-----Original Message----- From: Peter Timusk [mailto:ptimusk@sympatico.ca] Sent: August-14-10 7:12 AM To: 'Paul Frosh' Subject: RE: [Air-L] Query on Research about "Too Much Communication" I wonder if what he says about face to face amounts/direction of amounts is really valid? I guess that with more humans alive there is more dense living space and, in fact, face to face is increasing as well. Certainly in Canada where I live and work there are more diverse faces to deal with at work and in society than when I was young. My face to face is more and more global and again without any real valid measures I guess more global than my typed words. I am questioning his face to face statistics that are implied in what he says. Peter Timusk B.Math BA. Statistical IT officer Statistics Canada. -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Paul Frosh Sent: August-14-10 1:21 AM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-L] Query on Research about "Too Much Communication" At this year's ICA conference in Singapore Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht gave an opening keynote plenary called 'Infinite Availability: About Hyper-Communication and Old-Age'. It was a largely a (sophisticated) lament about too much communication (the "hyper-communication" of the title). It began with an anecdote about people texting their loved ones (who are meeting them at the airport) as their plane lands to say that they have arrived, then texting again at passport control, again at the luggage carousel, and again as they go through customs, until the moment of face-to-face contact. But I think that one person's hyper-communication may be another's phatic communion. Here is the abstract. I don't know if the paper is available yet anywhere, but ICA keynote plenaries are often published. Abstract: We have more opportunities to communicate than ever before in the history of Homo sapiens. This is the elementary fact that I am referring to with the word "hyper-communication," and I refrain from saying that hyper-communication is either a very good or a very bad thing. The frequency with which we talk to other persons face-to-face, that is in mutual physical presence, has most likely not increased - but it has probably also not dramatically declined during the past decades. If we have more opportunities to communicate than ever before, in the sense of conducting interactions based on the use of natural languages, then this increase is clearly a function of technical devices whose effects neutralize the consequences of physical and sometimes also of temporal distance. Some of us old ones feel that this is simply too much - and that, at the same time, it is not enough presence. If the process of Modernity has largely been a process of disenchantment, we have now written "Rat ional Re-enchantment" on our revolutionary banners. But I am fully aware that this is but another Gray Panthers' revolution. Paul Frosh, Ph.D Department of Communications and Journalism The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mount Scopus Jerusalem 91905 Israel msfrosh@mscc.huji.ac. _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/