Errors-To: owner-ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu Reply-To: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu Sender: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu From: ecto@ns1.rutgers.edu To: ecto-request@ns1.rutgers.edu Bcc: ecto-digest-outbound@ns1.rutgers.edu Subject: ecto #251 ecto, Number 251 Tuesday, 2 June 1992 Today's Topics: *-----------------* ectofloss Happy gets airplay in Eugene! Re: New to group Fluff (tm) i am so.... Perspectives on electronic community--I Perspectives on electronic community--II Perspectives on electronic community--III ======================================================================== From: shark@cs.ucla.edu (Jeanne B. Schreiter) Subject: ectofloss (fwd) Date: Mon, 1 Jun 92 15:05:22 PDT Ecto-floss Where her words meet harmony in all the out of the way spaces. (-Jb Schreiter) June 1, 1992 ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 1 Jun 92 20:21:40 PDT From: stevev@greylady.uoregon.edu (Steve VanDevender) Subject: Happy gets airplay in Eugene! I finally heard Happy on the radio in Eugene just a couple of minutes ago. Christina on the KAVE played "Waking Up" on her Women in Music show. Actually, the first time Happy was on the radio in Eugene was about a week and a half ago when we requested "Phobos". I wasn't listening to the radio at the time it was played, though. And of course none of this is a surprise to me because it's my Warpaint CD that she's playing :-). I talked to her this evening to request some Kate Bush (since my co-worker and burgeoning Ectophile Norm Nelson already requested Happy for tonight's show) but alas she had forgotten to bring any of her albums. Christina (she doesn't use her last name much) was very interested to hear that Happy is working on another album and planning to tour, and asked if Happy was planning on coming out west; I said that it would depend on how much fan base she could find out here, like the growing clusters in San Francisco and LA. Of course, I want Happy to become so phenomenally popular in Eugene that it will be the first place out West that Happy will come to :-). And then I could wear my Ecto T-shirt to remind her that yes, we are everywhere :-). ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 1 Jun 92 23:24:16 EDT From: Gregory Bossert Subject: Re: New to group ectoplasmic welcomes and transatlantic footahs to Dirk! (way to go, Klaus :) footah! -greg -- gb10@gte.com -- "a woman drew her long black hair out tight and fiddled whisper music on those strings and bats with baby faces in the violet light whistled, and beat their wings" -- T.S. Eliot ======================================================================== Date: Mon, 1 Jun 92 23:40:47 EDT From: Gregory Bossert Subject: Re: Happy gets airplay in Eugene! Steveveveveve reports: >I finally heard Happy on the radio in Eugene just a couple of minutes >ago. Christina on the KAVE played "Waking Up" on her Women in Music >show. yah! :) footah! -greg -- gb10@gte.com -- "in between the love and the anger is a little thread of hope that holds us together" -- KTB ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 2 Jun 92 09:37:58 MDT From: dbx@olympic.atmos.colostate.edu (Doug Burks) Subject: Fluff (tm) Greetings, Just a quick little (at least in length, but not in spirit) note to wish a warm fuzzy blue Happy HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Perttu, an Ectophile in one of the farthest of the many far-flung outposts to which Happy's music has been flung. I hope you enjoy/enjoyed your day! Doug Burks _O_ dbx@olympic.atmos.colostate.edu |< She really is!! ======================================================================== Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1992 11:00:04 -0500 From: kennel@herky.cs.uiowa.edu (Chris Kennel) Subject: i am so.... excited! I just sent off my order for "Warpaint!" Soon, I will finally hear what Happy sounds like! Anyone know how long it takes to get the orders processed? I am expecting 2 wks. at the earliest. Next month, I will get "Ecto." Is there a lyrics archive anywhere of Happy's songs? Last night I bought KaTe's "TKI, "NfE," and "Lionheart," thus completing my KaTe cd's. I listened to all 3, and one thing really really struck me--the genius of "The Dreaming." There first 3 aren't horrible or anything like that, but "TD" is just mindblowing (IMHO :]) when stacked up to all other CDs of hers. "HoL" would be next, for the concept behind it. Anyhow, better stop the KaTe talk (I know about rec.gaffa! =] ) If anyone is interested, I might give my impressions/opinions of "Warpaint" when the time comes. Tschuess! --chris ======================================================================== Date: 2 June 1992 13:59:11 CDT From: Subject: Perspectives on electronic community--I In a post to ecto on January 23, Meredith wrote: >The neatest thing about this whole net-business >is the fact that people get to meet others as they really are- it's really >hard to hide yourself behind any sort of facade and hold it there. Almost >impossible, in fact- people figure you out sometime. It's my belief and >experience that the way folks are on the net are the way they are