+ Page 12 + --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ####### ######## ######## ########### ### ### ## ### ## # ### # Interpersonal Computing and ### ### ## ### ## ### Technology: ### ### ## ### ### An Electronic Journal for ### ######## ### ### the 21st Century ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ## ### ISSN: 1064-4326 ### ### ### ## ### April, 1995 ####### ### ######## ### Volume 3, Number 2, pp.12-32 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Published by the Center for Teaching and Technology, Academic Computer Center, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057 Additional support provided by the Center for Academic Computing, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 This article is archived as CUTLER IPCTV3N2 on LISTSERV@GUVM (LISTSERV@GUVM.GEORGETOWN.EDU) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DISTRIBUTED PRESENCE AND COMMUNITY IN CYBERSPACE Richard H. Cutler Department of Communications Fordham University INTRODUCTION Today the technology of cyberspace is creating the social situation for the formation of a new understanding of community. In response to the environment in which people find themselves working and living, they appropriate the technology for their own needs. The consequent constructed social space is the fertile ground for new social relationships, roles, and a sense of self. Interaction is the key feature of cyberspace in the exchange of information from which a sense of self and control can be built. The result of new senses of self is a new sense of presence that fills the space in fluid forms of community. Community for persons living in a technological environment is shifting from culture-defining mass media to that of a proliferation of media as alternative sources of mediated experience. + Page 13 + Each aspect of this new social situation will be investigated in turn: the features of cyberspace, the response of human social needs, and the building of community through presence. Cyberspace, CMC Technology, Social Situation, Self, and Presence Cyberspace is a functional idea that gives us a way of talking about where our money goes when we deposit it. Cyberspace is also a convenient concept for where we go when we try to find out our balance. Cyberspace more commonly is the name that describes the convergence of the technologies of computer mediated communications (Rheingold, 1993). Computer mediated communications (CMC) is comprised of computers, their data bases, computer software to read them, and the telecommunications networks that get us there. Indeed, "there" is part of the conceptual problem that the notion of cyberspace helps us to unravel. Where are we when we share a phone conversation or read an electronic bulletin board? The notion of cyberspace helps us formulate tolerable answers for our unanswered needs to feel a sense of where we are. Apparently our need to feel physically grounded is so important that cyberspace writers and researchers use proprioceptive (body awareness) terms such as "immersion, manipulation, interactivity, and navigation" to describe its characteristics (Rheingold, 1991). Cyberspace and its technology of CMC have gained a strong foothold in the corporate and bureaucratic bowels of American and Western economies. Led by global banking and finance, the era of information-based economies is upon us. Transactions occurring simultaneously in different parts of the world are symptomatic of the functioning of cyberspace. What we are seeing progressively building in the information era are new social situations created by the application of information system technologies (Meyrowitz, 1985). Applications of CMC technology began with networked communication systems and information-driven management to improve efficiency and + Page 14 + productivity (Kiesler, Siegel, & McGuire, 1984).. As with other technologies, people appropriate them within the information system for their own social needs. From one perspective, the application of CMC technology is a social act from the outset. That is, those in power choose a technology for subordinates to use so they can gain better control of the means of production and thus increase profits. Sproull and Kiesler (1991), long- standing researchers of the effects of using CMC, call its implementation for increased efficiency "first level" effects. However, to supplant older technologies and implement the new, forms of social interaction must change (Meyrowitz, 1985). To conduct the organizational business within those new social situations demands changed relationships. Changed relationships have additional consequences for the range of human contacts. As people realize new relationships with the technology of work and with each other, they often experience an extended range of human contacts (Saffo, 1993). Expanded contacts may engender constraints of control on the access and use of information (Beniger, 1986). To establish new protocols requires much communication. Users must address new methods, establish protocols, and of course, realign working relationships. To communicate in this new environment, individuals must adopt changed roles. These new roles are comprised of new identities and senses of appropriate social standing (Meyrowitz, 1985). New power structures result from management's placement of employees holding new skills and the creation of gateways to information needed to perform work or receive its benefits. Changed social standing brings with it all the expectations of language, deference to power, opportunities of, or barriers to, privilege that such changes suggest. Information technology guides work as well as the supervisory and communication tasks formerly performed by management (Zuboff, 1988). As humans