This is a draft copy. The final should be cited as Feenberg, A. "A User's Guide to the Pragmatics of Computer Mediated Communication," Semiotica. Volume 75, Issue 3-4, Pages 257–278, ISSN (Online)1613-3692, ISSN (Print) 0037-1998, DOI: 10.1515/semi.1989.75.3-4.257, November 2009 Available here: http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/semi.1989.75.issue-3-4/semi.1989.75.3-4.257/semi.1989.75.3-4.257.xml

A USER'S GUIDE TO THE PRAGMATICS OFCOMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION

Andrew FeenbergWestern Behavioral Sciences Institute

Artificial CommunicationComputers are widely believed to be "artificial"

models of "natural" human intelligence. "AI" and therelated field of cognitive science have received agreat deal of study in recent years. The entry of thecomputer into the field of communications suggestsanother interesting metaphor which may also proveuseful. Instead of considering the computer as a modelof the mind, one could look at computer mediatedcommunication systems as "artificial" models of the"natural" communication systems in which we areaccustomed to participate. The interesting feature of"AC" is not the use of computer hardware, but theconscious construction of programs and conventions bywhich to simulate familiar communication systems, andto make possible new systems not previously conceived.

This discussion will explore the implications ofartificial communication in the case of computerconferencing, a particularly revealing application of

computers to human communications. Computerconferencing is a sophisticated kind of electronic mailsystem employed to facilitate group discussion over acomputer network. The technology makes it possible todefine private groups, usually no larger than 50, withaccess to a topically defined discussion forum.Messages typed by members of the group at their owncomputer terminals are transmitted over phone lines toa central computer where they are classified andstored. Participants can "sign on" at times of theirown convenience, using the central computer as a"meeting place" for an "asynchronous" conversation thatmay last weeks or months.

Technically considered, computer conferencing is anexample of what Gilbert Simondon (1958) calls progressthrough "concretization." Technological advance oftenproceeds by integrating apparently separate, externallyrelated functions in a new and more "concrete" whole.Thus the mail system is separate from but dependent onthe means of local filing of received messages. Only amessage that has been filed can be reaccessed over timeand used by the associates of the recipient. While thetechnology of transmission has advanced rapidly overthe last century, from the pony express to packetswitching, the filing technology has remained stable,and determines the social structure of mail as a systemof person to person transmission with the recipientresponsible for the physical action of opening the mailand inserting it into an appropriate folder. Evenordinary electronic mail systems remain wedded to theoriginal social structure of traditional mail, with itsindividual senders and recipients responsible for thelocal disposition of the message.

With computer conferencing all this is changed. Thecentral computer serves as a remote filing cabinet orbulletin board where all participants can see thelatest additions to the discussion and respond. Nolonger is it necessary for a local recipient to dispose

of the message; instead, the sender can place itdirectly in a virtual locus which is shared by allparticipants. Computer conferencing "concretizes" thepreviously separate functions of transmission andfiling. The social structure of mail as a basicallyone-to-one means of transmission is shattered andreplaced by true group interaction without regard forspatial proximity.

Contrary to the commonplace expectation thatanything involving computers must be analytic andimpersonal, quite complex social interactions takeshape on computer conferencing systems. Users act "asif" they were participating in one or another familiarsituation by introducing conventions analogous to thosewhich prevail in everyday settings. Any type ofprimarily verbal small group activity can then bemediated by computer.

Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz (1981:1) call thecombination of computer conferencing programs andconsciously innovated conventions "Groupware.""Groupware = intentional GROUP processes and proceduresto achieve specific purposes + softWARE tools designedto support and facilitate the group's work." Thedesign of groupware is a necessary function in theconstruction of artificial communication systems muchas interior design is necessary to suit a building forthe type of work that is to go on within it. Computermediated communications provides electronic socialenvironments for the activities that take place on-line. These environments are as socially specific asthe various interiors designed for the wide variety ofdifferent types of meetings that are organized in face-to-face settings. The selection of the properenvironmental design depends on an appreciation of theneeds and problems of the group which the design isintended to serve. Something quite similar goes on inthe domain of computer mediated communications, wheregroupware designers and programmers must identify the"social factors" that determine, on the basis of

specific types of group needs, who can have access towhat material through what procedure, whether commentsare filed according to date, topic, or some othersystem, the powers assigned to discussion leaders, andso on.

It is conscious design and selection whichdistinguishes groupware most significantly fromordinary social conventions. In another domain, videogames offer a particularly telling illustrations ofthis distinction. There are several video games basedon the image of a rebounding ball, one of whichresembles a pinball game, complete with cushions andflippers. The image of the ball on the screen obeysthe laws of Newtonian mechanics just like the realballs in play in an old fashioned pinball game. Yetthere is a subtle difference between the moving pointof light on the screen and a ball bearing: the latter,as a moving mass, "must" obey Newton's laws by nature,while the former is merely "instructed" to obey theselaws by a programmer.

Man cannot alter the laws of nature, but the ruleswe create for ourselves are conventions, and these wecan change. Thus one can imagine a program in whichthe image of the ball on the screen obeys entirely non-Newtonian principles of motion. (There is a "zero-gravity" version of computerized pinball on themarket.) No similar variants of a real pinball gameare imaginable, at least not on this earth.

There is an interesting analogy between these gamesand communication systems. The "laws" of communicationwe obey in everyday life are, of course, deeplyingrained cultural conventions rather than naturallaws. They form the horizon of our communicativepractice, beyond awareness and decision for the mostpart, and although they are not natural laws they areso deeply rooted in our consciousness as a sort ofsocial "second nature". By contrast, we experiencecomputer conferencing as an "artificial" communication

system. Many of the rules we obey on this system areobvious products of conscious decisions made either byparticipants or programmers. Usually these decisionsaim at constructing a framework that resembles familiarcommunication settings, such as meetings or classrooms,just as video games attempt to imitate familiar laws ofmotion.

