Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 12:40:55 -0400
From: Brad4d6-AT-aol.com
Subject: Re: WIRED Magazine


ma-AT-dsd.camb.inmet.com (Malgosia Askanas) responded to my question:

>> Can recollections of things read in WIRED magazine (or seen on a CRT...)
give
>> a person the courage (succor, etc.) to cope with extreme life situations?
 
>
>Yes, of course.  Ideas can do this, and so can modes of action.  Things 
>read in print or on a CRT represent (for lack of a better word) ideas
>and modes of action.

I tried to keep my posting short enough that people might read it, so my
question was oversimplified.  Maybe it's material for elaboration here on
this list, a process which your observation may have begun.

I agree that mediated communication (be the mediation via old-fashioned
artistic or scriptorial means, or hi-tech e-mail, WWW, etc.) *can* "touch" us
-- although it seems to me we need to examine what effects are introduced
into the experiential matrix by changing skin-to-skin into metaphorical
"touching" (also: compare augmenting a life rich in skin-to-skin touching
with the metaphorical kind, versus a life in which almost all the "touching"
is the metaphorical kind, with little or no meaningful skin-to-skin
touching...).

"At bottom", all of us humans have a foundation of unmediated touching and
communication as infants, and deficits "back there" can have serious adverse
consequences (see, e.g., Rene Spitz's studies on institutionalized infants --
their "failure to thrive", high mortality rates, and personality disorders in
the ones who did survive).  Is it possible that, in later life, mediated
communication can touch us only insofar as we are able to link the
disembodied symbols back to deeply internalized experiences of embodied
symbolization?

In fact, certain mediated communication experiences touch us more deeply than
many face-to-face (unmediated) experiences.  Talking with someone who just
responds with cliches can be "positively" alienating, not just less enriching
than reading a piece of text which "speaks" to me (e.g., my reading
Gelerntner's (sp?) story about how recalling his experience of a meaningful
face-to-face interaction helped him do what he had to do in the face of
death).

The (not necessarily "dysfunctional") capacity for hallucination/ideas of
reference probably comes in here: A person can hear something he or she reads
(or remembers having read) as "speaking to me".  And it seems this experience
could be constructively nurturing (e.g., in the cases of martyrs).  If I am
dying, how would this experience -- or messages received on one's computer --
compare with having caring friends present in the flesh, speaking with and
holding me?  (What might we learn here from religious rites where a priest
*reads* a protocol to the dying man?  I.e., neither (1) is the dying man left
to go through the text himself (a task for which he could have been prepared
by rote memorization of the text in childhood), nor (2) does the priest just
engage in unstructured fellowship, but rather he *reads* the service for the
dying -- so that we have here a synthesis of unmediated and mediated
communication.)

Insofar as mediated communication may have potential to provide succor
(etc.), I would tend to think of (e.g.) great poetry, or the Bible
(Gelerntner is a Talmudic scholar as well as a computer scientist), i.e.,
texts which represent rich face-to-face human interaction.  But the contents
(and intent, as I read the NYT article) of WIRED generally represent other
items from the digital world of which WIRED is a part, so that deep affective
human experience -- the story of Everyman, etc. -- is not even *re*presented
there.  Instead of the medium mediating a link to basic experiences of living
(a poem which talks about bereavement, e.g.), the medium here only links back
to its own level of symbolic mediation (an article about new means of linking
computers, e.g).  What "use" can recollection of *this* kind of material be
in times of existential need (e.g., Gelerntner after he was wounded by the
bomb)?  My pre-judice is that it doesn't "have what it takes", but I'm
*asking* about that here, to try to learn beyond my prejudices: (1) Might a
text which does not open itself beyond the realm of the digital be able to
give a dying man succor and strength (etc.)?  (2) If yes, would this
possibility depend on the individual so inspired (nourished, etc.) having a
particular orientation toward the digital realm?  (Aside: What about autistic
people? or the potentiality of person-computer interaction to encourage real
or simulated autism?)

I could continue, but I think I have written enough (too much?) to take the
discussion to the next step, and let's see if members of this list feel it's
something they/we want to explore further....

Brad McCormick


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