seek to stabilize their existence, they strive to build identities within this newly established social framework. These changed relationships result in what Sproull and Kiesler call "second level" effects, effects that are deeper and more influential for the future of the enterprise than first level effects. + Page 15 + Within this new context created by the application of the technology with its affordances and limitations, people conduct their own socio-emotional communication (Rice & Love, 1987; Steinfield, 1986). To do so requires attention to self concept construction in concert with the defining of "others." New social situations, new relationships, and the new roles that result place pressure on personal identities and sense of control. Since flows of information characterize the new environment, power in that environment depends on control of information. Thus the technology and the new social situation become the sites of negotiation for satisfying needs to build self-concept and control of disclosure. An awareness of self and others follows out of interaction, communication, and self-concept building. That altered sense of awareness that creates senses of who I am and who others are can be called a sense of presence. Presence, combined with common interests, enable people, removed physically from each other, to relate via cyberspace. These last two ideas -- presence and building networks of relationships -- will be developed as this paper progresses. Regarding the formation of self-concept, control of information disclosure is important for the interaction of individuals as they seek to form affiliations and trusting relationships. Without interaction in an information created environment, nothing happens. Information Space as Social Space Space used to be marked out through coordinates in three dimensions and distance. Coordinates could be used to calculate the attraction of physical bodies for each other. However, since Heisenberg and the atomic physicists, the solid world of Cartesian coordinates and Newtonian physics have given way to a multi-dimensional world subject to the presence of those defining it for inspection. Uncertainty about the location of any part or particle has become a function of statistics and probability. The paradigm of uncertainty applied to the concept of cyberspace says that our presence in space influences what we perceive to be + Page 16 + there. This is the first clue that the sense of space in cyberspace is a social construction (Berger & Luckmann, 1967). The argument of Samarajiva and Shields (1991) is similar, distinguishing between environment as a physical setting in which space is produced and the social construction of space within the physical setting. The world of work has evolved from an industrial era in which the body learned skills to be done by the body. The prior description of CMC revolved around the notion that, today, intellective cores of computerized systems create an informated environment where physical labor has been replaced by intellective tasks (Zuboff, 1988). Computer-based, automated systems drive networked communications and produce displays of information on the condition of the system. Whereas the factory worker's body learned skills for physical tasks, the mind of today's worker learns to do intellective tasks. Factory workers now oversee and adjust systems instead of machinery. The shift from body to mind is a reflection of the movement from factories to downsized businesses. Just as physical labor is displaced by intellective skills, in parallel fashion, displaced workers transform work experience to intellectual equity as temporary consultants or proprietors of "outsource" firms (Johnson, 1994). The reduction of physical working space from factory towns to suburban industrial parks and then to workers at system displays has paralleled the concentration of computer technology into increasingly smaller, faster, more powerful processors of information. Concomitant with the reduction of working space has come the dissolution of working place as more workers telecommute. Conferencing in cyberspace, employees experience their sense of place through "telepresence" that is both extensive of personal space and isolating to the distanced worker. A dispersed sense of self is merely symptomatic of the changed sense of space in a world of information systems. + Page 17 + True to some of Marshall McLuhans predictions, members of the information society increasingly find their modes of expression and communication multiplied (McLuhan & Forsdale, 1989). Their nervous systems seem to reach out far beyond any sense of bodily space to mingle with the extended nervous systems of others (McLuhan, 1965). As McLuhan, among others, has concluded, humans have long since conquered nature. Humans live in an environment and experience the world at large as defined by media. Instead of directly experiencing each other and nature, citizens of information societies share the world through media. Post-modern psychologist Kenneth Gergen (1991) calls this condition of extended and permeated selves a society of "saturated selves." Alone and isolated, saturated selves experience the world of work and leisure as a space constructed out of cultural products and social fictions. Persons at work occupy constructed space in their networked relations with others. Like a building, the network creates the structure. Like occupants of that building, workers occupy intellective spaces. That they seek affiliation in the technology that has fragmented their social lives ought to be no surprise. To participate in social constructed space requires a larger sense of presence than that tied to a central geographic location. Presence Carrie Heeter (1992) offers