A "Non-Newtonian" Communication System The strangest thing about computer conferencing is

the combination of rapid iterations, almost rapidenough to recall spoken conversation, with therestriction of all communication to written messages.The speed with which messages are exchanged makes itpossible to use computer conferencing in ways one wouldnever attempt to use mail, for example, to manage aproject or teach a class. Yet no matter what we do tobanalize the on-line environment it retains a strange"non-Newtonian" quality because it works only withwritten texts where we constantly expect to findspeech. This feature violates many deeply ingrainedcultural assumptions we make about communication, forexample, the assumption that writing is more formal andless personal than speech. A world in which suchassumptions do not hold is truly alien, as can be seenfrom the following example, drawn from literature, of asociety in which a communication system with propertiessimilar to those of computer conferencing plays animportant role.

The medieval Japanese novel, The Tale of Genji,(Murasaki, 1935) is set in a royal court in which face-to-face communication is so highly formalized that itis extremely tensionful for all but intimate familymembers. Guests are received in a special receptionroom where the host sits on a dias behind a screen andspeaks according to complex rules of etiquette anddiction. It is an extraordinary gesture of friendship,or an indiscretion, to show one's feelings or one'sface to outsiders in a private space such as a home.

What a relief in such a society, to receive a letterfrom a friend! Under these circumstances, letterwriting takes on a special importance as a medium formore sincere, personal and private communication thanis possible in face-to-face encounters. The charactersof the novel show their mood and taste by choosing aspecial paper for each letter, and display their graceand elegance in the beauty of their script. A gift offlowers accompanies an important letter. Servantscarry the letters back and forth at the convenience ofthe correspondents, making possible rapid exchangeswith confirmation of reception.

In this society all our assumptions about thedifferences between face-to-face and writtencommunication are reversed. Writing is the morepersonal form of communication, the one which permitsthe most natural expression of feeling. Thecorrespondents use the material stuff of which themessage is composed much as we use our clothing, as amedium for tacit self-presentation. Meanwhile, speechand the face have been so highly formalized that theyare presented publicly much as we present a text:carefully prepared, rehearsed, without spontaneity orsincerity.

Did medieval Japanese court life anticipatecommunication by computer? It would push an amusinganalogy to the point of absurdity to claim that it did.However, correspondence in that society shares withcomputer conferencing the (for us) paradoxicalcombination of highly personalized writtencommunication, informality, and the absence oftechnical barriers to the rapid asynchronous exchangeof messages.

Writing and Personal Presence In our culture face-to-face communication is the

ideal paradigm of the meeting of minds, compared with

which all other modes of communication are felt to bedefective. Communication seems to us most complete andsuccessful where the person is physically present "in"the message. This physical presence is supposed to bethe guarantor of authenticity: you can look yourinterlocutor in the eye and sense the tacit signs oftruthfulness or falsehood, the context and tone whichpermit the correct interpretation of the transmittedcontent. Computer conferencing helps us to see thelimitations of these culturally determined assumptions.

A negative view of the written word is alreadyclearly expressed by Plato, who argues that writing isan imitation of speech, while speech itself is animitation of thought. Thus writing would be animitation of an imitation and lowly indeed in thePlatonic hierarchy of being, based on the superiorvalue of the original over the copy. For Plato theessential point is that writing detaches the messagefrom its author. In speech the author is directlypresent in the message, while no one is present in atext. The message, once detached from its author andbecome a text can cross time (written records) andspace (mail), acquiring objectivity, permanence andmobility, while losing personality (Derrida, 1972.).

That we still think about writing much as did Platois shown by our sense of the different values of face-to-face, written, typed and printed forms ofcommunication. These different ways of communicatingform a continuum, going from the most to the leastpersonal. The computer appears to represent a finalstep toward total impersonality. For example,authorship seems to disappear altogether when textsentered into the computer's memory can be accessed inan order determined by the recipient rather than thewriter, in accordance with the recipient's interestrather than the writer's agenda.

But is it true that computer communication is akind of imitation cubed of thought, radicallysubversive of the personal touch? This expected

outcome of the application of computers tocommunications does not correspond at all to thefeelings users have about the medium. Instead, theyoften have the impression that through the computerthey gain a more immediate access to each other'sthought processes, undistracted by the status signalingand social games that are played simultaneously withspeech in face-to-face encounters.

In fact, ordinary individuals possess the"literary" capability necessary to project theirpersonalities in written texts. The loss of theinterlocutor's bodily presence does not signifyimpersonality, but rather calls forth a compensatoryeffort. Thus it is possible to use computerconferencing for such intense interactions as learning,"meeting" and even partying. Accustomed roles andrelationships reappear in this new communicativesetting, but subtly changed, sometimes for the better.

Communication Anxiety Entering and exiting face-to-face conversation

involves fairly complex forms of politeness called"phatic" functions by semiologists. When we say"Hello, how are you?" we signify our availability forsubstantive communication. We close the communicationline with another set of rituals, such as, "It's time Iget along, see you around." Throughout ourconversation, we are continually sending phatic signsback and forth to keep the line open and to make suremessages are getting through. For example, we say suchthings as, "What do you think of that?" or reply, "Yes,go on." Looks and facial expressions tacitly reassureinterlocutors that they are still in communication.All such phatic signs are elided in computerconferencing. Even standard codes for opening andclosing conversations are lacking.

