Hi, It´s a very interesting question. I think that given the proliferation of devices, the concept of CMC deserves to be discussed more profoundly. The focus of research could be PC-centric right now, but I think this situation is going to change soon, so the communication through PDAs, cell phones (that receives e-mails), pagers etc, could be subject of a scientific approach . I think CMC as a field of research can encompass a lot of issues and point of views, so it´s beyond the "communication field" . In the other hand, if the computer has became a metamedium (Kay, AIR Conference 1.0), so we can write about mass communication media, as Tv and newspapers, that it´s experienced through the computer, as an issue to CMC, just like we research about interpersonal communication through e-mail or chat. At the canadian seminar announced by Michael Totschnig last year - « La communication médiatisée par ordinateur (CMO) : un carrefour de problématiques » http://grm.uqam.ca/cmo2001/actes.html - these questions were the main subject of discussion. Leonardo Vidigal MA Student Federal University of Minas Gerais Brazil Sandeep Krishnamurthy wrote:

Friends,

All of you have seen the term computer-mediated-communication(e.g. http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/). A friend recently asked me about the PC-centric nature of this definition. "Why is this not screen-mediated-communication or device-mediated communication?", he asked me. I argued that, starting with the Internet, connectivity with others (or community, if you like) had to be a component of CMC, but not other forms of screen-based-communication. By this standard, communicating through PDAs or e-mail devices such as Blackberry was, indeed, CMC. But, checking out the weather on a kiosk was not.

What do you think? Is the term CMC too restrictive?

Best, Sandeep

-- To learn more about me, visit-http://faculty.washington.edu/sandeep

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