[Air-l] peace

[Steve Jones]

While I do feel AoIR and air-l are communities, I don't feel that 
they are one community, and further don't feel that we get what we 
need from any one community.

The interesting question that Danny initially asks, that I've been 
interested in for a very long time, is to do with our expectations 
for community. Should we expect discussion of the war, silence about 
it, or ignorance of it, how do those expectations come about and how 
do they change? How do we get what we need/want from communities to 
which we belong, and how do those needs/wants change?

I particularly appreciate your follow-up, Danny, as you've not just 
asked the question but tried to answer it from your perspective. My 
own perspective matches much of your own. It's important to note that 
all conversations occur in some sense at the expense of others, in 
part because when a voice is raised it is difficult to raise others 
without causing a din, but mainly because such is time (itself an 
_enormously_ under-studied matter in internet studies, the cost of a 
focus on space) that as conversations go on, if they are to be 
conversations, things that might have been said pass by or change.

The question of difference...enormously important, for as Danny notes 
there are multiple values at work and at stake. Right now it is more 
important than the other questions that can be taken up later. I am 
hopeful that all who want to make a difference in the world at this 
moment are engaged in so doing, and if air-l or AoIR can make a 
difference I am hopeful that it will, the cost of that difference to 
either notwithstanding at all.

Sj

At 11:30 PM +1200 3/20/03, Danny Butt wrote:
>What's interesting is the diversity of groups that I'm subscribed to, which
>ones are talking about the war, and how. This conversational diversity is,
>as many on this list have written about eloquently and studied extensively,
>an Internet phenomenon.
>
>But underlying David's question seemed to be a recognition of the slippage
>from interest group or occupational resource to "community". Perhaps the
>air-l community turned out to not behave quite the way we expect communities
>to behave. I sensed a question coming out to the list about what kind of
>community air-l is - "is it the community that is worth the emotional energy
>I'm investing here"?
>
>In my experience, this happens whenever one invests a lot of time in a
>project, as I know air-l exec do with the list. It's natural consequence of
>spending a lot of time and energy interacting with people and trying to make
>our projects successful. Our increasing work-life integration (driven by
>ICTs) makes us demand more of our professional relationships.
>
>But to me, the silence, and David's question, just reinforced the things I
>already feel about air-l:
>
>* It's highly professionalised
>* It's very North American
>
>Into this picture of the air-l community feeds the other information... the
>preponderance of methodological research questions, requests for stats (the
>overall displacement of politics in the u.s. empirical social science
>tradition), off-list complaints about the careerism of AOIR conference
>delegates from people who always complain about that sort of thing, etc.
>
>None of this is really a problem to me, because, as Steve and others have
>noted, there are plenty of other places to be talking. But it does form my
>framework for not expecting air-l to talk about the war, nor expecting to
>find it a very useful place to talk about it. My picture of the list
>hopefully indicates that air-l is not a "haven of on-topicness" in any
>serendipitous way, but rather constructs its topics and community to
>facilitate certain kinds of conversations at the expense of others. Again,
>I'm not complaining about this, it certainly serves its purpose extremely
>well and I gain a relatively large amount of useful information from it. But
>I don't ever feel like I might (or would want to) engage air-l in the
>dialogues on the political implications of ICTs that I seek on other lists.
>
>The larger question that follows from this is whether this is the sort of
>list AOIR people want. No right answers in this conundrum: the "benefits" we
>gain from our environment of highly specific, sophisticated discussion
>groups is not free, it comes at the expense of other kinds of conversations
>with other kinds of people and other kinds of action.
>
>So, does air-l want to make a difference to the invasion (I can't bring
>myself to call it a war), and if so, what could that difference be? Would
>trying to make that difference damage the other functions of the list? Would
>it be worth it?
>
>peace,
>
>Danny
>
>
>
>
>Steve Jones wrote on 20/3/03 3:06 PM:
>
>>  I would not be at all surprised if many, maybe most, subscribers to
>>  air-l are on other lists in which the conversation is non-stop about
>>  the war (regardless of whether that is "on topic" for those lists).
>>  Perhaps air-l is a haven of on-topic-ness. Maybe very few people are
>>  paying attention to air-l right now. Maybe, as I have seen with some
>>  of my students, some people are "warred out" and don't wish to talk
>>  about it. I also expect that people are otherwise engaged about this
>>  war in ways _not_ involving the internet, whether they are seeking
>>  peace or not when it comes to this war. And there are likely many
>>  people right now seeking news, being with family and friends, etc.,
>>  and not being very attentive to email lists (or the internet
>>  generally).
>>
>>  I would also not be surprised if there were those concerned about
>>  publicly posting a comment about the war, and I would want to be
>>  respectful of that. It does not matter that I believe or would like
>>  to believe and convince them, and everyone, that there is nothing to
>>  be concerned about raising one's voice, for even if there is nothing
>>  to be concerned about there are those who wish not to speak and to
>>  coerce speech is not necessarily better than to silence it.
>>
>>  I have found myself flooded with email about the war, but I do
>>  wonder, as Nils asks, whether the internet will matter in the case of
>>  this war.
>
>--
>http://www.dannybutt.net
>
>
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