Among other functions they serve, phatic utterancesverify the success of communicative initiatives.Messaging and commenting on-line, like participating ina face-to-face conversation, is a minor but realpersonal risk, and response is generally interpreted assignifying success while silence means failure. As asender of a message one needs to know not only that itwas received, but still more how it was received. Itis disturbing to lack even tacit signs of approval suchas nods of the head, smiles, glances, which in everydayconversation often take the place of explicit response.A participant writes that he finds himself "almostbegging this machine to recognize me."

This perhaps explains the curious fact thatcomputer conferencing seems to amplify certain socialinsecurities that no doubt were always there, but whichcome to the fore in this new medium as what I will call"communication anxiety." The problem is aggravated bythe asynchronous character of the medium which worksagainst feeling the full force of the other and weakensthe informal, tacit social controls of everyday face-to-face conversation. As a result, messages arefrequently left unanswered without the embarrassment wewould certainly feel if, for example, we were greetedby an acquaintance on the street and failed to respond.Thus, corresponding to the anxiety we feel about thereception of our own communication, there is anunprecedented casualness about responding to thecommunication of others.

In terms of ease of withdrawal, computerconferencing resembles letter writing, another mediumin which phatic functions are quite weak. It is farless rude to fail to respond to a letter than to refuseto answer a direct question in face-to-faceconversation. A poor correspondent will be excusedbecause of the delays and uncertainties associated withordinary mail. Correspondents do not know when, oreven if their letters are received, and in any case the

technical delay between sending a letter and receivinga response is long and unavoidable, loweringexpectations and calling for reserves of patience wequickly lose under the much better technical conditionsof computer conferencing. With this new technologymessages are never "lost in the mail" but are deliveredinstantly to the central computer, and manyconferencing programs even allow participants to findout when their messages are received by the addressee.These technical improvements, which make rapidexchanges possible, also mark unusual delays negativelyas a possible sign of rejection or indifference sincethere is no technical excuse for silence.Paradoxically, then, speeding up and improvingasynchonous exchanges causes unexpected distress.

This is why on-line communities place such anemphasis on obtaining active participation andminimizing merely passive reading of the conference bymembers who are often pejoratively called "lurkers."The concern with participation may become obsessive,revealing the surprising depths of anxiety oftenexperienced by authors who feel present in their textsbut who are not protected by strong social controlsfrom unceremonious withdrawal by their interlocutors.

The Imperative of Explicitness In ordinary conversation, when we do not understand

what is being said, we are likely to communicate thatfact tacitly by facial expression. The speaker willusually pick up our distress immediately and, by addinga sentence or two on the apparent subject of confusion,resolve the problem before explicit and possiblyembarassing notice of it need be taken. Completewithdrawal in the face of minor communication problemsis thus relatively unusual because it is perceived asfar more rude than bringing into play the sort of tacitcorrective measures that generally suffice tostraighten out misunderstandings.

Because these tacit correctives are unavailable,computer conferencing places a higher premium onclarity and explicitness than does everyday face-to-face conversation. It is embarrassing to concedeconfusion in writing, and the delay between message andresponse compounds communication problems. As aresult, one commonplace way of dealing with unclear andambiguous messages is to keep quiet. When a messagesucceeds only in reducing the interlocutors to silence,it has clearly failed in its purpose, but it may besome time before the writer becomes aware of theproblem and can take explicit corrective action. Thetenuousness of computer conferencing thus imposes adegree of clarity and willingness to discusscommunication problems that is rarely experienced withany other medium.

Participants frequently respond to this situation byadopting literary techniques such as the use ofredundancy which reduce ambiguity by narrowing therange of meanings and connotations of terms. Themultiplication of slightly different ways of presentingthe same ideas, using synonyms and different encodingschemes, increases the likelihood of the messagegetting through. But these techniques have thedisadvantage of violating another important rule ofcomputer conferencing, the imperative of brevity, whichresponds to the constant danger of "informationoverload." A clear message that is so long no onebothers to read to its end may be even moredemoralizing for conference participants than a short,ambiguous message that can be ignored.

While it is obvious as a general rule that in allcommunication length must be matched to complexity, itis not always easy to find the right trade-offs betweenbrevity and clarity. Two models of effective on-linecommunication obey each of these two imperatives. Theyare the telegram and the memo, each of which

corresponds to the needs of a different type of on-linegroup.

Many computer conferences work well with briefmessages of half a dozen to a dozen lines. Telegraphicmessages represent an extreme trade-off of clarityagainst brevity. They are inherently more ambiguousthan other forms of communication because theycompletely eliminate redundancy. Some computerconferences achieve quasi-telegraphic solutions to theclarity/brevity dilemma through using technicallanguage to discuss a very sharply defined theme.Technical languages are designed to restrict thesemantic range of terms, thereby reducing the need forredundancy.

The memo model supplies a clear context for theideas presented and uses an outline format to organizepoints, helpful techniques of group communication. Thememo model yields comment lengths in the hundreds ofwords rather than short bursts of a few lines. Thisis particulary appropriate in conferences which have afairly fluid context and participants with verydifferent backgrounds. In these conferences one cannotassume a shared technical language but must useordinary language to introduce and explain anytechnical content. In such conferences, long messagestend to be the rule for the moderator at least and,where the participants are well qualified andinterested, for them as well.

The Moderating Role Like other small groups, those organized through

computer conferencing are most successful whenskillfully led. The basic technical conditions forexercising leadership are usually defined in theconferencing program itself as a "moderating function"to which various powers are assigned: to set up groupsof participants as "conference members," to establishand name a file in the central computer in which tostore the discussions which make up a conference, and

sometimes to delete irrelevant messages from the fileor perform other related tasks of conferencemanagement.

