Can electronic communications can mediate real encounters with the other.

Those watching television's glowing box cannot see each other. It's sometimes said that the Internet might be a new space of democracy. But screen communications emphasize denotative statements and short messages; to exit from painful confrontation, you need only click a mouse. Easy, quick decisions are encouraged by such conditions, not the difficult sorting out that requires time and commitment. (Sennett 1999, 71-72)

Sennett here equates the technology's promise with its current abilities. Nonetheless he is right that "difficult sorting out" in dialogue requires habits of interaction and concentrated discussion that current media do not encourage. But anyone who attends civic face to face meetings over controversial issues realizes that those habits are lacking there, too. When the Net can offer enough bandwidth, a "place for discipline, focus, and duration" will not need spatial proximity.

We might wonder what will be the debating style of people raised not on TV's sound bites but on computer games' long concentration combined with constant challenges, and the integration of multiple variables and overlapping lines of simultaneous action.

Index
what are cities for now?

(c) David Kolb, 1 August 2001