"Every Home Is Wired": 1 -- The Net in Relation to Music Subcultures

"Every Home Is Wired":
1 -- The Net in Relation to Music Subcultures

Written Orality
Many misunderstandings about the quality of Internet discussions have also been brought on by attempts to apply traditional media concepts to this new medium. "Our official culture is striving to force the new media to do the work of the old. ... We approach the new with the psychological conditioning and sensory responses of the old. This clash naturally occurs in transitional periods" (McLuhan & Fiore 94-5). This becomes obvious, for example, from Reid's view that CMC users "cannot rely upon the conventional systems of interaction if they are to make sense to one another. Words, as we use them in speech, fail to express what we really mean once they are deprived of the subtleties of the non-verbal cues that we assume will accompany them. The sense of social context is lost" (62).	Bit 39
However, the point is that on the Net we do not use words in just the same way 'as we use them in speech' -- a fact that should be quite obvious from the observation that the vast majority of Internet traffic is based on written text. On the other hand, on the Net we do not just use words as we use them in print, either: "one equalising feature of cyberspeak ... is its informality compared to print. Specific communicative and linguistic practices develop ... . Language is neither as fixed nor as precise as it is in writing for print." Additionally, in the way participants adapt to the use of cyberspeak, "training and education show up", as Kottak continues (12) -- not only is Net language neither fully like oral nor like written speech, then, but it also emerges itself as a carrier of cues to participants' identities.¹¹	Bit 40

Section 1 -- Go on to Bite:

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31	32	33	34	35