These technical powers represent, however, only asmall part of the moderating "groupware," which Hiltzand Turoff (1981: 23-24) describe as follows:

In order for a computerized conference to besuccessful...the moderator has to work veryhard at both the "social host" and the"meeting chairperson" roles. As social hostshe/he has to issue warm invitations topeople; send encouraging private messages topeople complimenting them or at least commentingon their entries, or suggesting what they may beuniquely qualified to contribute. As meetingchairperson, she/he must prepare an enticing-sounding initial agenda; frequently summarize orclarify what has been going on; try to express theemerging consensus or call for a formal vote;sense and announce when it is time to move on to anew topic. Without this kind of active moderatorrole, a conference is not apt to get off theground.

The moderator's role can also be considered as asort of literary equivalent of the "intermediary" inthe sense given this term by Luce Giard and Michel deCerteau (1983: 11) in their discussion of neighborhoodlife. But this is an intermediary active not inneighborhoods but in new electronic "localities," basedon written exchanges. In these new spaces, moderators,like intermediaries, are essentially "translators whodecode and recode fragments of knowledge, link themtogether, transform them by generalization, handle eachconjuncture of events by comparison with a previousexperience and put together in their own way, by aneveryday practice (pratique de l'ordinaire), a ...logic of the general and the particular, of action andof time."

These are critical social functions which cannot beinstalled in a computer program. In the next fewsections, I will propose some hypotheses about thenature of these functions, but before passing on tothat discussion I would like to offer one furtherremark on the general problem of on-line leadership,which is undoubtedly the crucial problem ofconferencing (Feenberg, 1986; Kerr, 1986.).

More often than not, when conferences fail it isbecause the person in charge is unable to overcome theinitial difficulty of transposing leadership skillsacquired in face-to-face settings to the on-linesetting. The usual way in which we learn to playdominant roles is through our experience in dominatedroles. Thus the ability to chair a meeting iswidespread among people who have attended meetings; andthe ability to teach is readily cultivated by many whohave been taught. It is in the course of theseexperiences that participants acquire an understandingof the implicit codes on the basis of which the groupcommunicates. But since so few people haveparticipated in computer conferences, it is oftendifficult to find an experienced leader who knows theon-line equivalents of the codes operative in face-to-face groups. Furthermore, the codes of on-lineactivity are still very much in formation and to someextent each moderator contributes to inventing them.These are transitional problems, but for the momentthey are very real and suggest the need for specializedconferences on every conferencing system wheremoderators can exchange experiences and pass down lore.

The Contextualizing and Monitoring Functions To understand the need for moderating, one must

begin with an appreciation of the strangeness of groupcommunication without a tacit dimension. What I willcall the "contextualizing" and "monitoring" functionsare explicit substitutes for the massive flows of tacitinformation concerning appropriate and relevant

communication that guide talk in everyday face-to-facesettings. These two functions complement each other.Contextualizing functions concern the establishment ofa general context of communication through explicitstatements by a moderator authorized to bring the groupinto existence by speaking in its name. Monitoringfunctions offer explicit verification of the accuracyof each participant's judgments about the nature ofthat context, implied in the way the participantaddresses the group. The skillful performance of thesefunctions is a precondition for effective computerconferencing.

The moderator's first and most basic task is tochoose at the outset what I will call a "communicationmodel" for the group. The basic human relationships ofcommunication (the "pragmatics" of communication)differ in characteristic ways from one type ofcommunication model to another, for example, inmeetings, courses, informal conversations, parties,doctor's visits, and so on. As soon as we enter aroom, we orient ourselves more or less consciously infunction of tacit cues we notice in the context of thecommunication process we are about to join. Thesecontextual cues establish a shared communication modelfrom which flows norms, roles and expectations. Sinceno tacit cues visible in the environment can establisha communication model for participants in on-linediscussions, moderators typically must make an explicitchoice for the group they lead, reducing thestrangeness of the medium by selecting a familiarsystem of roles and rules imitated from everyday life(Vallee et. al., 1975.).

The contextualizing function has the unusualsemiological property of proceeding largely through theuse of "performative utterances." These are statementswhich bring about the very reality they describe. Anexample would be the Principal's statement to theassembled scholars to the effect that "School is nowopen for the new term." Such an utterance effectively

"opens" the school and so is called "performative."Performative utterances appear frequently in thecontextualization process by which activities areinitiated with a shared understanding of norms andpurposes (Austin, 1962; Turner, 1970.).

In face-to-face interaction, performatives play arelatively minor role because so much tacitcontextualizing information is available to establishthe communication model. In computer conferences, onthe contrary, explicit contextualization is required toindicate to all participants the communication modelthat will govern their interactions. Unless someoneopens the conference by saying "This is a meeting,""This is a class," or "This is a support group," theparticipants have no way of being sure what kinds ofcontributions are relevant and appropriate to theessentially imaginary "situation" in which they findthemselves. The moderator's contextualizing functionsare therefore all-important in relieving some of theanxiety participants experience in a communicationsetting that is undefined by tacit contexts.

Once a communication model has been chosen, themoderator must play the specific leadership roleimplied in that model, such as chairperson, host,teacher, facilitator, entertainer, and so on. In largepart, this role will consist in monitoring conformitywith the communication model by reassuring participantsthat their contributions to the discussion really fitthe model. As noted above, conferencing participantsare haunted by the lack of tacit signs of approval,which, in a face-to-face setting, would normally assurethem that their remarks were appropriate in thecontext. The resulting communication anxiety maysilence individuals who would speak if only they hadthe minimum feedback necessary to feel welcome and athome in the conversation. It is the moderator'sfunction, shared to some extent with other members of

the conference, to insure that everyone receives thisfeedback.

