The Degradation of Communication on the Internet Essays -- Communicati

The Degradation of Communication on the Internettalking on the Internet, people regress. Its that simple. It can be iodin-to-one talk on e-mail or many-to-many talk on one of the LISTs or newsgroups. flock regress, expressing sex and aggression as they never would face to face. Think around it. Current estimates say 23 million people communicate on the Internet from most of the nations on the globe, and that number is increasing at 12% a month. And all this just grew like Topsy, with no one provision or controlling it. Here is one of the extraordinary technological achievements, one of the great _human_ achievements, of our century. But _homo sapiens_ reverts to primitive, childish behavior. Why? There are one-third major signs or, if you will, symptoms of this regression. The one Internet primitivism that everybody talks about is flaming, escape into a typewritten rage at some perceived slight or blunder. Everywhere I went in the newsgroups, writes John Seabrook in _The New Y orker_, I found flames, and fear of flames (1994, 70). No wonder. Seabrook had written a friendly while on Bill Gates, the powerful president of Microsoft. In the profile, he make a point of the way he and Gates conducted their interview on e-mail. This is what appeared on Seabrooks screen (courtesy of a certain computer columnist) Crave THIS, backside Listen, you toadying dipshit scumbag . . . remove your head from your rectum long enough to look around and mention that real reporters dont fawn over their subjects, pretend that their subjects are making some sort of special contact with them, or, worse, curry favor by singing their subjects how great the ass- licking profile is going to turn out and then(prenominal) brag in print about doing it... ...m.nerdc.ufl.edu_ 31 May 1994. Span, Paula. The on-line(a) Mystique. _Washington Post Magazine_ 27 Feb. 1994, W11. Sproull, Lee, and Sara Kiesler. _Connections New Ways of Working in the Networked Organization_. Cambridge MA MIT P, 1991. Turkle, Sherry. _The Second Self Computers and the Human Spirit_. New York Simon and Schuster, 1984. Walker, Donna. Letter. _Washington Post Magazine_ 17 Apr. 1994, W3. Waterton, J. J., and J. C. Duffy. A Comparison of Computer Interviewing Techniques and Traditional Methods in the Collection of Self-report Alcohol usance Data in a Field Study. _International Statistical Review_ 52 (1984) 173-82. Weizenbaum, Joseph. _Computer role and Human Reason From Judgment to Calculation_. San Francisco W. H. Freeman, 1976. Wright, Robert. Journey Through Cyberspace. _Ottawa Citizen_ 18 Sep. 1993, B4.