Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 641.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Sun, 04 Feb 2001 10:39:17 +0000
From: lachance@chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance)
Subject: Re: 14.0624 e-bouncer vs e-dictator
Osher,
Are you acquainted with Donna Haraway's
Simians, cyborgs, and women: the reinvention of nature
?
Or more specifically, given the cultural allusion you made recently,
Eric Greene's Planet of the apes as American myth : race and politics in
the films and television series
?
Or
Gorillas in the Mist
?
I think Dan Price's anecdote helps elucidate the simple
anthropological fact that audiences as much as participants are
bound by rules of etiquette. I would venture to speculate that as more
users have mastered the poise of the delete key and the ingenuity of the
filter the general complaints about flame wars have declined (and will do
so for any given group in the future -- unless the flaming spills over
into spamming).
Boasting contests, counting the dozens and flame wars are
very much cybernetic systems that feed the fascination of participants and
observers. Gregory Bateson collects many fine examples in Steps to an
Ecology of Mind.
The banishment techniques as a means of controlling behaviour can be
resource intensive as Wizards on MOOs and MUDs can attest. To tell a
persona that they will be liquidated can sometimes act as a goad -- it
being a badge of honour to be booted out of the place and a source of
pleasure to revisit incognito.
The classic study on community policing in cyberspace remains for me
Julian Dibbell's Village Voice article widely available online.
http://www.hnet.uci.edu/mposter/syllabi/readings/rape.html
"A Rape in Cyberspace or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster
Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database Into a
Society"
I understand from a look at the Humanist archive that Dibbell has
published a book length study
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/Humanist/v12/0481.html MY
TINY LIFE: CRIME AND PASSION IN A VIRTUAL WORLD and that the ever diligent
David L. Gants sent on the announcement of a review of the book from David
Silver at The Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies
http://otal.umd.edu/~rccs
[How have I done in resisting the urge to engage in a massive offlist
tirade against speciesism and throwing a banana peel your way?]
Remember Sara, the language-learning chimpanzee?
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~jel/SGMonKanzi.html
Has any examined this literature and its intersection with natural
language processing?
--
Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance
Member of the Evelyn Letters Project
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~dchamber/evelyn/evtoc.htm
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