Meta-Communication and the Art of Weaving The term "meta-communication" refers to

communication about communication. Meta-communicationis particularly important as a means for re-establishing a threatened communication link by callingattention to problems in the communication process.Once again, the moderator has the heaviestresponsibility for this function, although others maymeta-communicate as well and often do so in typicalconferences.

Most meta-communication in face-to-faceinteraction is tacit although occasionally we engage inexplicit meta-communication, as for example, when weask our interlocutor to speak up or to come to thepoint. However, tacit signs, cues we give with ourbodies and tone of voice are so effective that we canoften carry on quite complex conversations without everemploying explicit meta-communication. Not only can weget along most of the time without making our meta-messages explicit, it is often embarrassing to do so.But in computer conferencing we do not have the luxuryof tacit cueing because our only means of dealingtacitly with communication problems is itself a majorsource of problems. The only tacit sign that we cantransmit on a computer network is our silence, amessage that is both brutal and ambiguous, far more sothan the subtle uses of tone of voice, expression andgesture on which we normally rely for tacit meta-communication.

The solution to this dilemma is explicit meta-communication. Whenever communication problems arise,participants must overcome their inhibitions and sendcomments that call for further explanation of unclearremarks, call attention to problems of informationoverload, request clarification of emotional tone and

intent, suggest changes in the rules of the conference,and so on. In this way communication lines can be keptopen during difficult moments by avoiding the recourseto silence as a particularly destructive form of tacitmeta-communication.

Meta-comments oriented toward the content ofdiscussion are called "weaving" comments.1 These aremessages which summarize the state of the discussion,identifying its unifying themes and underlying pointsof disagreement. These comments represent an extremecase of the reflexivity of computer conferencing. Thetask of writing them involves a relation to discoursewhich is characteristically literary, a command of thelanguage world "from above."

The writing of weaving comments is particularlydifficult and time consuming. Many conferences lackweaving because no one has the time or the talentrequired to perform the function for the group. Thisis a pity since, as a written medium, conferencingoffers unique opportunities to use weaving to advancethe agenda of the group. The conference moderator cango over printouts carefully, refreshing the memory ofearlier discussions, clarifying confused expressions,identifying the themes, making connections, "indexing"the material mentally.

The weaving comments written on the basis ofthis sort of review then supply a unifying discourse,interpreting and integrating participants'contributions, and periodically "retotalizing" theunfolding discussion by drawing its various strandstogether in a temporary synthesis that can serve as astarting point for the next round of debate. Only themost brilliant conversationalists can do this sort ofthing in face-to-face settings. Our memories are notorganized to manage huge blocks of spoken language"from above" but "from within." We navigate a flow inspoken language, but can distance ourselves from

written text enough to translate it into our own termsand categories.

Weaving comments are essential to giving on-line groups a sense of accomplishment and direction.They supply the group with a code for framing its ownpast, and thereby establish a common boundary, sharedby the whole group, between past, present and future.These comments mark satisfying discontinuities in thetime of the conference, comparable with the repeatedadjournments and beginnings of meetings or classes thatmake it possible for us to simplify our lives byshoving outdated material back into the past where itcan rest on the penumbra of our awareness, whilefocussing themes that require concentrated attention inthe future.

Absorption What kind of social system arises in the on-

line space created by computer conferencing?Conferencing is frequently said to build community, andoften it does so, but the idea of community impliesbonds of sentiment that are not in fact necessary toeffective conferencing. A group of intensely involvedindividuals may succeed in writing a successfulconference whether they also form a community or just atemporary gathering. In fact communities sometimesfail at conferencing while people who scarcely knoweach other succeed. Rather than focussing on theconcept of community to explain the sociabilitycharacteristic of conferences, it would make sense tostudy the dynamics of conferencing on its own terms.This may open a way to understanding the specificity ofthe groups that form and flourish in this medium.

Conferencing dynamics are essentially a matterof the management of time, both the personal time ofthe participants and the overall time of theconference. To some extent these dynamics arereducible to such extrinsic factors as job requirementsor the need to accomplish a mission. But conferences

are surprisingly fragile and no amount of externalnecessity seems able to save hopelessly mismanaged on-line groups. One observes something similar in face-to-face meetings, which require not only an extrinsicraison d'etre but also the kind of skillful managementthat insures that those with something to say haveappropriate opportunities to speak, while all thosepresent remain in attendance to hear what has to besaid. The key question about the social cohesion ofconferences therefore concerns participants' intrinsicmotives for signing on regularly whatever the extrinsicreasons for which the on-line activity was initiated.Related to this is the question of how the framework ofthe conference empowers its members to contributecomments that motivate others to sign on.

Viewed from the standpoint of motivation, thesociability characteristic of conferencing is like thatof sports or games in that we are drawn in by interestin the next step in the process of interaction. Everycomment has a double goal: to communicate a content,and to evoke the (passive or active) participation ofinterlocutors. Pursuing the game metaphor a bitfurther, we can say that playing at computerconferencing consists in making moves that keep othersplaying. The goal is to prolong the game and to avoidmaking the last move. This is why computerconferencing privileges open-ended comments and forms,which invite a sequel, as opposed to whatever is closedand complete in itself.

Erving Goffman introduced the term "absorption"or "engrossment" to describe the force that draws usinto an encounter such as a game (Goffman, 1961.). Theconcept of absorption refers to the typicalconcentration on a shared purpose among people whoprecisely do not form a community but have accepted acertain context of common work or play for an intensebut temporary relationship. The term in fact evokesvery nicely conferencing participants' feelings about

an exciting conference. They are "absorbed" in theactivity as one might be in a game of poker or bridge.

