From: randy@xanadu.com (Randy Farmer -- A survivor of the Lost Patrol) Subject: CyberConf2: A reply Date: Fri, 31 May 91 19:19:15 GMT Message-ID: <1991May31.191915.1712@xanadu.com> Organization: AMIX, The American Information Exchange A reply to Round One of the Cyberspace Conference debate: First let me say a huge THANKS to all of those who have responded to my initial call for debate. And let this message be a further invitation for more replies to this thread. I am especially looking for replies from literary critics. A. Stone and M. Benedict point out that I over-generalized my initial argument by breaking the conference into two groups: The software engineers and the literary critics. I concede the point. I did this on purpose, to avoid getting more specific about exactly which presentations fell into which category. I found I was able to understand the presentations of everyone EXCEPT the literary critics. I understood the anthopologists, the artists, etc.. A. Stone says the software engineers are as bad at communicating clearly as everybody else. Again I agree, and thought I pointed this out in my original article. If anyone cares to tell me how *my* presentation might be better understood, I'll gladly make changes. Is this true for the literary critic? She also asks "Why didn't the SEs say ''I don't understand a word you're saying?''". I've got lots of excuses here (maybe not good enough, but here they are) 1) I was in shock 2) I thought it was *my* fault 3) The speaker had already run over time and lost me in the first 5 minutes 4) It'd be RUDE! Now I know better, I'll risk being rude. I don't accept that language can't be made 'mostly' plain. Sure, some stuff won't be able to be translated, fine! Just as long as I can follow your thesis, premise and conclusion, and pick out a few supporting arguments along the way. I must address the question "Where were you when the call went out for the 1992 Conference Comittee?". 1) Giving a demo of Cyberspace and 2) Very confused about what was going on with this conference. It took me over a month to get my thoughts together on this subject. I'm ready for the tap now, if'n you really want me. Lastly, I never said I could do better. I said WE could do better, and that we MUST do better. Sandy, William sat behind me at the conference. I think you owe him an apology ;-).