Dear Colleagues,
It was a surprise to open Mg-Ed-Dv after a few days away. Something
dramatic must have happened. There is much conversation about list culture,
people leaving, and the like. On lists, this tends to be a sign of
community self-awareness and a symptom of community engagement following
some kind of disruption.
Several of the posts suggest that some disruption has to do with a failure
to use email effectively. I'll offer a few thoughts.
The central point is that email is a form of mail transmitted and mediated
in a new way. The speed of interaction changes matters. The opportunity for
multilogue conversation via listserv technology creates a new form of
correspondence that establishes new social dynamics. These are distinct
from the one-to-one dialogue of regular mail or email. The failure to treat
email as a form of written communication accounts for many of the problems
in the new medium.
Despite the speed of interaction and the sense of a global village that
this technology creates, it is still writing.
The largest part of our communication involves nonverbal process issues as
distinct from the verbal content of our messages. Tone of voice, eye
movements, body language, coughing, smells, context, the way the room is
structured and furnished, color of clothes, weather . . . these issues and
a hundred more establish the meaning of a conversation between two or a
meeting among many. Little of this information comes through in written
communication. Even so, we are not the victims of an impoverished medium.
Writing is a flexible, effective and powerful medium for those willing to
use it well.
Intelligent correspondence mimics conversation. Email can do the same. It
is interesting to observe a general improvement of online communication in
listserv discussions as people become accustomed to the no-longer-new
medium. Better communication and a reduction in flame wars and disruptions
parallel a reduction in the use of emoticons.
Emoticons were a brief attempt to transact feeling with emblematic
character constructions made of punctuation marks. The idea was the
emoticons would help where mere words didn't. Some of them became quite
well known. The best known was the so-called smiley comprised of a colon
and a right parenthesis :) . There others such as the wink ;) to show
good-natured humor, the angry frown >:( and more. Emoticons flourished
briefly as a form of postmodern hieroglyphics intended to meet emotional
communication needs in Internet conversation. For a while, Newsweek even
ran a weekly emoticon column. The creation and disappearance of the column
was a statement about the shift in interest and use of online
communication. I haven't received an emoticon in email correspondence for
at last a year now. I never used them.
The notion that emoticons would improve email communication was a mistake
based on false analogies. Written words convey emotions far better. They do
so through description and mimesis, using human intelligence to construct
an empathic understanding of the world experienced by others when described
in common vocabulary. Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Ibsen all communicated
through words. All three found and find audiences of readers among those
who have not seen their plays. Non-dramatic writers from Homer and Snorre
Sturlusson to Soeren Kierkegaard and Ursula Kroeber LeGuin understand the
magic and the power of words.
Effective on-line communication mirrors face-to-face communication just as
effective letters do. The failure of much on-line communication is not the
weak medium of words, but the fact that the instantaneous speed of e-mail
sometimes gives rise to laziness. The cure is time. Many good e-mail
correspondents write their documents in a word processor program as they
would write a letter, developing, changing, editing, and polishing, before
copying the letter into an e-mail document for posting.
I propose that this list can benefit from two simple principles. The first
is to write well, preferably in a word processor program before pasting and
posting. The second is to treat list communication as you would treat any
public communication.
I've always handled my email communication as I would treat a letter on my
department's stationery. Everything on the page or in the post ought to
reflect well on me, on my department and on my school.
The new listserv technology creates a new frame of scholarly and
professional communication. You can think of a listserv discussion group
such as Mg-Ed-Dv as a forum that combines the attributes of several media.
One is the oldest form of the learned journal, the scholarly transaction.
These posted the reports and accounts of members in a learned society.
Every member was responsible for his or her own communication. Members
transacted notes and ideas through the journal. The journal didn't vet
communication and peers did not review communication before published. Peer
review took place in open debate on the pages of the journal itself. The
journal was a medium that transacted communication among peers and
colleagues.
Another medium is the professional bulletin or newsletter. Members post
what they wish and read what other members write.
Yet another is the telephone. This is often the way listserv works as we
converse, gossip, swap tales and share ideas, often at the speed of light.
Anyone who recognizes that an online discussion group is combines the speed
and potential for conflict of a heated conference debate with the
permanence of an encyclopedia will recognize the benefits and challenges of
the medium.
Without putting myself forward as an online Ms. Manners, I'm perfectly
happy to prescribe the remedy for our troubles. It amounts to what once
would have been called professional courtesy. In this case, professional
courtesy involves the simple rules of courteous correspondence that we
learned when we were kids.
Best regards,
Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Knowledge Management
Norwegian School of Management
Box 4676 Sofienberg, N-0506 Oslo
Norway
+47 22.98.51.07 Direct line
+47 22.98.51.11 Telefax
email:
ken.friedman@bi.no
Home and home office:
Ken Friedman
Byvagen 13
S-24012 Torna Hallestad
Sweden
+46 (46) 53.245 Telephone
+46 (46) 53.345 Telefax
email:
ken.friedman@bi.no