Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series foreword
- Preface
- Contributors
- Part I Computer-based signs
- Part II The rhetoric of interactive media
- Part III Computers in context
- Introduction
- 13 Computer culture: The meaning of technology and the technology of meaning
- 14 One person, one computer: The social construction of the personal computer
- 15 Hi-tech network organizations as self-referential systems
- Comment: Disturbing communication
- 16 Dialogues in networks
- 17 Historical trends in computer and information technology
- Comment: The history of computer-based signs
- 18 A historical perspective on work practices and technology
- 19 Hypertext: From modem Utopia to post-modem dystopia?
- Index
16 - Dialogues in networks
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series foreword
- Preface
- Contributors
- Part I Computer-based signs
- Part II The rhetoric of interactive media
- Part III Computers in context
- Introduction
- 13 Computer culture: The meaning of technology and the technology of meaning
- 14 One person, one computer: The social construction of the personal computer
- 15 Hi-tech network organizations as self-referential systems
- Comment: Disturbing communication
- 16 Dialogues in networks
- 17 Historical trends in computer and information technology
- Comment: The history of computer-based signs
- 18 A historical perspective on work practices and technology
- 19 Hypertext: From modem Utopia to post-modem dystopia?
- Index
Summary
Through the technological invention and utilization of computer mediated communication systems (CMC systems) in the domain of human linguistic interaction, the organization of electronic communities across time and space has been made possible. The choice to establish interactive communities exclusively on the basis of shared interest, background or task, has become available. Computer mediated communication systems, providing facilities for this human communication independent of time and place, represent a large and challenging interactive potential, as they entirely overcome many of the practical problems associated with the establishment of a traditional face-to-face communication.
Although the linguistic interaction practised in this type of electronic environment has already been stated generally to be posited somewhere between writing and speech, it is clear that it is not sufficient — or even correct — to characterize this communication, enabled by CMC systems, barely as “a written communication, facilitated electronically.” Such a characteristic does not identify the overall nature and conditions involved in this totally new type of linguistic interaction. Viewing communication as a multi-semiotic process (a process that uses a combination of various possible ways — verbal and non-verbal — of establishing meaning in a communication situation), and being aware that the communication of concern here is a process taking place using only one type of all the types of communication involved in the general multi-semiotic communicative process, it seems relevant to discuss and enlighten more thoroughly the various aspects and characteristics involved in the specific type of communication, unfolding itself in a conferencing system.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Computer as Medium , pp. 389 - 421Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994
- 1
- Cited by