I owe you-all an explanation of my last message to the pcp list.
Not only because I had a great many typos there (mainly due to a
very bad transmission line), but also since I also indulged in the
greatest sin there is in e-mailing:
Using irony, sarcasm, ultra-short remarks.
These work fine when ole buddies are exchanging contact calls, but
these genres also serve to making the discourse impermeable for
others who are more on the periphery of the old-boy-network.
I am an old boy, too, of course (51 years, diploma in 1970 from
Munich University). Continuing the answer to Devi's joke of a
questionnaire: Philosophically, I am somebody who has gone through
the stages of naive realist, dialectical materialist, social
constructivist, on to something useful for the next decades.
Devi is new to the networking in CyberSpace, as he himself confessed.
Many others also just play around with the possibility of easy
quoting ("InterNet Style Commentary"). All of us surely want some
sort of community or other to exchange thoughts, and so on. This
cooperation of individual minds via electronic medium is, however,
VERY HARD WORK, I can assure you from 8 years of experience (mainly
with the UCSD based lists of the XFAMILY -- Hemant Desai knows more
about this, don't you?).
We need to try all sorts of traditional formats/genres/styles here.
So I found Devi's shaking up the trancelike stream of pcp thoughout
the summer quite fresh and produtive.
Yet, like I have sensed in Brian Gaines' joke with acid aftertaste,
a certain amount of naivete does not really have to be overstepped...
----
My trying to get off of the pcp stream had, by the way, nothing to
do with any disgust. It was purely a matter of being traveling the
next few days, not wanting to go through a morass of dated notes
when comming home.
A good week for you-all out there.
Arne.
--------------------------
Arne Raeithel
Dept of Psychology
University of Hamburg