[Air-L] FW: Query on Research about "Too Much Communication"

Peter Timusk ptimusk at sympatico.ca
Sat Aug 14 04:46:00 PDT 2010



-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Timusk [mailto:ptimusk at 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 at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Paul Frosh
Sent: August-14-10 1:21 AM
To: air-l at 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 at mscc.huji.ac.








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