Communication Technologies, Relationships and Communities:

Building Relationships with Time, Space, and Scale Machines

A Presentation at Oswego State University
December 6, 2002
Davis Foulger
Visiting Associate Professor

• Communication Technologies are nothing new
  • You are a communication technology
    • The product of, according to your faith, creation or evolution
    • Built in the intersection ofompatable senses and means of signal production
      • Sound
      • Sight

    • And gifted with both a memory of things past and a capacity for language

  • Your anscestors have been inventing communication technologies for over a million years
    • Fire and Smoke
    • Musical Amplifiers
    • Carvings
    • Paintings
    • Beads and Tokens
    • Clay and Stylus
    • Paper-analogues and writing implements
    • Paper and Printing Presses
    • Postal systems
    • Electrical and Radio Transmission
    • Microphones, Speakers, and Amplifiers
    • Cameras and Video Displays
    • Magnetic, Electrical, and Optical Storage

  • With them we have built media
    • Interpersonal Media
    • Presentational Media like speeches
    • Static Art Media like paintings and quilts
    • Dynamic Art Media like movies.
    • Correspondence Media like letters and electronic mail
    • Publishing Media like CD's, DVD's, Magazines, and Newspapers
    • Telephonic Media like cellular telephones and instant messenger
    • Broadcast Media like radio and television

• These media are built with technology to manage at least three dimensions:
  1. Scale (and Complexity)
  2. Space (and Selectivity)
  3. Time
     • Memory
     • Parallel Interaction
     • Coming soon: Supersynchronous Interaction

  • 

• Media aren't built just with technology (mediators), but with:
  • Characteristics like the above
  • Uses
  • Effects
  • Practices
  • 

• Lets briefly discuss just a few "new media":
  • cellular telephones
    • Living the Clueless Moment
    • And changing the way we interact
    • We always thought of communication as a serial process
    • Now we talk on the phone while we walk and talk with our friends
    • Phones around the table

  • family radios
    • Staying in touch while skiing

  • instant messenger
    • Parallel interaction and media use
    • Filling in the non-verbal gap
      • emoticons
      • personal names
      • personal icons

  • electronic mail
  • chat rooms
  • personal and commercial web sites

• Tech Media and Relationships
  • Relationship Equals Sum Media Use:
    • Obvious on the Internet
      • Meet in a chatroom
      • Add electronic mail
      • Add instant messenger
      • Add telephone
      • Add watching television while on the telephone
      • Add a "Bill Gates Date"
      • Add web cams
      • Add a shared web site
      • Add Face to Face Interaction

    • Of course this is nothing new
      • Meet at a party
      • Provide a phone number
      • Add Telephone Interaction
      • Add Face to Face
      • Add Watching a Movie together (shared experience)
      • Add talking about it (self-disclosure)
      • Add Eating a meal together
      • Add Intimacy
      • Add Watching television together

    • I could go on
      • Our relationships grow as, and in part as consequence of, the increasing number of ways in which we interact
      • And as they decline, our shared media experiences decline
      • New media are making long distance relationships workable for many people

• Tech Media and Communities
  • Community Equals Sum Media Use:
    • Communities die as the ways in which people interact within the community decline and dissapear
      • Newspapers
      • Churches
      • Local schools
      • Local businesses
      • Local sports (Little league)
      • Downtown shopping areas

    • Communities grow as the ways in which people interact within the community increase and grow
      • Community bulletin boards
      • Community radio and television
      • "The Mart" (the local Walmart)

  • Computer Technology is making new kinds of community possible
    • You may be participating in one or more such communities
      • Chatrooms
      • Computer Conferences (News Groups and many more)
      • Distribution Lists (?ListServes)
      • Multi User Domains (MUDs and MOOs)
      • On-line gaming
      • Collaborative Composition Sites (WIKI)

    • Virtual support groups
      • Evidence shows that bringing cancer patients into support groups
        • Increases their life expectancy
        • Decreases their need for hospitalization and medication

      • Some such groups form spontaneously
        • http://surgicaleyes.com

• Tech Media and Organizations
  • Organization Equals Sum Media:
    • An organization's potential is shaped by the media it uses

  • Changing the way organizations operate
    • Mark Russell Associates (http://www.mragroup.com)
      • To a large extent still does PR the old fashioned way
        • One office
        • Face to face interaction and meetings in the creative team

      • But times are changing
        • More e-mail and telephone interaction with distributed clients
        • Client Web Sites bring the remote client into the process
          • Constant update on project and account status
          • More timely and direct input into the creative and production process
    • This research was done by students in my organizational communication class

  • In some cases radically
    • IBM (http://www.ibm.com)
      • Worldwide Computer Conferencing
        • Bottom Up Networking
        • A Human Database
        • Tremendous Impacts on Morale
        • The power to displace a company president and CEO
        • Transforming a distributed company of many pieces into a worldwide company.
        • While I was at IBM Electronic Mail and Computer Conferencing displaced
        • Letters, Group Meetings, and Telephone Interaction
        • to become the number two and three media used in the company
        • Face to face communication did not drop measurably

      • Distributed Development Teams
        • Round the clock development
        • Using
          • Networked databases
          • E-Mail
          • Computer Conferencing
          • Instant Messaging
          • Edge of Time zone teleconferencing

      • Electronic Service and Support
        • Using e-mail and computer conferences
        • As a low cost and rapid alternative to letters and phone calls
        • Customers find answers directly on the web
        • Customers solving each others problems
        • Problems passed rapidly to the people who can help most
        • Exploiting the human database

      • Direct Marketing on the Web
        • Direct Computer Sales
          • No more retail computer sales
          • One of the first billion dollar revenue businesses on the web

        • Business Partner Integration
          • A shift from regional strategy, sales, and business partner relationships
          • to global strategy, sales, and business partner relationships
          • hundreds of collaborative applications
          • hundreds of thousands of documents
          • much of it in twelve or more languages

        • IBM Regional Product Announcements once trailed U.S. Announcements by as much as a year
        • No more.
          • One of the first billion dollar revenue businesses on the web

        • IBM's once vaunted direct sales force has all but dissapeared

      • the transformation continues
        • Instant Messaging is an a rapid rise
          • Parallel Interaction
          • Presence Detection

    • Universal Music (http://www.umusic.com)
      • Minimizing Propinquitous Interaction
      • Distributed Teams
        • Talent
        • Representation
        • Producers
        • Publicity
        • Advertizing
        • Packaging
        • Production
        • Distribution
        • Financial Management
        • Contracts/Legal
        • Consumers/Audience

      • Media Used
        • Telephone
        • Federal Express
        • Web Sites
        • E-Mail
        • Conference Calls

      • Media in Eclipse
        • Face to face interaction
        • Group Meetings
        • Magazines and other Print Media
      • This research was done by students in my organizational communication class

• Tech Media and Societies
  • The Digital Divide
    • Have not users, communities, and countries
    • The world wide web is used by less than 5% of the world's people
    • Obstacles:
      • Infrastructure: Power
      • Communications: Telephone lines
      • Literacy
        • Over half of the world's literate population has less than two years formal education

      • And a media divide
        • Computers
        • Books
        • Libraries
        • Even Newspapers

  • The changes we are seeing aren't happening for most people in these countries