From: wex@pws.ma30.bull.com (Alan Wexelblat)
Subject: Re: CyberCon2 Organizer Replies!
Date: 5 Jun 91 15:59:23 GMT
Organization: Bull HN, Inc. Billerica, MA.




Pardon me for jumping in late here.  I haven't seen any of the preceding
articles and Sandy doesn't directly quote other people, so I can only get
her sense of what they said.

First, some background: I've been at Cyberconf 1 & 2; I'm the book that
resulted from the first conference and I'm on the program committee for the
third one.  (Does that mean I know anything at all?  No, but it looks
impressive as heck in print. :-)

In article <1991May31.050056.10025@milton.u.washington.edu> sstone@weber.
UCSD.EDU (Allucquere Rosanne Stone) writes:

   First is the way Randy describes what he saw and heard at
   2Cybercon, which was to divide up the talks into two
   groups--software engineers and literary critics.  This is going
   to upset the anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists,
   artists, and businesspeople who also presented at the conference.

An old joke: There are two kinds of people in the world, those who think the
world can be divided into two kinds of people, and those who don't.

I will let Randy speak for himself, but let me tell you why I tell people
there were SE's and LC's there.  The dividing line for me was text versus
ideas.  The SE's were those who wanted to talk about the ideas of
cyberspace, inspired by Gibson's book or Kreuger's or something else.  For
us (and I freely admit to a bias well on the SE side), the important thing
is that there is an interesting set of ideas here -- a way to see the world
and maybe change it.

The LCs on the other hand, were concerned wtih the text.  Gibson's text was
paramount.  It was dissected, deconstructed, analyzed, taken as a metaphor,
criticized, used as inspiration, etc.  The important thing is that there is
a literary text which can be compared to other texts, that projects a kind
of future, that can inspire new ways of thinking, etc.

   [...] somehow, everything that wasn't software engineering looked like
   literary criticism.  Why do you suppose this is?

Because the LCs were constantly talking about Gibson and his text.  Most of
the SE talks didn't mention Gibson at all, let alone NEUROMANCER.

   My hit on what happened [...] is that the SEs jargon (and I include
   myself in that group) is transparent to SEs;

I'm surprised to see you in our group, Sandy.  I wouldn't have bet on that.
Personalities aside, I think our jargon is, in a sense, more transparent.
That's because we're on the techno bleeding edge and that edge has (in this
century at least) had a disproportionate effect on the evolving language.

How many people knew what a "hacker" was before Robert Morris hit the front
pages?  Or before the rise in BBS popularity.  Nowadays, I bet you can stop
10 random people on the street of any major city and all will know the word
(even if they have different definitions).  But that's not to defend our
(SE's) pig-headedness.  See below...

   [...] explained to the LCs the extremely wide diversity of the attendees'
   backgrounds and disciplines, and to have suggested that they also be
   prepared with a kind of general-language version of their work [...]

That might have helped.  But I'm not sure it's possible.  I have some LC
background, and I know how hard a time I have explaining stuff like
philosophy in non-technical terms.  I have to do it all the time with
computers (as, I suspect, do all SEs), so it's a bit easier.  I think SEs
are just more used to talking to general audiences.

   But part of the problem rests with the SEs just as it does with
   the LCs, because SEs are so used to swimming in the heady waters
   of the SE community that communication is just so *easy*, and
   communicating ideas about computing and graphics is second-nature.

Truth.  My opinion is that the LCs (and by this I mean all the non-techie
types) made greater strides than the SEs at the conference in terms of
putting up with our kind of talk.  They went more than half-way, if you
will.  We SEs more or less sat in our own corner and expected the world to
come to us.

The other problem we have is that too few SEs can cross the line.  Too few
of us have LC background/training.  There is a significant part of the LC
community that has SE credentials (and more every day).

   And I also heard arrogance...on the part of some LCs, who assumed that
   everybody understood them, and on the part of many SEs, who assumed that
   it was naturally the LCs' job to learn how to speak like "normal
   people"--which is to say, them.

Guilty as charged.  I guess it comes from the society we live in.  It
rewards us SEs these days much more than the LCs, both in terms of money and
prestige (and power, for that matter).  We've got the world in the palm of
our hand; it's a little hard not to feel like gods and goddesses.  Now I'll
make the most biased statement I can think of: from the extreme SE point of
view, it looks like we're doing work which will shape the world for decades,
both in personal and global terms.  What are you doing that compares to
that?  Why should we pay attention?

Even the Soc/Anthro people usually can only analyze in retrospect.  It's
rare that they can deal with modern culture in any way.  Sandy is something
of an exception.

   Why *didn't* the SEs use more technical language?

Because we're used to getting called on the carpet for it.  Plus, we want
our stuff to be as widely understood and used as possible.  I know LCs who
are happy if they produce a paper that can only be understood by 1000 people
in their particular specialty.