The New Age of Digital Communication.

OK, you might not think that there's a 'new age' of digital communication if you're reading a weblog entry, but there is. And there's some lovely discussion about it of late....

Deborah points out why she doesn't like online chat - and truth be told, I'm not a big fan unless there are established objectives. Aldon Hynes asks what your communication goals are, and makes some good points. I just responded on the Digital Divide list... some excerpts here:

...But you see, people are slow to adopt things. This is why we're using listservs for most of the communication here on the DDN, because many are simply not comfortable unless they can use Microsoft Outlook to inform us when they are out of town (perhaps so that someone can burglarize them and they can make insurance claims? I do not know). Perhaps on a busy day, such as when you sent this, I would not respond because I'm up to my neck in other listservs.

There are forms which are not as self limiting. As you say, all forms

are self limiting - but the degree to which they are self limiting

varies. For broad communication with large groups, websites are less

self limiting - and are decreasing even further over time. Email hasn't

really changed in the last 10 years that much... however, website

technology has changed quite a bit, and has shown itself to be more

adaptive to the demands we place on this medium. It even uses email as a tool at times...

...We must not forget our roots either. Man is a social creature, and as such the senses play an important part. Face to face conferences are social gatherings - maybe some things are discussed, maybe not. But they are social gatherings, in the hopes of attaining some purpose that the attendees wish to achieve.

How odd for me to defend face to face conferences - and yet, if web

conferences incorporate audio and video, what is missing from the

conference? Proximity? The ability to have dinner or drinks with each

other? I do not ask that to be flippant, and it is not rhetoric - I

don't think anyone knows the answer, and in a way we're being forced to

answer that very question.

Oddly enough, both the Cathedral and Bazaar deal a lot with social

gathering. Bonfires or grand events about Linux... even voting. I wonder how much voting would change if candidates took part in web conferences instead of broadcasting and only answering questions that the speechwriters and strategists want answered. As a sidenote, here's an interesting thing to look at for US politics and bandwidth:

http://www.longdarkteatime.com/2005/01/broadband-democracy.html

In the end, we have to do things which increase participation on the

internet - which means that we have to adapt our use of it to this

purpose. And that means that we need to adapt things which are less self limiting and more inclusive...

There is much room for improvement in communication between people - period. How we adapt the online ability toward such improvement... that's the question. There are plenty of experts running around selling books and having conferences you have to pay to attend (aha!), but in the end that seems just like a half-baby-step in the grand scheme of things.