three kinds of presence in terms of personal awareness: personal, social, and an environment of interaction. To Heeter's notion of personal awareness can be added public and private awareness (Lea & Spears, 1991; Matheson & Zanna, 1988). At its root, the concept of personal presence and awareness is a human capability for reflectivity. According to the concepts of Mead (1934) and Cooley (1964), reflectivity is necessary for self-concept creation. In this age of interactive media self-concept creation further requires an awareness of control of disclosure. The more one discloses personal information, the more others will reciprocate, and the more individuals know about each other the more likely they are to establish trust, seek support, and thus find satisfaction. Without disclosure and interaction nothing happens. Disclosure creates a kind of currency that is spent to keep interaction moving. + Page 18 + To personal presence so necessary for telepresence in cyberspace, Heeter (1992) adds social presence. The concept of social presence has already a literature allied to that of CMC. Short, Williams, and Christie (1976) take the ability of a medium to deliver degrees of audio and visual richness and tie it to a perceiver's subjective awareness of another communicator. However in cyberspace, social presence in interactive social space takes on more of a complexion of reciprocal awareness by others of an individual and the individual's awareness of others. In interactive media such as CMC a new, mutual sense of interaction is essential to the feeling that others are there. Heeter's (1992) third component of presence, an environment of interaction, is also a focus of reciprocal awareness. The technology of communication has created a social situation, cyberspace. Interaction mediates for the participants in that space by creating what in computer parlance is called an interface. That is, work and leisure take place in the social environments created by human interaction with the technology and each other. This new sense of space is a little disconcerting to grasp. Think though of the "place" created during a phone call. There the sense of being in a fictional space is the defining characteristic. A bodily sense of immersion as a major defining characteristic of cyberspace becomes heightened in a specialized interface of cyberspace called virtual reality. So great is the need to have consensus about the constructed space that occupies so much of business and now social life that there has grown up among virtual reality researchers a Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML) project. If the environment of cyberspace is a collection of interfaces, it is also a created environment of appropriated, commodified media experience. This is also the environment of information systems referred to earlier. Video-on demand, tape at eleven, and cable re-transmissions are examples of how the media industry recirculates cultural products. The result of cultural product churn is an environment where our dreams, + Page 19 + fantasies, and attention have become externalized and used to permeate our real world consciousness and perpetuate a consumption-based economy. Years of on-going research have identified our beliefs, fantasies, and susceptibilities to distraction. We live our internal experience reflected in advertising-created simulations of life dramas. So, environmental presence, the third area of presence, is a powerful, constructed space filled with visions of our dreams and fantasies. In a preindustrial era, many small printing presses and a nation of farmers formed many little communities with little contact beyond neighbors. Mass media such as television later possessed the overwhelming power to create and disseminate imagery to mythologize our lives. Telecommunication networks complete the picture of a society reconfiguring itself from central sources of mass media power to networks of individuals linked in consciousness and need fulfillment by information systems both commercial and public. Now, personal computer (PC) technology has distributed power to the desktops of isolated individuals needful of affiliation and commitment relationships. Here are but a few instances of distributed identity and presence: * a worker's voice mail is taking messages; * the fax machine is sending out the day's messages in a queue; * the insurance company is adjusting rates based on electronically gathered group statistics; * based on credit card transactions, marketers target the person; * the family's fortunes rise and plummet depending on the automatic buy and sell programs of the mutual funds managed computer. + Page 20 + Community in Cyberspace The previous two sections have offered an understanding of the basis for community today: social space built out of information systems and expanded notions of presence. Into this vision of the Information Society at the end of the twentieth century signs of community are arising. In addition to mass media built cultural media products on the one hand are the many discussions between individuals via CMC on the other. Social structures of work and leisure are beginning to reflect the use of cyberspace communication technologies. Powerful social elites apply cyberspace for more efficient production. Workers appropriate the new social situations in order to use the new technology and to create their own relationships. Social space has replaced physical location as the metaphor for where human interactions take place over electronic networks. In the new social spaces, individuals make personal and public commitments to groups that affiliate around mutual interests. This latter development will be the focus of the section that follows. Leading up to that discussion, however, is