruso is trying to stimulate
interdisciplinary research in other sciences. She calls it "Hybrid Vigor."

And I seem to recall that the Kraut team was interdisciplinary.

The part about political scientists and historians was stimulated by my
interest in the public sphere. Frankfurt school political philosopher
Habermas concentrated on the origins of the modern public sphere in public
gathering places and bourgeois and early capitalist institutions. A recent
book by Zaret, a historian, puts the origins further back and more closely
linked to printing, in the form of petitions in 17th century England. His
claim was that political philosophers should have paid better attention to
historiography.

But I digress.

Next question? Comment?
  

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