Date: Sun, 9 Apr 1995 00:20:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: aka bookish <swilbur-AT-bgsuvax.bgsu.edu>
Subject: Re: Re: Political Woman Daily Hotline #1 (fwd)


Just a (hopefully on-topic) thought about the language of this exchange...
Jim ended his most recent post with a call to prevent infoglut ("spam" in
another message) from "getting out of control," after suggesting that we
are going to have to exercise increasing (self-)control over what we post
where. We can all probably agree that signal/noise ration is a concern,
but the old net.saw still applies: one person's signal is another person's
noise. Groups shape their own dividing lines, or have them imposed by
various sorts of authorities (moderators, vocal posters, etc...)
Determining what is on/off-topic has to be a matter of experimentation,
and list "communities" need to make openness to that a part of their rules
of engagement, unless we would rather leave ourselves and our discussions
at the mercy of some combination of strict self-regulations or "justified"
chastisements - the net result of which seems likely to be a "discussion"
which constantly rediscovers its own "proper" self, a self-replicating
orthodoxy. Think about the abject in this context, and about the
implications of controlling the flows of discussion. Is this the right
sort of orientation for the discussion (arguably a practice) of "French
feminism"? I find the ease with which we have slipped into a language of
controlling flows, of proper-ty, of "spam", etc rather disturbing.
Patience, tolerance, and the ability to use the D-key are, at least IMO,
community-sustaining virtues "out here."

-shawn 

Shawn P. Wilbur
American Culture Studies
Bowling Green State University
swilbur-AT-bgsuvax.bgsu.edu




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