Re: [Pen-l] What are these lists for?

[Doyle Saylor <doylesaylor@xxxxxxx>]

Greetings Economists,
On Jan 9, 2009, at 7:41 AM, Julio Huato wrote:

> Emotions, on the other hand, have been around for a while.  And it
> seemed that traditional writing had managed well to communicate
> emotions without new symbols.  Why use them then?

Doyle;
Early on with email people recognized that a lot of 'flaming' was  
happening.  Also on early pre-internet electronic bulletin boards.  It  
was surmised then that people often interpreted a note as being sent  
with the emotional message of something antagonizing hence flaming  
happened because of confusion over emotional content.  So people  
started attaching something for the receiver to know what the  
emotional content was.

This uncovered a problem with writing systems that showed their  
inadequacy with carrying emotion information.  The issue is  
highlighted in email because of the speed of responses because face to  
face people sync up their feelings in a conversation in real time.   
The more immediate email showed how text by itself was deeply  
ambiguous about emotional content.  One cannot really well convey  
emotions with text no matter how well literature seems to describe a  
state of feelings.

Face to face or joint attention studies is one sort of scientific area  
in which a lot of this issue of how to show feelings is researched.   
This is conducted about how people online can work together.  I've  
seen various studies, but one that sticks in my memory, is lawyers  
working on legal papers online can correct errors on the same document  
much quicker and more accurately by being in the same room together  
than if they try to collaborate by email only.  The reason being that  
they can see each others face.

Face to face is real time awareness.  Email is fundamentally not real  
time, and writing is similar across all media in not being real time.   
When real time is a factor in communicating, the face becomes  
important to establish connection stably.  Normal human conversation  
routinely is not accurate like writing conventions seek to be, but  
rest upon a mutual practice of clarification and redundancy like  
anticipating what someone will say.  For example old married couples  
know each other well enough to finish one's sentence.

Telephone conversations can function as real time means of connecting  
in the sense the voice can display feeling as well as the face.   
Written down the same words lose that content.   Emotion content then  
is related to the strength and accuracy of the connection.  In other  
words emotions convey information about accurate and stabile  
connection in communication.  Hence are a network property of  
communication as opposed to text which is a data carrier.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor
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