Textual Production The comparison of conferencing with a game is

suggestive but omits the strangest aspect of theactivity, the fact that the "game" consists in writingand reading texts. Computer conferencing is in fact anew form of collaborative writing. From this point ofview, a completed conference forms a single text withseveral authors rather than a collection of singlyauthored texts. Naturally, there are conferences whichhave no real unity, and which are in fact anthologiesof texts by individual authors but these "monologic"conferences do not employ the medium to its fullestcapacity. One of the most exciting things aboutcomputer conferencing is its power to achieve somethingmore than this, a real "meeting" of the minds, if notnecessarily agreement between them.

How does a conference acquire the kind ofcoherence we associate with a text? Normally, whenseveral authors collaborate they revise each others'contributions, and it is this which makes a collectiveproduct of the resulting text. In this case, the orderof production bears no necessary relation to the orderof the final product. Participants in computerconferences generally lack a commonly agreed on plan oroutline and cannot modify each other's contributions.The order in which messages are deposited in theconference is fixed and no final revision brings theideas of each to bear on the others' actualformulations. A large measure of contingency andunpredictability is intrinsic to this process, far moreso than to ordinary collaborative writing.

The work of giving coherence to a conferencemight be called "textual management" to signify the

kind of collaborative relationship characteristic ofthis medium. The various moderating functionsdiscussed above are the means of textual managementavailable in computer conferencing. These functionsinclude requesting comments from participants, settingan agenda for the conference, and pulling it togetherperiodically around a common theme. This list suggestsyet another metaphor for conferencing since these meansmight be better compared with those at the disposal ofthe leader of a jam session rather than with thoseemployed by the editor of an article or book. Eachparticipant takes his or her turn at "improvising" acontribution to the group's performance under thedirection of the moderator. The result is a new kindof text.

Games, writing and jazz improvisation eachsupply a piece of the puzzle that is computerconferencing. These pieces come together in the ideaof the conferencing as an improvisational game playedwith text. From the world of writing conferencingborrows the unique property by which texts propel usforward from the first to the last line throughestablishing patterns of generic expectation anddeploying suspense and surprise to generate intrinsicmotivations for continuing to read. In conferencingthese motivations are transformed in the course of"play" into the cement of a continuing socialinteraction that consists in the exchange of"improvised" texts.

The Management of Identity Computer conferencing is one of a number of new

computer mediated communication technologies whichsupport the development of new forms of management ofidentity and discourse. By the management of identity,I mean the personal techniques individuals employ tocontrol their self-presentation, techniques whichdiffer from one medium to another. Users of electronicbulletin boards, dialogue systems and computer

conferences appear to each other only through explicitwritten language. Where self-presentation takes theform of the production of personal texts, it ispossible to reflect on a choice of tone and language ina way that few can achieve in speech, dress andgesture. The communicating subject is profoundlymodified by the generalization of such highlycontrolled forms of self-presentation. The "I" whopresents you with the "me-as-text" is not exactly thesame "I" who appears in face-to-face encounters. Thisis an "I" that has increased its distance from theworld and itself far beyond the norm for our culture.

The startling consequences of enchanced controlover identity are exemplified in an extreme form by"chatting" systems in which people make dates throughan exchange of pseudononymous messages. These systemsrepresent an interactive form of the classifiedpersonal advertisement. In France, where such systemshave been developed on a fairly large scale, this is apopular way to meet people (Bruhat, 1984.).2 As withwritten "personals," the individuals have theimpression of fully commanding all the signals theyemit, whereas control of the totality of the means ofexpression in face-to-face interaction is extremelydifficult and uncertain. Thus the use of writing makespossible elaborate games with identity. As ClaudeBaltz (1984: 185) writes, "instead of identity havingthe status of an initial given (with which thecommunication usually begins), it becomes a stake, aproduct of the communication." Even more important,there is greater ease of withdrawal from potentiallyembarrasing situations in a written exchange ofpseudononymous messages than in a face-to-faceencounter.

These aspects of the experience ofpseudononymous communication call to mind ErvingGoffman's (1982: 31) double definition of the self asan "image" or identity, and as a "sacred object" towhich consideration is due: "the self as an image

pieced together from the expressive implications of thefull flow of events in an undertaking; and the self asa kind of player in a ritual game who copes honorablyor dishonorably, diplomatically or undiplomatically,with the judgmental contingencies of the situation."By tremendously increasing the individuals' control ofimage, while diminishing the risk of serious loss offace, computer messaging alters the sociological ratioof the two dimensions of selfhood and opens up a newsocial space.

The relative desacralization of the anonymoussubject weakens social control in computer mediatedcommunication as contrasted with face-to-faceconversation. It is difficult to bring group pressureto bear on someone who cannot see your frown ofdisapproval. Communication by computer thusparadoxically enhances the sense of personal freedomand privilege individualism, while reducing the"existential" engagement of the self in itscommunications. "Flaming"--the expression ofuncensored emotions on-line--is a negative consequenceof this feeling of liberation, as is the diminishedsense of the reality of the other and, correspondingly,feelings of isolation and communication anxiety.

Chatting systems, like "hacking," (Turkle,1984) are bizarre social innovations that accompany andsubvert the mainstream of technological innovation onwhich they depend. Marc Guillaume (1982: 23) hasintroduced the concept of "spectrality" to describe thesubject of these new forms of interaction betweenindividuals who are reduced to anonymity by the societyin which we live, and yet succeed in turning thatanonymity to their own profit, using it to shelter andassert their identity.

Teletechnologies, considered as a culturalsphere, respond to a massive and unconfessed desire toescape partially and momentarily both from the symbolicconstraints which persist in modern society and from

totalitarian functionality. This escape does not takethe still ritualized form of those brief periods ofcelebration or disorder permitted by traditionalsocieties, but is initiated at the convenience of thesubject, who pays for this freedom by a loss. Hebecomes a spectre...in the triple sense of the term: hefades away in order to wander freely like a phantom ina symbolic order which has become transparent to him.

