[Air-L] the internet resembles face-to-face

[Robert Whitney]

"Perhaps this quote is the most useful for supporting Pam's thesis
(one I've been working on, too) that much of the Internet resembles
face-to-face communication. Why else would Internet researchers have
to be reminded that posting emails is a form of publication unless,
of course, Internet posting is so pervasively considered to be
something other than publishing--e.g., f2f communication."

- Alex Halavais, last week


I find this statement curious for a number of reasons.  For instance, I feel
that many books and print works have the same visceral quality as face to
face communication, while many print ads or commercials, billboards, etc.
feel cold.  I think that the same is true of the net, so that "desktop
publishing" resembles face-to-face in so far as it is personalized in some
way by the writer.  However, since the formal establishment of signs and
signifiers is not quite present, static, or established in our
consciousness- and since the volume of information that we deal with is so
daunting that these things often have shifting meanings and allusions, we
are confronted in a far more colloquial manner.  I believe that individuals,
in most informal cases (such as this), write more as if they were having a
conversation, which should be obvious but, I question very much if it is
anything beyond that.  We all know that the internet has "changed the way we
communicate" but I think that behind all the rhetoric, and the obvious
difference in tools, the nature of the message behind it all is the same
(though moving at a much faster rate).  An unpersonalized message, or a
corporate site- something anonymous does not resemble the visceral qualities
of a conversation to me no matter how it is presented.  Also, are you
proposing to set aside the great deal of pornography which engulfs the
internet and would you say that it resembles f2f?

-Bob