Topic 25: Plenary: Social and cultural issues of Tele Community By: Matisse Enzer (matisse) on Sat, Jul 24, '93 2 responses so far Saturday PM Plenary Social and Cultural Issues Dave Hughes (dave@well.sf.ca.us) Ann Branscomb (?) Randy Ross Howard Rheingold (hlr@well.sf.ca.us) Steve Cisler (sac@well.sf.ca.us) Gene Youngblood (gy@well.sf.ca.us) Richard Lowenburg (tellinst@csn.org) 2 responses total. Topic 25: Plenary: Social and cultural issues of Tele Community # 1: Matisse Enzer (matisse) Sat, Jul 24, '93 (23:01) 63 lines Steve: A couple systems that *limit* access to the outside world. Santa Monica PEN limits itself to Santa Monica residents and property owners. The Zuni reservation system... have rules where parts of the system are open only to initiated males over age 14 can get in. Gene: The foundatiion of power has always been who controls who can talk to whom, about what and how long. A community *is* a conversation. We define art, science, reality. Thw social construction of reality. The ability to autonomously create the reality you want to live in. Howard: In the 18th century... the idea came about that if people in an area could talk to each other they could govern themselves. Tele-comm begins to give us back some of that communcations. We have a short window of opp to do something - fears will arise about the kinds of communities we will create. Start by discussing what the rules and the norms ought to be. You can't go and adopt someone elses charter, you gotta fiught it out for yourselves. Find the skeptics and bring them in to the debate. Dave: The horror may be that half the world only wants to watch Twin Peaks. When we did online Politics at Rogers Bar it forced my and others to reread the Federalist Papers... Jefferson wouldve used an Apple, and Franklin an IBM but Tom paine would have put Common Sense on a pirate BBS. What is the relationship between the rules of Telluride and the rules in cyberspace? Ann: Santa Monica PEN found that after a few months a few crazies upset the system so others left. We will see a multiplicity of these tele-communities. About universal access: Who will pay for it? The real expensive part is who pays for the content online... Gene: Access to communities is more important than access to information. Acces to community must be free - we have socialized highways, we need universal access to each other. There has never been a technolgy that was revolutionary. Dave: Print was one. Steve: WHen people complain about certain personalities it sort proves the openess of the network.. Dave: Give us tools to filter out stuff we don'tn want to see. Randy: There is a difference between cultures in attitudes and in thought process. How do we get people respected when their mode of communication is grounded in different basis and differently spirituality. Over 350 recognized tribes, less than 2% of US population. How do insure that we have locally determined images. Hope that indian law schools will be able to develop telecom law. Topic 25: Plenary: Social and cultural issues of Tele Community # 2: Matisse Enzer (matisse) Sat, Jul 24, '93 (23:02) 40 lines Questions etc from many different people... Last thing I want is 5.5 Billion people walking through my office. Telluride would be making a mistake to not have an area where you have to have a stake inthe local community to participate, and also it would be a mistake to not have a door where you can walk into the global network. People all over the world are going to looking to Telluride as an example. Colorado State Board of Ed: I can get people to respond easily... if I were in a 'real' office like city council, state rep etc. I'd want to have our own BBS with voting software. Start your own system and start talking about it.... We are a very atypical group.... sheer magnatude of choice causes people to retreat.... the dark side...becoming more isolated.. so much to choose from.... retreat from choosing.... All this talk about 500 channels... we all know it's 1 channel. Difference between people who are internally/externally directed. Many people like to have only 3-4 choices.... It takes adifferently level of emotional education to deal with 100 choices. If you're gonna link with other cultures... embrace the Internet and text and all that but can we get on with and include sound and pictures and music and so forth... let's not just become a bunch of people who as beautiful as they type.... Access to alternatives... About conversation... what we have here is a palate of tools: text, auditory, visual etc we are now increasingly in a poition of designing conversations. Conversations are not ness a vocal experience. The challenge is getting a better understanding the design tools we have and understanding methodologies. See Brenda Laurel's "Computers as Theatre" .