THE SCREEN PERSONALITY
by Robert Harper


Everyone who works hard at conferencing tends to develop a character that is ON all the time, a SCREEN personality. For some people it is not sufficient to have the *ONE* SCREEN personality. Depending on their mood, or the things they have been reading lately, they display multiple SPLIT SCREEN personalities.

The discrepancy between the SCREEN personality and the REAL personality is a manifestation that confronts anyone who uses CC systems regularly. Both writers and readers soon come to recognize that a person's ID will usually give a clue to what he will write about. The TITLE that is used to set off the writing may also tell which SCREEN personality the author is currently using.

Every individual does his best to consolidate his SCREEN personality and also signals others about the ways in which he expects his text to be treated. In much the same way that an animal marks off his own territory so that others should not infringe on it, the SCREEN personality develops a STYLE that is instantly recognizable as his own and marks out his territory with words rather than with body odors...although sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.

It can be said that some people come alive at the keyboard, and their SCREEN personality bears no relationship to how they conduct themselves when engaged in normal human communication. Those that stammer, blush, and are lost for words in public, often find the keyboard and the CRT perfect channels for expressing ideas that would otherwise remain bottled up inside.

To a certain degree the opposite is also true. People who are very strong OFF-SCREEN may stumble when it comes to expressing themselves in a computer conference. This well known syndrome of the manager who has a micro on his desk as a status symbol yet never has the time or the inclination to use it, can lead to what has been called TECHNISTRESS and cause hostility and fear of the medium.

The SCREEN personality has mastered all the high-tech details and his basic concern is not how to COMMUNICATE technically but how communications are RECEIVED and ACTED upon. The SCREEN personality may also suffer from TECHNISTRESS, but for different reasons.

TECHNISTRESS hits the SCREEN personality at two different levels which contrast with each other...INFORMATION OVERLOAD and APATHY.

The SCREEN personality hates to read long texts. If he does read them it is generally because they are comments on a previous long text that he has entered. He devises shortcuts in an attempt to avoid too much reading. He will SCAN HEADERS on the look out for texts of interest and read and comment on them.

The biggest vice that he has is egoism, and his greatest fears are that irony will be misinterpreted as bitterness, humour condemned as rubbish, compassion scorned as weakness, level-headedness dismissed for boredom. He has to remind himself that the more communication there is, the more difficult it is for communication to succeed, and that it is naive to believe that increased communication is always for the better.

Indeed, when under the stress of INFORMATION OVERLOAD, he is inclined to suggest that too much communication is just as bad as too little. The only time when he regards INFORMATION OVERLOAD as being appropriate is when he himself is a major factor in creating it.

But it is only the most resolute SCREEN personality that can continue to ply his trade in the face of APATHY. This is felt as an even bigger burden than INFORMATION OVERLOAD. When his glorious vibrant texts sink into oblivion without drawing a single comment, the SCREEN personality fears that his messages may be misunderstood in a way that does the most harm.

In computer conferences, it is not important how things ARE but how they APPEAR to be. Generally the SCREEN personality would like to be serious but more often than not, serious topics scare people off and create APATHY. If the SCREEN personality does not evoke some response when he is serious, then the next thing to try is humour. If humour does not work then the SCREEN personality will go into hibernation. If everyone else on the system is asleep, then the best policy is to do likewise.

In his heart of heart the SCREEN personality knows that the global village is at not at hand. Experience tells that even though the telecommunications links and networks are fast falling nicely into place, the real barriers to be overcome are the same as ever...man's inhumanity to his fellow man.

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Author's Note: Robert Harper is a microbiologist who lives in
Finland. He has been involved in various international projects
where computer conferencing has been used for the exchange of
ideas and information between scientists in the life sciences,
and he is particularly interested in applications for exchange
of information between the developed and developing countries.
He describes this piece as "partly a political broadcast from
the Finland Station."