Caution. Democracy (May Be) in Progress: Deliberative Discourse on the "Information Superhighway"

(Susan's disclaimer to those up at Lehigh who may be taking the time to read my paper: I wrote this last spring as a beginning. To what, you may ask. Well, maybe to a very tentative seed of an idea for my dissertation. Or maybe, just to getting down in writing my first thoughts about computer-mediated communication. Or maybe to my ideas about argument theory, because Dr. Kroll did say we had to write a paper on something for that course last year . . . In any case, this paper is only a beginning.)

When a group of people remains in communication with one another for extended periods of time, the question of whether it is a community arises. Virtual communities might be real communities, they might be pseudo communities, or they might be something entirely new in the realm of/ social contracts, but I believe they are in part a response to the hunger for community that has followed the disintegration of traditional communities around the world.
-- Howard Rheingold

Something is wrong online. For all the hype about information highways and the explosive growth of the Internet, relatively few people are using the online medium for genuine communication.
-- Crawford Kilian

At stake is nothing less than the shape of our work and our world.
-- Nancy Kaplan

A rebirth of deliberative democracy is needed, where people come together to learn about pressing issues and make choices about common concerns.
-- Suzanne W. Morse

On another front entirely, groups like the National Issues Forum, the Alliance for a Better Public Voice, and the Public Conversations Project are exploring various approaches to "opening up" the public conversation, both in terms of encouraging participation in civic culture and in terms of finding new models for discussing issues that tend to polarize us as a society (abortion, physician-assisted suicide, gun control, to name just a few). 2 It seems to me that all of these forces begin to come together in questions for composition teachers about the obligations we have to teach our students how o write in what Jay David Bolter has designated the "late age of print."

Actually, I've been "online" for almost three years. Compared to a (still) rather small group of writing teachers, this means I'm fairly new to computers and the Internet, but compared to a much larger group (most writing teachers), I'm practically a "cybernaut." Admittedly, in the past few months, I have become one of the "converted," in the sense that I believe computer technology does create a new and important "writing space" (to borrow another phrase from Bolter); nonetheless, I think this writing space raises many complex issues for those of us concerned with composition studies about how and how much computer-mediated communication will influence our pedagogical practices in the composition classroom.

At first, though, I was more than a little puzzled over all the excitement about being in "cyberspace" -- what was the big deal? Sure, it was convenient to use email; however, besides the ease with which I could now "talk" to those both near and far, I couldn't quite understand what the Internet "was for." Then, through my own online experience and through reading (lots of reading) about the experiences of others, I slowly began to get it: talk, or to put it more fashionably, discourse is what people "do" in cyberspace. 3

In fact, computer technology in general and what we have come to call the Internet in particular together seem to provide a new public forum, an electronic "agora" of heretofore unimaginable dimensions: cyberspace turns out to be a "place" for the exchange of information, for the sharing of common interests, for the examination of ideas, for the testing of opinions, for the analysis of current problems, and for argument about solutions to these problems. To put it another way, it may be that computer-mediated communication is potentially a new "public sphere" which can facilitate the kind of public dialogue so necessary to sustaining a democratic society based on deliberative discourse. Whatever democratic potential exists for discourse in cyberspace, however, is intimately connected with our willingness as educators to accept responsibility for helping to prepare students who will become citizens capable of participating in that discourse.

Of course, I don't mean to suggest that computer technology itself offers some kind of utopian solution or quick fix to any of the social, political, and economic problems we face -- no matter what we ultimately choose to "do" with that technology. What I do want to suggest, though, is that those of us involved in the teaching of writing have an ethically compelling reason to examine, to question, and to influence the role computer-mediated communication will have in the development of our students, as writers, communicators, and citizens who are themselves willing to be socially responsible. And I want to suggest that we need to start by looking at both the positive and negative aspects of the discourse practices that are already beginning to take shape in and through cyberspace. In particular, I want to explore three writing "spaces" that different computer technologies make available, and I want to try to identify some of the ways these writing spaces converge with the other cultural forces I noted at the beginning of this essay to create new possibilities for deliberative discourse.