deep-down, >and when you actually meet in person you can't help but be yourself, no matter >how many masks you try to hide behind the rest of the time. I've always >been one to express myself much better via the written word than vocally, >but when I get together with net-friends I find myself babbling just as much >as I do electronically, if not more. >Electronic modes of communication are bringing more people together than >anyone would have dreamed possible. The hearing-impaired are able to > communicate >with anyone and everyone, there are hardly any prejudices to get past (I >don't think even God can spell ;), and people can get to know each other >so easily and become so close without ever being in the same room with one >another, that it truly boggles my mind. There are some out there who are >able to have a "net-personality" that isn't their own, but the percentage, >at least in my experience, is extremely low and in this case, I'd like to >believe, negligible. When I met the Love-Hounds in London at the KonvenTion, >it really brought home to me this concept of being among friends, when I'd >never seen these people in person before in my life. When I first read this, it reminded me of an article which appeared a year or so earlier, in the newsletter of the American Sociological Association Section on the Sociology of Culture, which engaged some of the points Meredith raised, albeit reaching somewhat different conclusions on certain issues. I started an effort to track the article down. A few days later, the comp-academic-freedom-talk mailing list reposted an article which touched on some very different aspects of the same general issue. While it dealt principally with computer conferencing as a teaching tool bene- fitting disabled people, it did deal at least briefly with the nature of social interaction through computer links. Last weekend, I finally came into possession of the former article. According- ly, I am now pleased to share them both with you, in separate postings. Mitch Pravatiner ======================================================================== Date: 2 June 1992 14:41:09 CDT From: Subject: Perspectives on electronic community--II (My thanks to Muriel Cantor and Bob Weber of the ASA Culture Section for their assistance in obtaining a copy of this article--M.P.) CYBERSPACE AND THE LIMITS OF SOCIAL AND CULTURAL REALITY by Allucqere Rosanne Stone (Source: American Sociological Association, Sociology of Culture Section News- letter, Volume 5, Number 2, Winter 1990, pp. 4-5. Copyright 1990, 1991, American Sociological Association. Clearance for redissemination not solicited.) Julie was a totally disabled older woman, but she could push the keys of a com- puter with her headstick. The personality she projected into the "net"--the vast electronic web that links computers all over the world--was huge. On the net, Julie's disability was invisible and irrelevant. Her standard greeting was a big, expansive "HI!!!!!!" Her heart was as big as her greeting, and in the intimate electronic companionships that can develop during online conferen- cing between people who may never physically meet, Julie's women friends shared their deepest troubles, and she offered them advice--advice that changed their lives. Trapped inside her ruined body, Julie "herself" was sharp and percep- tive, thoughtful and caring. After several years, something happened that shook the conference to the core. "Julie" did not exist. "She" was, it turned out, a middle-aged male psychiat- rist. Logging onto the conference for the first time, he had accidentally begun a discussion with a woman who mistook him for another woman. "I was stunned," he said later, "at the conversational mode. I hadn't known that women talked among themselves that way. There was so much more vulnerability, more willingness to risk. Men's conversations on the nets were much more guarded and superficial, even among intimates. It was fascinating, and I wanted more." He spent weeks developing the right persona. A totally disabled, single older woman was perfect. She wouldn't be expected to have a social life. Conse- quently her existence only as a net persona would seem natural. It worked for years, until one of Julie's devoted admirers, bent on finally meeting her in person, tracked her down. The news reverberated around the net. Reactions varied from humorous resigna- tion to blind rage. Most deeply affected were the women who had shared their innermost feelings with Julie. "I felt raped," one said. "I felt that my deepest secrets had been violated." Several went so far as to repudiate the genuine gains they had made in their personal and emotional lives. They felt those gains were predicated on deceit and trickery. The computer hackers, the people who wrote the programs by means of which the nets exist, just smiled tiredly. They had understood from the beginning the radical changes in social conventions that the nets implied. Young enough in the first days of the net to react and adjust quickly, they had long ago taken for granted that many of the old assumptions about the nature of identity had quietly vanished under the new electronic dispensation. Electronic