[FRIAM] Reed's law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Glen E. P. Ropella wrote:
> Even worse, we've all become a bunch of bean counters (or at least
> lawyers), reading what people _write_ rather than listening to what they
> _mean_. 
I reckon that what many `real-life' individuals or groups often _mean_ 
is a subconscious impulse:  to impose their personal set of issues on 
others and get people to go their way, so as to make their life 
better.   They _mean_ to stick others in their mud, their group think, 
their business goals, etc.   Joe's a good guy!   (Where `good' is 
defined by `amenable to our needs'.)
>> > This comes from several features.
>> > 
>> > 1) Space I can communicate with people distributed over virtually any
>> >  geographic region without waiting for them to come to the same
>> > location as I.
>>     
>
> Yes, but consider the _quality_ (a.k.a. character) of your
> communications.  Can you really _know_ someone who grew up and still
> lives in Holland or Taiwan?  Are you really communicating with them?  Or
> is your communication limited to some common denominator?
>
>   
> Sure, it's fun to engage in heavily abstracted dialog with your heavily
> abstracted friends; but, of what _use_ is such behavior other than to
> make you happy or to allow you to exploit?
I'd say social networks mediated by technology can be interesting 
_because_ participants don't have to be intimate.  Discussants who might 
not even be able to tolerate one another in person can find common 
ground.   Take all of those mere common denominator discussions and 
contrast them against the alternative which is that they might not occur 
at all given personal idiosyncrasies, or geographic or cultural 
boundaries.  I suggest redefining `common denominator' to as `dimensions 
of intersection' and remember there are billions of people all with 
different dimensions.  

Perhaps it would be better if we could and did try infinitely hard to 
understand all of the details of all kinds of people, but the fact is 
almost no one does that, at least without having some professional 
responsibility to do it or appear to do it.

As for "heavily abstracted dialog" it sounds a lot like scientific 
analysis and peer review to me.
And as for exploitation, I can see your point, but the reverse can also 
be true.    Manipulative people with professions like preachers and 
teachers rely on the fact that they have a captive audience that will 
confirm to a certain set of polite behaviors to make verbal 
communication work at all.   In e-mail, such `presenters' can get 
shredded in short order.  

Marcus