I hope nobody takes offence about the subject, because that issue of
Scientific American that I never quit talking about used the word 'tribe' to
describe small (up to a few hundred) electronic group that "support sustained
interaction, develop their own norms of behaviour and generate peer pressure":)
In the best of traditions from Monte Python, I'll not talk about that, but
about the feasability of doing some serious Traveller work over the TML with
regards to how electronic groups work.
There has been laboratory studies of how different electronic forums perform
in comparision to face-to-face meetings and even, belive it or not, studies
of the frequencey of flames in different forums.
The results were that in discussions done through electronic mail there are
less 'stool pigeons' than in fact-to-face discussions. More ideas were
proposed in them, but they took *much* longer to reach a decision. From the
diagrams they took between three and five times as long time to get something
done.
I belive that we have seen this in action at least once, and that was one
of the reasons behind why I said that unless a core group of persons in
physical contact with each other is placed as the spiders in the net, there
is no way anything comm*rcially successful will come out of TML.
(Also note that I have a nagging suspicion that the site that most graciously
lends their resources to serve as the hub of the TML would object rather
strongly if anything comm*rcially successful came out of the TML)
- -bertil-
- --
"It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe political view or
strange religion there exists a proponent on the Net. The proof is left as an
exercise for your kill-file."