The Relationship to Discourse These changes in the management of identity

only take on their full significance against thebackground of the changes in the role of language thatoccur in computer mediated communications systems. Themodification of the linguistic environment can beunderstood in terms of the social implications of thedifferent types of iteration to which discourse issubject in different media (Derrida, 1972.).3 Thequestion concerns what might be called the organizationof social memory as it is structured by media such asstorytelling, books, and mass communications.

We can distinguish generally between"retrievable" and "repeatable" discourse. Retrievalinvolves accessing a text permanently deposited on anobjective support such as a book or diskette. Inprincipal there is no reason why such access should notbe entirely under the control of the subject since theinvolvement or presence of other human beings is not anintrinsic requirement of the retrieval process. Texts"stored" in human memory are "accessed" in aqualitatively different way through a "repetition" orperformance. I would call even the private recall of atext a performance, albeit with only the performer foraudience, because the logic of such a repetition isstill based on mnemonic and formulary devices linked tothe art of rhetoric (Yates, 1966.). In cultures whichrely heavily on the repetition of their basic texts,the function of performance is generally a specializedone assigned to certain individuals or social

categories, and the repetition of texts then takes theform of a social relationship to an audience. Accessto the repeated text is not under individual controlbut regulated socially.

The distinction between retrievable andrepeatable texts is more fundamental than that betweenspeech and writing, although it is generally true thatup to now spoken discourse could not be retrieved forcareful perusal but only "repeated" in memory or insubsequent performances while writing was designed foreasy retrieval as an aid to memory and reflection.This difference between speech and writing served inthe past as the basis for the concepts of oral andliterate culture, which retain much of their interestdespite the fact that today these descriptors are infact metaphors to the more fundamental distinctionbetween retrievable and repeatable discourse.

This change in the status of the concepts oforal and literate culture has occurred because thedifference between repetition and retrieval no longercorrelates neatly with the distinction between speechand writing: answering machines routinely and banallypresent us with speech as a retrievable text, computerdialogue systems make possible synchronous writtenconversation, and sophisticated phonemail systems andvoice management technology on computers will soonshift the balance toward retrievability in all domains.This shift has remarkable social implications.

It has only been a short while since MarshallMcLuhan announced the end of literate culture and therise of a new "oral" culture based on electronicbroadcasting. Certainly McLuhan was right to identifya steady devaluation of the written word in modernsocieties. This development seems to have reached itsculmination in recent years as evidenced by theproliferation of remedial writing courses in collegesand the gradual decline of the childhood pastime ofreading for pleasure and escape, a necessaryprecondition for learning to read properly at all. In

this context computer mediated communication seemsparadoxically to promise once again that writing willbecome a universal form of expression.

One powerful hypothesis about modernindividualism holds that it is related to the emergenceof printing and literacy, what I have calledretrievable forms of discourse (McLuhan, 1964; Ong,1977.). The spread of written discourse spreads thecorresponding form of subjectivity: the eye (I) of thereader is an individual. As Goody and Watt (1968: 62)argue, "Writing, by objectifying words, and by makingthem and their meaning available for much moreprolonged and intensive scrutiny than is possibleorally, encourages private thought."4 The organiccommunity of speech, based on repetition andperformance, gives way to the modern individual. Theself-consciousness of this individual involves distancefrom the language of the community and, as aconsequence, the innovation of a personal language thatis "double" because the speaker/writer uses it foreffect rather than "being" it. This distance fromlanguage is the essence of modern forms ofindividuality. It is the loss of this distance inpseudo-synchronous performance that accounts for thedecline of individuality in mass society (Ong, 1971:284-303; Katz, 1980: 84-89.).

McLuhan (1964: 50-51) was not afraid to drawthe political conclusions corresponding to his thesis,essentially the demise of Western individualism and therise of a new form of collectivism based on thereplacement of "literate, fragmented Western man" by "acomplex and depth-structured person emotionally awareof his total interdependence with the rest of humansociety."Generalized retrievability suggests adifferent future in which a new form of "postmodern"individualism emerges, not as a retrograde reminder ofthe dying past, but in response to the most advancedmethods of mediating experience (Lyotard, 1979: 103-104.).

Conclusion: A Reflexive Medium One of the originalities of computer

conferencing is the intensely self-conscious characterof the new medium. Typically, both participants andmoderator are involved in reflection on the meaning ofthe conference and the communication problems itengenders, and they share these concerns with eachother explicitly. The need for explicit meta-communication is particularly great among new users,whose interactions are often nearly contentless atfirst. Although the frequency of meta-communicationdeclines with experience, it remains a salient featureof the medium. A face-to-face conversation as self-consiousness as a typical computer conference would bea strange experience indeed.

One reason for this unusual state of affairs isthe difficulty experienced by the many new users ofcomputer communications at present. Because it posesso many problems for these users, reflection on themedium is a constant preoccupation of conferencingparticipants. This article, like other articleswritten by the many participant-observers of computerconferencing, might be thought of as an extendedsequence of "meta-comments" in the sense in which thisconcept was defined above.

The high degree of reflexivity of conferencingis to some extent also due to its newness. In thisregard I am reminded of a bit of film history that maysupply an instructive comparison to computerconferencing. The earliest films were of sights suchas horses racing. These films demonstrated themiraculous power of the camera to capture motion. In asense, then, these were purely reflexive films, filmswhich took as their subject the amazing potentialitiesof film itself. Times have changed: in one recent filmthe entire action consists in two men chatting at adinner table. That such a film can be madedemonstrates that film is no longer about itself. It

has achieved a degree of familiarity which releases itfrom the necessity of showing its stuff.

