Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com\!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.mech From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Few crossroads have exerted as potent an influence on the Date: Wed, 4 Nov 92 10:28:41 EST Message-ID: Few crossroads have exerted as potent an influence on the American psyche as did that of Haight and Ashbury streets in San Francisco during the 1960s. A quarter century has passed since the word "hippie" entered the nationÕs vocabulary. Flower Power faded long ago, or perhaps was crossbred into concern over the rain forests. But the dog-eared neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury may once again find itself at the forefront of social change. This time the soundtrack will feature the clack of keys instead of the acid rock of Moby Grape or the Grateful Dead. The new agents of change refer to themselves as slackers, not flower children. Slackers are people in their twenties who profess boredom with school and the notion of a career. They prefer to sleep in late and hang out in coffeehouses. (Their parents may say they simply havenÕt Òfound themselvesÓ yet.) Few would suspect that slackers have something in common with engineers. But they do. Off in the corner of a cafe, slackers huddle around a table that happens to have a computer screen and keyboard embedded in it. One of them deposits 50 cents and for the next 20 minutes responds to e-mail messages or chats with habituŽs of another cafe linked to SF-Net. Users recently told Katherine Bishop, a reporter for The New York Times, that they were drawn to this computer network because it offered them a chance to meet and share ideas with others without worrying about appearances. SlackersÕ comments are remarkably similar to the experiences of engineers, as reported by Judy Myers, Thomas Wilson, and John Lienhard at the University of Houston. In ÒSurfing the Sea of Stories: Riding the Information RevolutionÓ (pages 60 to 65), they report that Òa new working cultureÓ is forming around far-flung networks of computers. ÒPeople who have worked in relative isolation from the technical literature now enter into conversations from which they once felt excluded,Ó they write. ÒPeer structures are being dismantled and re-created even as we write. The electronic communities do not care who you are. They care only for the quality of your information and your ideas.Ó The experiences reported by both slackers and engineers point toward Cyrano de Bergerac, the wonderful verse play by Edmond Rostand. Briefly, Cyrano wields the keenest sword and sharpest poetic wit in 17th-century France, but he also sports the longest nose. Christian, on the other hand, is fair of face but either tongue-tied or vulgar when he approaches a lady. Although Cyrano has loved Roxane for years, she is drawn to Christian because of his looks. Cyrano agrees to help Christian woo her by ghost-writing speeches and love letters. Roxane is enthralled by the words and does not discover the truth about their author until it is too late. Appearances cannot be disregarded completely. Nor should communications remain disembodied forever. Many slackers will someday find themselves knotting a necktie and joining the ranks of the 9-to-5 (as did their hippie ancestors). Face-to-face meetings are invaluable for the many nonverbal clues to the personality and behavior of another person. (They also facilitate camaraderie and romance.) But the common experience of slackers and engineers demonstrates that a computer network can help people get closer to expressing what they think and feel without worrying so much about how others will receive them. In that light Cyrano can be seen as a pioneer. -Jay OÕLeary, Editor Copyright 1992, Mechanical Engineering. For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Corporation (usa@AmeriCast.COM)