networks in their myriad kinds, and the mode of interpersonal interaction that they foster, are a new manifestation of a social space that has been better known in its older and more familiar forms in conference calls, communities of letters, and FDR's fireside chats. It can be characterized as "virtual" space --an imaginary locus of interaction created by communal agreement. In its most recent form, concepts like distance, inside/outside, and even the physical body take on new and frequently disturbing meanings. One of the more interesting aspects of virtual space is "computer crossdress- ing," of which Julie was an early manifestation. On the nets, where warranting (grounding a persona in a physical body) is meaningless, men routinely use female personae when they choose, and vice versa. This wholesale appropriation of the other has spawned new modes of interaction. Ethics, trust and risk still continue, but in different ways. Gendered modes of communication have remained relatively stable, but who uses which of the two socially recognized modes has become more plastic. A woman who has appropriated a gendered male conversational style may be simply assumed to be male at that place and time, so that her/his online persona takes on a kind of quasi-life of its own, separate from the person's embodied life in the "real" world. In studying virtual systems, both the space of interaction which is the net and the space of interaction which we call the "real" world are consensual loci. Each has its own "reality," determined by local conditions. Shortly the conferencees will abandon warranting personae in even more complex ways, as the first "virtual reality" environments come on line. VR, one of a class of interactive spaces which are coming to be known by the general term cyberspace, is a three-dimensional consensual locus or, in the terms of science fiction writer William Gibson, a "consensual hallucination" in which data may be visualized, heard, and even felt. The "data" in some of these visual en- viroments are people: 3-d representations of individuals who "enter" the cyberspace by donning computerized goggles, gloves or entire suits. While high resolution images of the human body in cyberspace are years away, when they arrive they will take "computer crossdressing" even further. In cyber- space a man may be seen and perhaps touched as a woman and vice versa--or as anything else. In a recent experiment in a VR laboratory, the participants embodied themselves as lobsters. ("One of the advantages of being a lobster," a participant remarked, "is that you have extra limbs.") They envision renting prepackaged body forms complete with voice and individual scent: multiple per- sonality as commodity fetish. The social and cultural questions that virtual environments raise are beginning to be addressed in such forums as the Second International Conference on Cyber- space, to be held in April, 1991 at the University of California, Santa Cruz. New academic organizations like the Group for the Study of Virtual Systems have begun to study the social and cultural implications of virtual environments. A roundtable discussion at the Second International Conference will address such topics as politics of representation in cyberspace; implications for minority discourse; implications of teleagency; what counts as style, and why; legal, economic and technological factors in the institution of cyberspace(s); the meaning of surveillance, security, privacy, and control in cyberspace; the disabled/differently abled in cyberspace; who owns/creates/manages cyberspa- ce(s); what is a crime in a virtual world...and so forth. It is interesting that just about the time that the last of the untouched "real world" field sites are disappearing, a new and unexpected kind of "field" is opening up--incontrovertibly social spaces in which people still meet face to face, but under new definitions of both "meet" and "face." Virtual systems instantiate the collapse of of the boundaries between the social and technolo- gical, biology and machine, natural and artificial that are figured in postmod- ernism. Seemingly futuristic, their implications for studies of culture are as real as the shock on the faces of "Julie's" intimate friends. Information and bibliographies on social studies of virtual systems is avail- able from The Group for the Study of Virtual Systems, Center for Cultural Studies, University of California at Santa Cruz 95064; or by email to virtual@ucscc.ucsc.edu. ------------------------ Allucqere Rosanne Stone's background is in neurology (NIH), film production (Sundance Institute), and recording (Jimi Hendrix, the Boston Symphony). She worked with the Bell Telephone Laboratories Special Systems Exploratory Devel- opment group, and as a programmer, consultant, and engineering manager in Silicon Valley. Her first science fiction novel, "Ktahmet," will be published by DAW Books/New American Library. She is currently completing a book on cy- berspace and culture. She travels between Santa Cruz and San Diego, and will be teaching courses in microsociology, film theory, and gender studies during 1991. ======================================================================== Date: 