a necessary review of the role communication plays in forming identity and a sense of belonging. Returning to Mead (1934) and Cooley (1964), communication builds identity because of the ability of humans to see themselves as others do. This awareness allows an individual to adjust personal behavior until the person perceives it as appropriate. That accommodation to appropriate behavior is also what Meyrowitz (1985) refers to as a "Sense of Place." Identity building through communication works because people can interact. Thus the opportunity for interaction becomes the key to understanding places where identity may be formed and affiliations made. Through discourse made possible by interactive media (CMC) individuals find or form groups that share interests. In the socially constructed space of cyberspace, where interaction produces culture, information is the only medium of exchange an individual has with which to build a presence. Information exchange becomes the carrier for + Page 21 + expressing self-concept and eliciting emotional support. Some information an individual possesses may be about the external world. Other information of a personal nature is about motivations, needs, personal history, and what is not known to others. Personal information helps form relationships by disclosing intentions and thus building trust. although a thorough discussion of control of disclosure is pertinent to this discussion, I must postpone it in favor of moving the concepts of affiliation along (see Cutler, 1994). Online discourse, composed of jokes, stories, and the history of discussions themselves helps to build culture in cyberspace. The popularity of participating in on-line culture building may be seen in the rapid growth of cyberspace. Internet, national commercial information and entertainment services, and local electronic bulletin boards systems (BBSs) make up the structure in which on- line discourse occurs. The growing interest in interaction online has led to more cultural activities, particularly game play -- singly and in groups, entertainment, education, learning, business, discussion, talk, and socializing. Affiliations which form around general and special interests are limited only by the ability of individuals to process all the interactions that flow through the network (The Net) to the desktop. The range and relative newness of affiliations means that they have little or no time bound histories. Commitment to relationships and community therefore does not come out of previous relationships but out of the temporal mutuality of interests. Commitment, though, spans the range from fleeting to deep involvement. Each discussion forum has many "lurkers" who simply read or observe the actions of others. There are usually many more lurkers than active participants. Lurkers seem drawn to the activities of the group but feel most secure by remaining anonymous. Anonymity is a feature of CMC that bedevils system communicators and sets back discussion. From the sidelines will suddenly shoot an ill-considered barb that results in emotional responses. In contrast, for the committed few who discuss, perhaps as representatives of the lurkers, there is heavy emotional involvement. As builders of histories, files, MUD (multi-user Dungeons) worlds, the creators take a very proprietary interest in sustaining the community. + Page 22 + Online community power structures also reflect the commitment of individuals to the life of the system. Communicators who are free to participate or lurk may conduct their discussions in forums in which no one seems to direct the conversation. Except for censoring known to occur on commercial discussion systems, a participant can pretty much say anything. If any, rebukes come freely from other participants. I observed a participant make an anti-Semitic joke in what I interpreted as a self-deprecating utterance. However, overwhelming, outraged responses pummeled him until he publicly apologized. Contributions and differences tend to be aired in an egalitarian atmosphere, with one notable exception. When disclosed, differences in gender will often reveal sexist role assumptions. Females often complain that males will lavish unwanted attention on them. Or males will rush to help them but will then attempt to extract promises of affection or (virtual) sexual favors in return (Bruckman, 1992). Commitment of participants seems to be to maintaining their opportunities to continue discussions and to maintaining social decorum. In MUDs or other object oriented environments, object builders have a great commitment to seeing their creations remain. Says Garza (1992), an observer of DragonMUD, Definitions of self in player/characters and the community as a whole are tied to the existing environment. Altering the environment would require altering conceptions of self. The game is no longer just a game; it is a community of people with a history and set of common values. (p. 18) The greater number of observers are free to come and go as they wish. Some participants reveal that they are active in other groups while some participants seem committed to the loose web of associations they can freely form and dissolve. + Page 23 + Also in the power hierarchy are the administrators who look out for the survival of the group. Administrators frequently moderate, that is edit, the flow of messages into threads. Sometimes a moderator will even withhold access from participants who threaten to disrupt the directions or purposes of the interest area. I recall a listserve in which a participant repeatedly couched his remarks in a fundamentalist Christian perspective, which included passing judgment on the activities of members. For weeks the group divided itself between his right to add