CONFERENCING WITHOUT A COMPUTER
by Stan Pokras


Towards the later part of the last century, around the time that the
telephone was being invented, hobbyists who owned their own printing
presses and who had been exchanging printed material with each other
through the mail, decided that it would be simpler to mail their work to
one central person who would collate it and mail to each contributor a
package containing one copy of each contribution.

I first learned of this technique in 1981, when a free-spirited young man
named Paul Angel came to Philadelphia to write an article for the
newsletter which I occasionally publish called OTHER NETWORKS.

According to Paul's article the earliest of what I understand to be
asynchronous communications became known as the United Amateur Press
Association (UAPA) somewhere around 1870.

"By the 1920's" Paul wrote, "this and other "apas" had evolved into forums
for conversation. H.P. Lovecraft, the horror-fantasy writer, belonged to
an apa in the 20's. When science fiction fandom began in the 1930's, fans
who were members of the "mundane" apas spread the idea. SF fans spread the
idea so well that South of the Moon (SOTM), the index of apas within
sicence fiction fandom now lists more than 70 apas."

Paul had been active in at least one science fiction apa, and had begun
his own, DAPA, in Denver and an apa for his friends interested in Anarchy.
(Paul being a political and social anarchist).

Paul's article went on to describe the quality of communications he found
most exciting in his apas: diverse topic possibilities, dialectic (which
he dubbed "multilectic") and the juxtaposition of many different points of
view. He loved the constant flux of of interweaving comments - which he
saw as useful in helping people become more tolerant and understanding of
diversity.

Paul coined the term "Multilogue" which he felt better described the
process and would be a better generic name for this sort of exchange.

He also described how this form of interaction was being accomplished now,
with the use of copy machines instead of printing presses. The access to
this new copy machine technology had made it possible for anyone who lives
near a copy center to create their own conference by offering to do the
monthly photocopy work and mailing for the group.

Naturally issues in conference moderation are very much the same in the
paper multilogue form as we understand them to be in computer conferences!
People may be timid perhaps at first. Some people can't manage the idea of
a once-a-month mailing. For some it's too slow, for others it's too often!

Only certain people have the patience it takes to interact via typed pages
and their handwriting may not reproduce well... Here I'm referring to the
idea that lead me to introduce this topic in the first place. Even paper
conferencing will leave some people out in the cold. Long mailing
distances can affect paper conferences by takeing two or more months for a
letter to come to the U.S. from distant or backward countries. And clear
photo copying means clear originals, some people can't produce an easy to
read page. Handicapped people for instance, or people who write in
different languages. Even this simple technology leaves out some people.

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

At about the same time that Paul came to Philadelphia, I learned that a
woman named Ann Weiser had begun a writing group that she called a
"many-to-many" (possibly having heard the term while using EIES where
Harry Stevens was busily working on his development of Participate, then
called "Topics," with Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz - Parti on The Source
was first introduced in June of 1982).

Ann had met the futurist Robert Theobald at a World Future Society
conference in Toronto in 1980 and brought her experience as a member of a
science fiction apa to bear on the problem of how to stay in touch with
Bob and the other people she had met at the conference. This was the
begining of the first of now over a dozen such groups which are
flourishing around Bob's work and are associated with his Action Linkage
organization.

I was invited to join the second "many-to-many" that Ann started. It's
purpose was to act as an exchange among people working on issues in
regional and local social transformation. This very same many-to-many is
still circulating, haveing never missed a monthly mailing since it's
beginning in March of 1981. Many people have taken turns being the central
editor of this group. It's had names come and go. At one point I had
dubbed it the "Link to love" after a conference topic which was supposed
to be a collective book authoring project on Delphi, where I had my first
electronic communication experience. It is now called simply the "General"
many-to-many. Some of the people in this group were among it's original
inhabitants.

As the idea seemed useful to Theobalds work, he bagan to talk about the
many-to-manys in his speeches and write about them in his mailings to
members of Action Linkage. New topics were born such as the discussion on
government which is lead by the Lieutenant Governor of Iowa, and the
planning and theory group called the "Strategy many-to-many" which
Theobald himself leads. The Action Linkage organization recently held it's
first "Face-to-face" meeting in Arizona, reminding me to some extent of
the beginings of the ENA in New York last April.

As a result of this face-to-face, several people in Action Linkage will
soon be joining us here on Unison. My own paper based many-to-many called
the "Action Linkage COMPUTER Multilogue" will be used to help others who
are now in the grey area between owning a computer and getting themselves
connected to others via a modem to join us here in the high speed
conference world.

Many of these people see the step of going on-line as being out of their
budgetary reach. Hopefully this will prove less of a barrier in the future
than it has to date. Other people in the COMPUTER Multilogue do not have
a Telenet node in their local calling area. This adds to the cost, and
makes their participation on-line less likely.

Those who *do* come online will already be exprienced with asynchronous
communication and the process of exchaging ideas on a regular basis
because what they are doing is really computer conferencing - without a
computer!