🚀 go-pugleaf

It's nice that there's finally an article in this group that I feel is worth
a reply (even though I'm going to largely disagree with Nick).

In article <20921@crg5.UUCP> szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes:
   I think most of the audience is technically oriented, and interested in
   groupware to facilitate the discussion of technical topics.

I think that's an unwarranted overgeneralization.  People are interested in
groupware for all kinds of reasons; facilitation of technical topics is a
relatively small part of the field.

   Also, I am not convinced that sound and video are better for emotional
   issues than print.  They can communicate more emotional data, yes, but
   that is not necessarily a good thing.  [Galileo example deleted.]
   Emotional interaction is ad hominem and gets in the way of finding the
   truth or achieving technical goals.

This is a typical rationalist overgeneralization.  You will find that even
supposedly logical and rational persons benefit from emotional content to
communication.  For example, how do you know which of your coworkers'
objections are the most serious?  You read their body language, hear their
tone of voice, etc.  This is as true for any technical example you care to
bring forward as it is for the sales interactions you disparage.

Even when the outcome is not entirely desirable in global terms, the
conveyance of emotional content can be extremely helpful.  EG: in an
historical sense, Galileo recanting may not have been the "right" thing to
do, but it probably kept the pope from killing Galileo - definitely a
benefit to him!  Without the emotional content, Galileo might have been
misled into thinking that the pope's objections were less serious, and thus
hastened his own demise.

   [...] I see little need for sound and video.

Really?  You have an impoverished view of communication.  How do you know
I'm not mad at you for being such an imbecile?  How do you know I haven't
separately sent you the last 200 years of research/philosophy on
communication so that you can see the error of your ways?  Realistically,
you don't.  What you're doing is interpolating a huge amount of data from
the words I've typed.  If you had that data available directly you'd be able
to make better judgements and interpretations; even an extreme rationalist
such as yourself should be able to see the advantage of that!

--
--Alan Wexelblat			phone: (508)294-7485
Bull Worldwide Information Systems	internet: wex@pws.bull.com
"Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people."