By "deliberative discourse" I mean something close to what David Mathews means in his 1994 book Politics for People: ". . . to weigh carefully both the consequences of various options and the views of others" (111). Mathews further elaborates on this definition of deliberative discourse in his discussion of what politically disillusioned college students, when given the opportunity to talk about it, "imagine" a different kind of political dialogue might be: 4

Although students would not like to see less emotion, they would like to see less acrimony. They wish there were more discussions where people listened as well as talked. They want to see more moderation, more appreciation for the indeterminate nature of political issues. They think there should be more respect, more inclusion of different perspectives, not for the sake of just being tolerant but for a very practical reason -- to have a better understanding of the whole. Students want to know more about what trade-offs are in the "solutions" they hear touted. They want to know how to make compromises with integrity and create common ground for action. (115)

As Mathews points out, all of these characteristics, along with ". . . the ability to keep an open mind, to stand in another person's shoes, to change, and to make decisions with others" (115) describe what we think of as deliberate discourse. I would like oo suggest (albeit cautiously) that these same characteristics also describe some of the discursive practices made possible through computer-mediated communication and electronic writing.

According to Bruce Sterling in "A Brief History of the Internet," electronic technology basically offers four things we can "do" on the Internet: send electronic mail (email) to one person or to many (email discussion lists); post to electronic bulletin boards and newsgroups (of which USENET is the probably the most well known); locate, transfer, and receive files (which at this point in time may contain, besides text, graphics, sound, and video) that are stored in various ways, for instance, on the World-Wide Web (WWW); and engage in long-distance complting (like searching for information by connecting to a remote database such as that of a library catalogue) (5). But, although all of these electronic activities are associated in some way with computer-mediated communication, they do not all "create" new electronic writing spaces in the sense that I mean. For the purposes of this essay, I want to focus on the use of computers to participate in email discussion groups, to enter into the synchronous discussions at various MOO sites, and to produce hypertexts both for the classroom and for "publication" on the WWW.

Perhaps the "oldest" (circa 1970) and most ubiquitous form of computer-mediated communication is the electronic writing we do when we send email. Even those who do not have direct access to the Internet may have the ability to send and receive email. Email allows users to communicate easily with other users, no matter what their geographical location. In fact, the ever-growing network now known as the Internet was in part meant originally to insure that the military could communicate during a nuclear war. In very short time, though, scientists and researchers were sharing computer facilities, collaborating on projects, and sending messages via email over the network. It also wasn't long bufore the invention of the "mailing list," through which an identical message could be sent automatically to a large number of network "subscribers"; ironically, the first "really big" list was not exactly essential to national security -- SF-LOVERS for science fiction fans (Sterling 2).

With the availability of computer software programs like LISTSERV, starting and maintaining an email discussion list is not difficult; there are now well over ten thousand lists covering a wide range of subjects. The main function of an electronic discussion list is to create a forum in which a large number of people with related interests can engage in an asynchronous conversationuabout topics relevant to them. Almost anyone, including students, with access to email can participate in that conversation. Most of these lists have, to one degree or another, at least three common characteristics: they are discussion oriented, they encourage information sharing, and they make possibte deliberative discourse about issues that are of genuine significance to listmembers. 5

On the surface, then, the purpose and characteristics of discussion lists sound similar to what students (and probably most of us) identify as the purpose and characteristics of public discussion in general. Actually, the similarities often go deeper because, as Howard Rheingold claims in The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electric Frontier, "whenever [computer-mediated communication] technology becomes available to people anywhere, they inevitably build communities with it" (6). We usually think of communities as having a physical location, but we sometimes talk of communities as being defined by profession (as in the academic community) or even by ethnicity (as in the African-American community). In " and the Spirit of Community," Roger Scime suggests that, although we should not accept this "new vision" uncritically, communities can be "virtual" too, when they are made up of people with shared interests and values, an ethic of caring and nurturing, an opportunity for discourse, and a moral voice (2).

Obviously, most physical communities rarely meet all of Scime's idealistic criteria; nonetheless, many of the virtual communities that have formed around discussion lists are "places" where the practice of deliberative discourse is a way of (community) life. Essentially, what I'm getting at here is that, as writing teachers, not only do we have the opportunity to introduce our students to the various forms of electronic discourse in cyberspace but we also have a powerful interest in showing them how to use the technology correctly and responsibly, in helping them to understand the conventions, and in encouraging them to become interactive community members. We have this "powerful interest" because asynchronous discussion on email discussion lists is text-based -- electronic writing. Just as we hope to have a hand in developing in our students a sense of social and civic responsibility and a critical consciousness through more traditional forms of writing and discussion, we should bring that same hope to cyberspace. To put it another way, since electronic writing is the way (at least for the time being) we participate in what constitutes the public discourse of the Internet, it seems to me that we must begin to include in our teaching what our students need to know to responsibly "inhabit" the new writing spaces that computer-mediated communication creates.

