Re: Repeating -Reply -Reply -Reply

["Frank Sherwood" <FSHERWOO@Hermes.GC.PeachNet.EDU>]

> Carol, I think listserv-text is quite different than conversation and
> print, not simply a combination of the two.  Not sure how, exactly,
> but, for one thing, don't you think there's a hallucinogenic quality
> to listserv-discourse?  

Using music for metaphor, I think it's the rhythm that's different.  
Simplistically, rhythm of conversation is continuous, but print it's 
discontinuous--the reader creates a new rhythm, or in a sense, no 
matter how much he follows the mystical flow of the author, the 
reader interrupts that rhythm more than he creates it.
 
> > Timothy Leary's theory of transactional analysis seems to account
> pretty well for what can happen during online conferencing, btw. 
> 
> Somehow, online conferencing and listserv discoursing seem like very
> different texts to me.  Do they to you?  --Jon, olsonj@cla.orst.edu
> 
> >>> Carol P. Haviland <cph@wiley.csusb.edu>  8/22/96, 02:02pm >>>
> Jon--Now how can this text (electronic or otherwise) exist without
> you,  the reader?  Your comment elaborates the reading nicely; it
> suggests that  we do our initial reading much the same way we
> converse at a party or  conference:  we listen selectively, wander in
> and out of topics,  sometimes engaging old threads and other times
> ignoring them--the  "reading" we do, we do like conversation. 
> However, the "reading " we do  in terms of using the etext, is more
> like working with print--we play at  the words, we quote, and we
> critique more harshly than we do verbal text.
>
Is harshly perhaps more intensively or spontaneously or expectedly?
 
> I'd like to continue work on this topic in the context of online wc 
> conferencing.  Anyone else interested?
> 
> Carol

I think etext, thinking of rhythm again, is more habitual than verbal 
text, if I'm understanding it correctly, but more discontinuous--or 
distant from where we usually keep our habits. 


Frank Sherwood
Gainesville College
Gainesville, GA