to the discussion and the attacks that flew between him and others. The heated debate spread to topics far beyond the avowed purpose of the list. The list became clogged with endless ripostes. Participants decried spending time and space on matters outside the interests of the list members and began dropping from the list. Others debated preventing the Christian from participating. The tenor of discussion moved from disagreement on issues to personal attacks. Suddenly the furor died away. Weeks later, a cautious posting from the Christian appeared. In a rare appearance, the administrator explained that she had put the Christian's contributions on hold for two weeks so that the group would focus on other issues more about the group's purpose.1 Administrators and systems managers participate little in the discussions, to the point of being invisible, but can wield considerable power to stem the flow of messages. Owners of university and research systems commit themselves more to keeping the system functioning than agonizing over content. Managers of commercial systems liken themselves to newspaper editors (Markoff, 1990). Computation center managers restrict the activities of MUDs, asserting that the participants are merely game players and that they are taking up processor time, computer storage space, and preventing bona fide users from getting access to the system (Wilson, 1992). The distributed nature of networks provides alternate sites and message channels that temper the power of administrators and managers to prohibit any kind of activity. The history of computer software development finds much of its origins in the MIT Railroad Club, where students were dedicated to gaining entry to any room and access to any system. + Page 24 + SUMMARY A major premise of this paper is that the adoption of cyberspace technology changes the social situation by providing new opportunities for extended relationships accompanied by renewed efforts to centralize control. This premise is supported by the propositions of Meyrowitz (1985) and the findings of CMC (computer mediated communication) scholars (Hiltz & Turoff, 1978, 1984; Kiesler, Siegel, & McGuire, 1984; Sproull & Kiesler, 1991). People change the information space that they work and play in. They make new links to each other, and they adopt new roles relative to each other and the organization. Consequently, information system technologies adopted by management for the better control of systems and processes change not only the relationships of employees to their work but to each other and the power structure as well. The application of communication technology creates new social spaces. The sense of social place is redefined when communication technologies mediate between employees and their work, when work becomes the production and manipulation of information, and when power becomes defined in terms of control of information. The cases of changed work spaces and relationships cited in Shoshana Zuboff's (1988) classic In the Age of the Smart Machine illustrate how workers become perpetual information processors. They formerly worked with skills their bodies had learned. After automation, they face consoles illuminated by information abstracted from working process: dental records, bank transactions, and paper production. Life for today's worker has in many respects become fluid because of the mobility of information and the social spaces its movement creates. Computer-based information systems and their concomitant communication networks have created dynamic and fluid social situations. Automation of processes, the replacement of worker and management functions by expert systems, and just-in- time manufacturing, shipping, and inventory restocking are prominent examples of the impact of computer-based information systems that have changed social situations. On a broader front + Page 25 + can be seen the dismantling of manufacturing in the United States, downsizing, outsourcing, temporary employment, consulting, and jobs lasting only years instead of decades. Similarly, the traditional communities built around stable institutions located in physical places are no longer part of the lives of persons who must frequently seek new employment. Networking becomes the mode of finding employment, housing, and all the other necessities of a mobile existence. Contacts with far-flung former coworkers take on increasing importance. The very information technology of networked communications that has occasioned the massive changes in social situations also provides the "place" for people to meet and exchange mutual interests. Besides the communications utilized for survival in the employment market, participants in what has become called cyberspace explore new activities and share passions for mutual interests in constellations of fluid associations. Lacking the familiar church, neighborhood, and town square that form the physical nuclei of community, many people turn to "lifestyle enclaves" (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985). Lifestyle enclaves may meet expressive and support needs not met in or out of work. A person may belong to a computer user's group so as to overcome the technology learning curve that never seems to abate in the face of constant upgrades. Once connected to Internet or other local or nationally linked services, participants do many information-seeking tasks for themselves that used to be handled by agents: getting airline tickets, buying cultural event tickets, banking from home, gathering financial market information and making financial investments. Each night millions of people play electronic games over national or regional networks. Interest groups that feed professional goals and esoteric sex practices