Because it is so unfamiliar, computerconferencing is still about itself to a remarkabledegree. We cannot help using it at this stage in itshistory to test its power to communicate. The proofthat it works is participation, the failure of whichprovokes communication anxiety. In sum, the outcome ofevery successful communication in this medium includesa bonus of satisfaction at having shown that the systemworks.

Perhaps there will soon come a time whencomputer conferencing will achieve the degree offamiliarity of film. Then the medium may becomesomewhat less intensely self-conscious, and explicitconcern with communication may fall to the marginallevel it occupies in others types of interaction. The"artificiality" of computer mediated communication willgradually come to resemble the "second nature" ofcommunication by such familiar media as the telephone.In the interim, before banality overtakes it, we canlearn a great deal by paying attention to the surprisesand disappointments of a new medium of communication.

NOTES

1. Leif Smith of the Denver Open Network firstintroduced the term "weaver" to describe a person who"sees patterns and can make connections." A weaver"organizes serendipity." Weavers may connect people topeople or to information.

2. The erotic charge of new communicationstechnology in France today curiously parallels earlyexperience with the telephone in that country. See,Catherine Bertho (1981).

3. Derrida's discussion of the concept ofiterability, reminds us of the relativity of thedistinction between speech and writing, and shows thatspeech is no more original than writing. Thus we canagree with his remark on McLuhan, to the effect that"we are not witnessing an end to writing which wouldrestore transparency or immediacy to social relationsaccording to McLuhan's ideological representation." (p.392) Yet, a non-ideological reconstruction of thedistinction generally covered by the difference betweenspeech and writing is needed. This is what I attemptin the remainder of this section. 4. Cole andScribner (1981: 236) distinguish between a view ofliterate culture which relies exclusively on theproperties of the written word, and their own "practiceaccount of literacy" which takes into account "threecomponents: technology, knowledge, and skills..." Thepractice account is particularly useful for thegeneralization of the distinction between literate andoral culture attempted here.

REFERENCES

Austin, J. L. (1961). Performative Utterances. InPhilosophical Papers. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Baltz, Claude (1981). Gretel: Un Nouveau Media deCommunication. In Telematique: Promedandes dans lesUsages, Marie Marchand et Claire Ancelin (eds.), p.185. Paris: La Documentation Francaise. Bertho,Catherine (1981). Telegraphes et Telephones: de Valmyau Microprocesseur, 243-245. Paris: Livre dePoche.

Bruhat, Thierry (1984). Messageries Electroniques:Gretel a Strasbourg et Teletel a Velizy. InTelematique: Promenades dans les Usages Marie Marchandet Claire Ancelin (eds.). Paris: La DocumentationFrancaise. De Certeau, Michel and Giard, Luce (1983).L'Ordinaire de la Communication. Reseaux (1983)3,11.

Cole, Michael and Scribner, Sylvia (1981). ThePsychology of Literacy, p. 236. Cambridge: HarvardUniv. Press.

Derrida, Jacques. (1972). La Pharmacie de Platon. InLa Dissemination. Paris: Seuil.

-(1972). Signature Evenement Contexte, 392. InMarges de la Philosophie. Paris: Editions deMinuit.

Feenberg, Andrew (1986). Network Design: AnOperating Manual for Computer Conferencing. IEEETransactions on Professional Communications 29(1).

Goffman, Erving (1961). Fun in Games. InEncounters. New York: Bobbs- Merrill.

-(1982). Interaction Ritual, 31. New York: Pantheon.Goody, Jack and Watt, Ian (1968). The Consequences

of Literacy, 62. In Jack Goody (ed.), Literacy inTraditional Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Guillaume, Marc (1982). Telespectres. Traverse 26,23. Hiltz, Roxanne and Turoff, Murray (1978).The_Network_Nation, 76-130, 23-24. Reading:Addison-Wesley,

Johansen, R, Vallee, J., and Spangler, T. (1979).Electronic_Meetings 59-84. Reading: Addison-Wesley.

Johnson-Lenz, P. and Johnson-Lenz, T. (1981).Consider the Groupware; Design and Group ProcessImpacts on Communication in the Electronic Medium. InStudies of Computer-Mediated Communications Systems: ASynthesis of Findings, S. R. Hiltz and Elaine Kerr(eds.), NJIT Research Report #16. An abridged versionis available in Computer-Mediated CommunicationSystems: Status and Evaluation, Hiltz and Kerr (eds),New York: Academic Press, 1982.

Katz, Elihu (1980). Media Events: The Sense ofOccasion. Studies in Visual Communication 6, 84-89.

Kerr, Elaine (1986). Moderating On-Line Conferences.IEEE Transactions on Professional Communications29(1).

Lyotard, Jean-Francois (1979). La ConditionPostmoderne, 103-104. Paris: Editions de Minuit.

McLuhan, Marshall (1964). Understanding Media, 172-173, 50-51. New York: McGraw Hill.

Murasaki, Shikibu (1935). The Tale of Genji, trans.by A. Waley. New York: The Literary Guild.

Ong, Walter (1977). From Mimesis to Irony, 283,300.In Interfaces of the Word. Ithaca and London:Cornell University Press.

-(1971). The Literate Orality of Popular CultureToday, 284-303. In Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology.Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Simondon, Gilbert (1958). La Mode d'Existence desObjets Techniques. Paris: Aubier.

Turkle, Sherry (1984). The Second Self, 225-238. NewYork: Simon and Schuster. Turner, Roy (1970).

Words, Utterances and Activities. InUnderstanding Everyday Life, Jack Douglas (ed.). NewYork: Aldine.

Yates, Francis (1966). The Art of Memory. Chicago:University of Chicago.