2 June 1992 14:44:50 CDT From: Subject: Perspectives on electronic community--III (Source: Computers and Academic Freedom mailing list, postings for January 27, 1992 [comp-acad-freedom-talk@eff.org]) Date: Mon, 27 Jan 92 13:34:06 -0600 From: "Carl M. Kadie" Message-Id: <9201271934.AA28227@m.cs.uiuc.edu> Subject: [comp.org.eff.news, et al.] Liberation Technology To: comp-academic-freedom-talk@eff.org (comp-academic-freedom-talk mailing list) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.news,comp.org.eff.talk From: rita@eff.org (Rita Marie Rouvalis) Subject: Liberation Technology Message-ID: <1992Jan27.180504.29513@eff.org> Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1992 18:05:04 GMT LIBERATION TECHNOLOGY Equal Access Via Computer Communication by Norman Coombs (NRCGSH@RITVAX.ISC.RIT.EDU) I am a blind professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology.As such I use a computer with a speech synthesizer,and regularly teach a class of students online with a computer conference. Most of these students have no physical handicap. Some, however, are hearing impaired, and others totally deaf. I have team-taught another course at the New School for Social Research, some 350 miles away, with a teacher who is blind and confined to a wheelchair. On the computer screen, our handicaps of blindness and mobility make no difference. One of the courses I teach online is African American history. In that class, some students are White, some Black, others Asian, and still others Native American. Obviously, some of the class members are male and others female. All of these differences, like those of the handicaps described above, become unimportant on the computer screen. It isn't that these characteristics disappear; participants share their identities, views and feelings freely. However, these differences no longer block communication and community. In fact, conference members often feel free to make such differences one of the topics for discussion. A student in my Black history course said that what he liked about conducting a class discussion on the computer was that it didn't matter whether a person was male, female, Black, White, Red, Yellow, blind or deaf. His comments were accepted for their own worth and not judged by some prior stereotype. One myth about the computer is that it is cold, depersonalizing and intimidating. When I began using the computer to communicate with students, I had no idea of its potential to change my life and my teaching. First, it liberated me, a blind teacher, from my dependence on other people. I now have all my assignments submitted through electronic mail including take-home exams,and have little need for human readers. Because of this I have become a member of a pilot study using computer conferencing to replace classroom discussion for students in continuing education. Students with a personal computer and modem could work from home or the office. This freed them from the time and bother of commuting and also let them set their own schedule.The conference facilitates genuine group discussion without the class having to be in the same place at the same time. In addition, I find it easy to send frequent personal notes to individual students, giving me more contact with individual students than is usual in a traditional classroom. I find conferencing appeals to three groups. First, the off-campus continuing education students who no longer have to commute. Second, those who had been taking television or correspondence courses. The online experience gives them a means of exchanging information between themselves and their teacher. The third group turns out to be regular day students with scheduling problems. Online is especially valuable for students whose schedules are filled by laboratory courses. Although computer conferencing had obvious benefits for me, I had failed to grasp its significance for disabled students in general. Only when a deaf student joined the class did I realize its potential. This deaf woman said that this was the first time in her life that she had conversed with one of her teachers without using an intermediary. She also remarked that mine had been her most valuable college course because she could share in the discussions easily and totally. Computer conferencing can also benefit people with mobility impairments. They can go to school while they stay at home. The distance involved could be anything from a few miles to all the way across the continent or across an ocean. Students with motor impairments can also use this system. There are a variety of alternate input devices to let motor impaired persons use a computer even though they cannot handle a keyboard. But conferencing liberates more people than the physically disabled. All students became less inhibited in the discussions. Once students got over any initial computer phobia, many found it easier to participate. Where there is no stage then there is no stage fright. While some educators prefer to keep the teaching process academic and objective, others are convinced that students learn more profoundly when they become emotionally engaged in the process. My class