A recent discussion on one of the lists (OCC-L -- On-line College Classroom) I belong to provides a good example of how this discourse relates to the purpose and characteristics of deliberative discourse. The topic "thread" was called "Marking on-line" and began with a question from Art Clarke to other list members (mainly writing teachers) about how to comment on student "papers" in an electronic environment. This post generated approximately forty responses before the discussion changed direction somewhat to "Dr. Feelgood" ("should we grade papers at all?"). Actually, there are no easy answers to either question, just as there are no easy answers to many of the larger social, economic, and political problems that belong in the public forum. As might be expected from a community of both experienced and inexperienced writing teachers, a variety of perspectives were represented by the responses, most of them informative, practical, thoughtful, and well considered:

I initially tried to respond to papers as I would an email message, but this quickly became cumbersome reverted back to paper, returning papers with my comments in footnotes. Students, if they elect to revise their papers (about 70% do), resend the next version to the class list for archiving in the class session on Horizon Home Page. Not an elegant solution, but it works.
(Morrison)

I receive all assignments via email and then forward back to the students inserting my comments, questions, suggestions, etc. in Capital letters. I make it clear at the beginning of the course that I am NOT flaming, but just wanting to call attention to my comments.
(Englebardt)

I don't write a lot on student papers, but I do write comments at the end, or I talk to them in conferences. I'd like to do away with "marking" altogether --
(Cummins)

Even in my F2F [face to face] classes, I encourage students to constder my comments a dialogue with them and to consider me a learner who has come along side them. I often heve students come up after class to tell me what they meant, to answer a question, or to continue a dialogue in response to my response . . . or take up the issue in their next paper.
(Kincaid)

There are other characteristics I think email discussion lists have in common with deliberative discourse, especially those characteristics that have to do with trying to find some kind of common ground, with trying to "listen" to the other person, and with trying to "stand in another person's shoes." In fact, one convention of email discussion, that of quoting a part of someone else's post, seems almost to allow us to "internalize" another's words:

>ON APRIL 19 ERIC WROTE:
> . . or is 'marking' even an appropriate and
>productive activity? Maybe it's a vestige of
>print that we can leave behind.

Interesting, Eric! Do you write out your evaluations? Perhaps email your responses? I use minimal marking, but I want to ditch even that. What's the alternative? Tell us more?
(Bjork)

I want to emphasize, too, that even the "offshoot" of the main discussion about marking on-line ("should we grade papers at all?") added to at least my (tentative) "understanding of the whole," which means that my own participation in computer-mediated communication will help me to make a more informed (though perhaps more provisional) decision on this issue. Generally speaking, too, except for online discourse problems like "flaming," the tone of these discussions tends to be a contingent one that resonates with ideas about the social-constructed and contingent nature of all knowledge.

Computer-mediated communication also gives us the ability to participate in synchronous online discussion. In order to do this, we are using technology similar to that which gave scientists the opportunity to collaborate with their colleagues through "long distance computing" -- logging on to a database at a location different from their own. MOOing is one form of long distance computing. MOO is an acronym that incorporates yet another acronym (MUD) and stands for "multi-user dimension (or domain) object oriented." 6 MOO sites are "virtual" places in cyberspace, which are created through text and where "players" can "talk" to one another by typing the text of what they want to say. 7 In "MUDs and MOOs: An Overview," Leslie Harris illustrates the text-based nature of MOOs with the following description of the "living room" at LambdaMOO:

It is very bright, open, and airy, with large plate-glass windows looking southward over the pool to the garden below. On the north wall, there is a rough stonework fireplace. The east and west walls are almost completely covered with large, well-stocked bookcases. An exit in the northwest corner leads to the kitchen and, in a more northerly direction, to the entrance hall. The door into the coat closet is at the north end of the west wall, and at the south end is a sliding glass door leading out onto a wooden deck. There are two sets of couches, one clustered around the fireplace and one with a view out the windows.

You see README for New MOOers, Welcome Poster, a fireplace, Cockatoo, The Birthday Machine, lag meter, Helpful Person Finder, and George here. 8 (2)

After "players" log on to a MOOe they can "talk" to other players, explore the various rooms and objects that already exist there, or even "build" their own rooms and objects. MOOs can serve a variety of purposes (social, educational, scientific),9 all of which, because of their text-based nature, have to do with engaging in electronic writing as discourse -- even rooms and objects can only be made to "appear" through typing words into the computer.

