THE BENEFITS OF COMPUTER CONFERENCING
by Sylvia Engdahl


As most of us know too well, telecommunications--other than in a strictly business context--suffers from a bad press image. The general public hears about how it's misused, but rarely about its benefits; when they are mentioned, the focus is usually on value to programmers and hobbyists rather than to users of CC. A few months ago in Parti on the Source I started a conference, "Role of CC", to discuss what the benefits are. One of the things I included was a statement of them in list form.

What follows is an expanded version of that list, which I've revised to include points raised by participants in "Role of CC" and in another Parti conference, "Mindspeak", as well as some I myself thought of after posting my original version. It covers benefits of CC for social and educational purposes, excluding those unique to business use. Wouldn't it be nice if the public could be made aware of all these things?



1. Each individual can communicate with more people via CC than in any other way. This is true not only of those like myself whose face-to-face contacts are limited, but of everyone. No matter how many people you know, you can talk to a lot of additional ones electronically.

2. CC enlarges the circle of an individual's acquaintances not only in terms of numbers, but in terms of variety. In CC, people of all ages and backgrounds meet on equal footing, which is not generally the case in face-to-face contact. In fact, the factors that artificially divide people, including such handicaps as physical disability or unattractiveness, become irrelevant and in some cases even invisible.

3. With CC, geography is no longer relevant to communication (except insofar as phone costs differ). In principle--and in practice for a fortunate few--people in different parts of the world can converse easily as those living in the same city.

4. CC frees communication from the constraints of time. Most people are too busy to meet all the people they'd like to talk to, and in fact the more people they know, the more significant time becomes. With CC, they can communicate at their own convenience (maybe even in the middle of the night) while others do so at theirs.

5. CC brings people with common interests together; those who haven't met anyone nearby who shares their interests can contact others in the same position. This is particularly significant to people who enjoy serious discussions but are limited to a circle of acquaintances among whom only "small talk" is acceptable, and who therefore feel intellectually isolated.

6. Discussions can be better organized, and therefore more focused, in CC than in any but the most formal face-to-face settings.

7. CC allows individuals who have a visual rather than aural orientation toward language, and who therefore communicate better through the written word than through speech, to express themselves more fully than any other interactive process. Though these individuals often have opportunity to express ideas as writers, writing via other media is not interactive; even a letter produces no response for a week or more, and with published writing it's a matter of months before any feedback can be obtained. CC, by eliminating this delay and by allowing many people to take part in a single written discussion, opens the door to a level of written communication that has never before been possible.

8. Ideas can be expressed more fully in CC even by those who don't have a strong personal preference for writing, simply because everyone has a far larger vocabulary in writing than in speaking, and because it is socially acceptable to use a richer vocabulary and sentence structure in written communications than in spoken ones.

9. Many people feel less inhibited when communicating through CC than when speaking. Even to those for whom this is not true, there is less inhibition in teleconferencing than in most face- to-face conversations simply because its social conventions permit people who are not intimately acquainted to discuss their inner feelings in a way not customary at social gatherings. Perhaps for this reason, online friendships are often perceived as being closer than face-to-face ones.

10. CC leads to wider participation by all members of a group than occurs in face-to-face meetings not only because the medium itself is disinhibiting, but because a specific effort is generally made by the discussion leader to be supportive of all contributors. Everyone's comments have equal exposure, and they can be made at any time, without waiting for the more active participants to "be quiet and let someone else speak." Furthermore, since it's known that readers can skip comments that don't interest them, there's no worry about boring others; the audience, if not receptive, will at least be "listening" by choice. (By the same token, a person who does dominate the conversation in a way that bores other participants can be easily tuned out.)

11. The environment in which a person communicates via CC is normally quiet and free of sensory distractions, which leads to greater concentration on the ideas being discussed, and possibly to a mode of thought unlike that in which other forms of communication usually take place.

12. In CC, responses to comments are not as immediate as they are in speech, and can therefore be thought through before they are made. This gives participants a chance to clarify their thoughts before expressing them, which on the whole raises the level of the discussion. Any comments made in haste can be modified or deleted, not only from the record but often before they are seen by the group.

13. CC creates a permanent record of every discussion, which is of great value in going back to review what was said. Ideas don't get lost or forgotten when they are part of such a record. Moreover, newcomers to the discussion don't miss what was said before they arrived, and in fact, the entire exchange of ideas can be of great benefit to readers who encounter it long after its conclusion.

14. CC enhances communication between people who also meet face-to-face. If they have met online before such meetings, they start off at a higher level of involvement than they would if they were strangers, and the productivity of the meeting is therefore increased. On the other hand, face-to-face acquaintances who are separated by distance can stay in touch much more conveniently than by mail or phone.



Author's Note: Sylvia Engdahl, former professional systems
programmer, vendor of TOPS80 Tape Operating System and author of THE
PLANET-GIRDED SUNS: MAN'S VIEW OF OTHER SOLAR SYSTEMS (Atheneum, 1974) plus 11 other books, including the following SF novels (all Atheneum; most
available only in libraries): ENCHANTRESS FROM THE STARS; THE FAR SIDE OF
EVIL; the trilogy THIS STAR SHALL ABIDE / BEYOND THE TOMORROW MOUNTAINS / THE DOORS OF THE UNIVERSE; and JOURNEY BETWEEN WORLDS.