proliferate not as information services but as the aggregation of contributions by participants. It is when persons find new relationships worth cultivating, roles worth adopting, and selves worth becoming through activation of those roles that we can speak of community. Many more followers of these interest groups cruise around from group + Page 26 + to group, reading, watching, and only occasionally participating. For these lurkers having minimal presence one can hardly build a case for a sense of community. Yet, in some peripheral way they bask in the glow of the communication rituals performed by others. Still, for those who write, joke, comment, add, contradict, flame, and reconcile, the thousands of newsgroups, listservers, and chat lines form webs of associations around interests. Groups of individuals separated by miles and continents find venues for expression and solace in ways that are not available to them in their physical surroundings. The same dynamics of interaction that characterize face-to-face interpersonal and group communication interaction can be found in the thousands of discussion groups in cyberspace. Furthermore, commitment to their continued existence gains in importance. Participants commit their personal selves to new socialization processes of learning the cultures and hierarchies of the groups they join. Further commitment to maintain groups can be found in the discourses tangent to discussion of issues. Participants argue, cajole, rebuke, rejoin, rally to support each other, and seek to reconcile warring parties. If not for the worthwhileness of the community being formed, for what do they commit so much time and attention? Their slender thread of connection can be broken at any moment, and they can move on to another group. Many dissenters who find insufficient support for their views often are not heard from again. Presumably they have continued to scout out new, more hospitable soil to sow their seeds of commitment. For many individuals isolated in rural hamlets and urban high-rises there are no other public spaces in which to share interests and to foster rituals of socialization and identity building. Job survival becomes a matter of maintaining personal contacts throughout a fluid employment marketplace. By finding peers for assurance and advice, cyberspace communicators meet personal, emotional survival needs for expression and support. Presences on electronic networks have become distributed because of the distributed nature of networks. Just as the work world of the information society has become distributed, so it should come as no surprise that the social world of the + Page 27 + information society finds its affiliations through distributed "places" and presences. In the aggregate, distributed places and presences attempt to meet social and emotional needs for commitment, intimacy, and a sense of belonging. That there are conflicts one may be certain. That only a minority of America's population is experiencing the new social situations of cyberspace is neither to diminish the importance of the rate at which it is changing nor the impact of its participants on the remainder of the society. That individuals suffer conflicts between their real life identities and their distributed presences can only be imagined. With identity and self spread around, how a person say, "Hi honey, I'm home!"? Victorian homes resisted for only awhile the intrusion of the telephone into the privacy and sanctity of the family. Today, the computer sits warming and waiting to reconnect cybernauts to the world they left at work, if they ever left home to go to work. The sense of being somewhere else all the time is pervasive. The abundance of contacts and relationships needed for employment and community are on the Net and not proximal. Automated systems and economics of efficiency have conspired to create a society of isolated individuals with uncertain futures and the need to be flexible and mobile in order to survive. As Meyrowitz (1985) points out, our "social situation" has changed because of the technology of communication. Furthermore, who we are has kept pace as our persona becomes increasingly distributed. We become our agents as credit profiles, medical records and consumer data fill scattered files. Traditional community based upon location, a history of interlocked relationships, and a diversity of individuals has fallen away. What can replace it? Our distributed selves lead fluid existences that need distributed points of contact. A variety of media supply "places" to become not merely audiences but presences acting for personal and public benefit. Privately we create a "networked" sense of self. Publicly we find places to express ourselves, form our fluid identities, and receive the support to help us keep a sense of self-cohesion. Outside personal presence we rally for support in a world that increasingly seems out of control. We are aware of several kinds of presence: personal, social, and environmental. + Page 28 + Communication is how we build self concept. Distributed communication networks distribute our selves. Therefore, with the selves we have and the social situations of cyberspace, we build distributed community. Our commitment is to on-going groups to build identity and control disclosure, so necessary for self expression and protection from vulnerability occasioned by distribution of data about us. Internet, national commercial services, and local BBSs are growing rapidly. More activities move online: play, entertainment, education, business, discussion, talk, socializing. Signs of community -- building culture, social structure, social space creation, personal and public commitment - -- are all about us. REFERENCE LIST Bellah, R.N., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W.M., Swidler, A., & Tipton,S.M. (1985). Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. New York: Harper & Row. Beniger, J.R. (1986), The control revolution: Technological and economic origins of the information society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Berger, P.L. & Luckmann, T. (1967). The social construction of reality. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, Doubleday. Bruckman, A. (1992). Identity workshop: Emergent social and psychological phenomena in text-based virtual reality. Unpublished paper available by contacting the author via Internet: asb@media-lab.media.mit.edu. Cooley, C.H. (1964). Human nature and the social order, New York: Schocken Books. + Page 29 + Cutler, R.H. (1994, November). Technologies, relations, and selves. Paper presented at the annual convention of the Speech Communication Association, New Orleans, LA. Gergen, K.J. (1991). The saturated self: dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. USA: BasicBooks, Harper Collins, Publishers. Heeter, C. (1992). Being there: The subjective experience of presence. Presence 1 (3):262-271. Hiltz, S.R. & Turoff, M. (1978). The network nation: Human communication via computer. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Hiltz, S.R. & Turoff, M. (1984). Online communities : a case study of the office of the future. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Johnson, K. (1994, October 5). Evolution of the workplace alters office relationships. The New York Times, p. B1. Kiesler, S., Siegel, J., & McGuire, T.W. (1984, October). Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication. American Psychologist, 39(10):1123-1134. Lea, M., & Spears, R. (1991). Computer-generated communication, de-individuation and group decision-making. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies 34:283-301. Markoff, J. (1990, November 27). Home-computer network criticized for limiting users. The New York Times, p. D1. Matheson, K., & Zanna, M. (1988). The impact of computer- mediated communication on self-awareness. Computers in Human Behavior 4:221-233. McLuhan, M., & Forsdale, L. (1989). Technology and the human dimension. Marshall McLuhan: The man and his message. G. Sanderson, & F. Macdonald, (Eds.), Fulcrum, Inc. + Page 30 + McLuhan, M. (1965). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: New American Library. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Meyrowitz, J. (1985). No sense of place: The impact of electronic media on social behavior. New York: Oxford University Press. Rheingold, H. (1991). Virtual reality. New York: Summit Books. Rheingold, H. (1993). The virtual community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. Saffo, P. (1993, January). The future of "virtual" computer conferencing looks as clear as mud, PC Computing. 6, (1), 104. Samarjiva, R. & Shields, P. (1991). Integration, telecommunication, and development: Power in the paradigms. Journal of Communication 40:84-105. Short, J., Williams, E., and Christie, B. (1976). The social psychology of telecommunications. London: Wiley. Sproull, L. & Kiesler, S. (1991). Connections: New ways of working in the networked organization. Cambridge: MIT Press. Steinfield, C. (1986). Computer-mediated communication in an organizational setting: Explaining task-related and socioemotional uses. In M.L. McLaughlin (Ed.) Communication Yearbook 9, (pp. 777-804). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Wilson, D.L. (1992, November 18). Colleges debate whether computer games are legitimate use of academic equipment, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 39, No. 11. + Page 31 + Zuboff, S. (1988). In the age of the smart machine: The future of work and power. New York: Basic Books, Inc., p.300. Notes: 1 For five months in 1994, the author observed the interactions of a group of communicators on a group list, a moderated forum, somewhat like a BBS, but more focused on their area of mutual interest. Because the sexual lifestyle of members of the list might be characterized as "fringe" when compared to the values of what they call "Ozzie and Harriet America," they had great stake in cleaving together for mutual support and open discussion of their issues. Presented in panel at the 1994 Speech Communication Association, New Orleans, November 20. ------------------------- BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Richard H. Cutler Department of Communications Fordham University Bronx, NY 10458-5151 voice: (718) 817-4863 FAX (718) 817- 4868 Internet e-mail: cutler@murray.fordham.edu Currently teaching communication technology and interactive media at Fordham University in the Bronx, NY while completing Ph.D. in Communication Technology and Policy from the University of Texas at Austin. He holds an MA in Film Production from UT and two bachelors: one in Business Administration from UC Berkeley and another in Art from UC Santa Cruz. Prior to entering teaching he was a writer, producer, and director of educational and informational video for nine years. Married and living in Riverdale, NY with Carolyn Cutler, Director of Instructional Technology for the NY School for the Deaf. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ` + Page 32 + Interpersonal Computing and Technology: An Electronic Journal for the 21st Century Copyright 1995 Georgetown University. Copyright of individual articles in this publication is retained by the individual authors. Copyright of the compilation as a whole is held by Georgetown University. It is asked that any republication of this article state that the article was first published in IPCT-J. Contributions to IPCT-J can be submitted by electronic mail in APA style to: barnessu@sfitva.cc.fitsuny.edu