underlined this aspect of conferencing. In a discussion on welfare, one woman in her twenties confessed to being on welfare and described her feelings about it. In a Black history course, students described personal experiences as victims of racism. White students admitted to having been taught to be prejudiced and asked for help and understanding. Black students revealed that they had prejudices about various shades of color within their own community. As a teacher, I often felt that I was treading on privileged ground. These were experiences I had never had in the 29 previous years of my teaching career. Computer communications is infamous for people making thoughtless and irresponsible attacks on one another, something known as "flaming". In my experience, happily, there has been almost none of this. First, the teacher has the opportunity to set ground rules and establish a professional atmosphere. Second, a computer conference is different than electronic mail. Once a mass mailing has been sent, it is irretrievable, while the contents of a computer conference are posted publicly for all to see. Most students seemed intuitively aware of the potential for misunderstanding and, before criticizing someone, they frequently asked questions to be sure that they understood what had be meant by the previous author. On very rare occasions I have removed a posting before it was read by most of the class. Usually, I prefer to leave controversial material on the conference and utilize it as a group learning experience. Computer communication has other important implications for both the print handicapped and those with motor impairments. Library catalogs can already be accessed from a personal computer and a modem. Soon, growing numbers of reference works will be available on-line . While the copyright problems are complex, it seems inevitable that large amounts of text material from periodicals and books will also be accessible on a computer network. I still have vivid memories of the first time I connected my computer to a library catalog and found my book was really there. It was only a year ago that I had my first personal, unassisted, access to an encyclopedia. Not only is this technology liberating to those of us who have physical impairments, but in turn, it will help to make us more productive members of society. Not all handicapped persons rush to join the computer world. Indeed, many have become dependent on human support systems. Sometimes, independence is frightening, and handicapped students may need special assistance to get started. Another problem is cost. While the personal computer has decentralized power and is seen as a democratizing force in society, it works mainly for the middle class. Unless there is a deliberate policy to the contrary, such technology will leave the underclass further behind. Visually impaired computer users, at present, have one growing worry. They fear that graphic interfaces and touch screens may take away all that the computer has promised to them. Recently passed federal legislation has tried to guarantee that future computer hardware and software be accessible to all the physically disabled,but there is no real mechanism to enforce this. Besides, voluntary awareness and cooperation by computer providers is a far better approach to the problem. Educom has established EASI to work within the academic community for software access, and it is having an important impact on voluntary compliance. Others believe that adaptive software and hardware can be produced which can adequately interpret graphic interfaces for the visually impaired. Physical disabilities serve as an isolating factor in life. They also create a tremendous sense of powerlessness. Computer communication, however, serves to bring the world into one's home and puts amazing power at one's fingertips. Not only can this empowerment liberate the handicapped to compete in society more equally, but the sense of power changes how one feels about oneself. Finally, I am personally excited about the ability of computer networking to provide more equal access to education and information for many persons with physical disabilities. In the fall of 1991, The Rochester Institute of Technology and Gallaudet University in Washington will conduct an experiment involving two courses: one taught from Rochester and the other from Washington, DC. Students from both campuses will be enrolled in both classes. While some use will be made of videos and movies, class discussions and meetings between a student and a teacher will all be done with computer telecommunications using Internet as the connecting link. Some students will be hearing impaired, and one teacher will be blind. Norman Coombs Professor of History Rochester Institute of Technology One Lomb Memorial Dr. Rochester NY 14623 Email: NRCGSH@RITVAX.ISC.RIT.EDU ======================================================================== The ecto archives are on hardees.rutgers.edu in ~ftp/pub/hr. There is a README file explaining what is where. Feel free to send me (or leave in the incoming directory, just let me know) things you'd like to have added. -- jessica (jessica@ns1.rutgers.edu)