In the Fall of 1995 I approached Drew Kampion, editor of the Island Independent, with an idea for a newspaper column on electronic communication. The approach was to be simple, geared to all the beginners and about-to-be-beginners out there dealing with e-mail and the World Wide Web. Most importantly, it was to be consciously dissimilar to other such columns in the Puget Sound area which emphasized technology and slighted the human effects of electronic communication. He liked the sample columns I had written and decided to begin the column when the II changed to a monthly publication in January of 1996. I named the column CyberBeat, a descriptive if not overly crreative title.
Mr. Kampion produced the Island Independent for three years on a shoestring budget, building an advertising clientele that would hopefully carry the II into perennial existence. Unfortunately this was not to be, and the II published its final issue in March of 1996. The Island Independent offered incisive, wide-ranging commentary on community and bioregional issues, and evidenced a literary panorama and level of excellence which was sorely needed, and is sorely missed.
As this is to be a column about electronic communication, I'm naturally going to start with a story about manure spreaders. I grew up raising chickens, lots of them. I'd get chicks, hatched just two hours before, bed them down in a clean building with glowing heaters, fresh wood shavings and starter feed, and watch them grow up. After they had moved on to a new home to lay eggs, I'd be left with the shavings/chicken manure, which I would shovel into our old, green John Deere manure spreader.
I associate electronic communication with the spreader because the volume of electronic communication is so great, compared to any one person's interests, that the great majority of it is like chicken manure. Figuring out what to do with what's not needed is critically important, and a mechanism like the John Deere--simple, direct, and reliable--is necessary to permit one's concentration to be focused on specific interests.
This column will favor the manure spreader approach. I'll steer clear of the latest on the XS-91 chip, judgements of which CD ROM will spin the fastest, and the sleaze of platform/application incompatabilities. That's a well populated thicket already, where one's bearings (and enthusiasm) can easily be lost. I prefer a more comprehensive view, containing historical, political, and systemic perspectives. Why worry, even a little bit, about things you don't need and won't use.
One thing you will see a lot of is words. Unlike many other human languages, American English invents and absorbs new words like a freeze dried sponge tossed into a pitcher of beer. Even if we consider American slang, technology is still the ruling coiner of words. And of all the areas of technology, argueably the most inventive and rapacious is the computer industry. So you'll often find words here that will be new, or used in a different manner. Relax. Keep the ones you like or find useful and toss the rest. It's the American way.
So I come to ecomm, a word I minted because I saw a need. Quite possibly someone, somewhere else is happily using ecomm, but I read a lot and I haven't yet heard about them. Ecomm is an abbreviation for Electronic Communcation, desirable because it encourages a different view of communication, and efficient when expressed by tongue or keyboard. Remember, you saw it here first.
Ecomm has a place in our lexionary because it is useful to consider electronic communication as an integrated whole. Ecomm includes e-mail, file transfers, Usenet, Telnet, net-in-the-making, the World Wide Web, and what will be the Web's replacement. All these reside on that electronic racetrack called the Internet of course (or simply the Net, if you don't care for multi-syllabics), and share traits which are fundamentally different than older communication methods. Ecomm functions independently of space, meaning that the file cabinet where we store our information will rarely suffer from bloat. Ecomm also shrinks time: no month long wait for the packet boat, or week long wait for the pony express rider (or US Mail), or even day long wait for FedEx or UPS. Nope. Hit a key and the info's somewhere else, RIGHT NOW.
So what's the big deal about ecomm? We all know how quick those computer thingies are. Here's what. It's taken us nearly a century to discover even a portion of the ways in which the introduction of the telephone, for example, not to mention the automobile, altered the modern social landscape. We're still figuring it out. Ecomm should be approached differently. Any new information integrates old information and dispassionately multiplies it. So we don't need lots more information nearly as much as we need information about information, so we can quickly perceive what's important and chuck the rest.
In a world where information is the fastest growing thing, what we'd really like is a new tool: a seine-with-a-brain we can dip into the information stream, to filter out only those things we want to catch. Above all it must easy, even pleasant to use, like the John Deere; something to help us pick the agates out of a handful of pebbles, the gold specks out of all the sand. Turns out computers do that, really well. Which swings us back to ecomm, because ecomm is the stream. Forget about figuring out the computer; that'll take care of itself. The key is learning how to toss the net; that's easier.
Once upon a time, computers used to be a fright to operate; one had to think like a machine. Now we finally have computers that don't fight back. If I compared computers to cars, I'd point out that "fingertip control" in cars was once only dream; now it's a reality we expect. Computers, however, have progressed as much as cars in 10 years instead of 70: we've come that far, that fast. If your laboring under the assumption that you have to be an expert to access ecomm, forget it. Experts are many things, but they're also people who know a lot about a very tiny slice of the pie. I'm more interested in whole pies, preferably pumpkin.
So what you'll read about ecomm here will be a combination of the simplicity of a manure spreader and fingertip control. Fingertip manure spreading, as it were, and that will be the most difficult part. The easy parts will be fun: the challenge and reward of meeting new friends (and visiting old ones); the pleasure of pursuing those interests which, of all the people in town, only you and two other people possess; easy access to information; the energy which bursts forth when creativity is awakened; the opening of a new world to those housebound or disabled; the expansion of the spirit.
If you have a special interest, question, or concern you'd like to see addressed, write me at Cyberbeat, care of the Independent. New perspectives are the best tools to use on old dilemmas. And if I don't know, I'll find someone who does.
Column Number Two
Column Number Three
Column Number Four
Column Number Five, unpublished.