🚀 go-pugleaf

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This article is from RICE <RICE@USC-ECLB.ARPA>
 and was received on Sat Jun 21 06:12:12 1986
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[extracted from CRTNet Digest.  They received a copy of the article on 
 computer-based personalities (etc). --Dave]

The experiences mentioned by Dave Taylor about online and
offline human behavior are  certainly intriguing and consequential.
I would just like to mention, however, that there's been by
now a fair amount of research, not just  anecdotes, about this and
related phenomena on computer-mediated human communication.
On the one hand, it's  always encouraging that the same sorts of
experiences are related -- it  provides a grass-roots corroboration
for the more academic-type discussions.  But on the other hand,
it's a bit frustrating to hear/read these insights for the hundredth
time. They are, of course, new for the person experiencing them.
But it also indicates that

  (a) the  research on this topic is
      published in very diverse places so nobody
      really knows where to track it down, and

  (b) academic stuff just doesn't get read very much (for
     understandable, if unfortunate, reasons).

  I'd just suggest that people interested in these and related
matters read, for a start, NETWORK NATION, by Roxanne Hiltz
and Murray Turoff -- published in 1978 by Addison-Wesley.
I have yet to read much in the following 8 years on this topic
that wasn't considered, in detail, with empirical
analysis, by Hiltz and Turoff.  Amazingly, even articles in
Harvard Business Review (the notorious recent article
by Sara Kiesler) don't show any recognition of all this prior
research, and talk about these issues as though they've been
discovered or invented for the first time.
We should continue to share our experiences -- they are real
and important --  but we should also do our homework a bit better to
take advantage of the considerable amount of prior study and
consideration of interpersonal aspects of computer-mediated
communication.

Ron Rice