As another activity available through computer-mediated communication, virtual spaces like MOO sites also tend to exhibit their own versions of the community-building phenomenon noted by Howard Rheingold about cyberspace in general. Because MOOS have a "natural" hierarchical structure with different "classes " of players (wizards, programmers, builders, newbies), 10 the issues facing many of those who belong to the community of MOOers seem to relate to those we often struggle with in democratic societies. And, not surprisingly, on a MOO the conversation about these issues shares some of the purposes and characteristics of deliberative discourse.

Perhaps the most well-known instance of the MOO struggle with social, community, and democratic issues is the one recounted by Julian Dibbell in "A Rape in Cyberspace: Or, How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society." As Dibbell makes clear in the title, the "incident" which sparked widespread discussion, not just at LambdaMOO where the incident took place but throughout the larger MOO community in cyberspace, was a "virtual" rape:

They say he raped them that night. They say he did it with a cunning little doll, fashioned in their image and imbued with the power to make them do whatever he desired. They say that by manipulating the doll he forced them to have sex with him, and with each other, and to do horrible, brutal things to their own bodies. (237)

Although no "real" rape took place in the sense that we mean in "real" life, the victims themselves felt violated and (along with other affected Lambdaites) felt, among a range of other responses evoked by this virtual outrage, that what happened violated LambdaMOOs "communal spirit" and that, indeed, "something needed to be done" 11 (246).

But done how and by whom? What are the possible punishments for MOO "crime"? And in what manner does a virtual society decide on which punishment is appropriate? These questions led to the bigger question of how to get community consensus about what to "do" in order to "do" anything at all. Over the course of several days, MOO-wide public deliberations took place on LambdaMOO's own discussion list (*social) and at the well-attended "conclave" that was convened in "evangeline's room." Lambdaites (including Mr. Bungle, the "perpetrator") with many different perspectives contributed to the "civic" conversations prompted by the rape -- "representatives of all the MOO's political stripes" participated (248). Almost everyone concerned had a say, and as Dibbell reports, the "arguments" were "well-honed" (252). As might be expected and because one of the wizards eventually took matters into his own hands, 12 this "fable" from cyberspace does not exactly have a democratically "happy ending"; however, the rape did lead to putting into place at LambdaMOO some of the democratic mechanisms (ballots, petitions, arbitration) we use in real life. And it would seem that Lambdaites took advantage of this experiment in universal suffrage with "widespread participation" (254).

Obviously, I'm not suggesting that all the events that happened on LambdaMOO present themselves as experiences we should expect (or even want for that matter) our students to have online. 13 Yet, I think MOOs do offer another writing space where discursive practices related to deliberative discourse are possible. 14 Particularly on educational MOOs, like Diversity University and DaedalusMOO, students have a chance to use electronic writing to participate in discussions with many "others"; that is, MOOs make it easy to include in the conversation "voices" that represent a diversity of perspectives, "not just for the sake of being tolerant but . . . to have a better understanding of the whole." For instance, in the Spring semester of 1995 Leslie Harris from Susquehanna University (basically a small university with a fairly homogenous student population located in a rural region of northwest Pennsylvania) taught a freshman composition class which collaborated with Robert Smith's freshman composition class from George Washington University (a large urban university with a heterogeneous student population located in Washington, D.C.). The two classes shared the theme of the course, "families across cultures," and also the various assigned readings, which gave the students a basis for their "online" discussions. These computer-mediated discussions occurred both asychronously, in an online journal (an email discussion list), and synchronously, at Diversity University during five MOOing sessions. By electronically linking their classes, Harris and Smith "created" a new writing "space" which was also a new kind of public "place" for deliberation that invited into the ongoing conversation "voices" representing a wide range of "racial, class, and cultural differences in attitudes about families" ( "Writing Seminar"). 15

While email discussion lists and MOO sites in some way do seem to be "virtually" new deliberation spaces/places made possible through the technology associated with computer-mediated communication, hypertext should be thought of as morerof an electronic system of writing made possible by the technology of the computer. The term "hypertext" was coined in 1965 by the computer visionary Ted Nelson, who defines it as "non-sequential writing -- text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read on an interactive screen. As popularly conceived, this is a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways" (2). Actually, hypertext systems return the word "text" to its original etymology: that which is woven or is a web. And of course the fastest growing hypertext system is the World-Wide Web (WWW or Web) on the Internet. The Web was developed by Tim Berners-Lee, who defines it as an "Internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing" (1), which allows texts (and graphics, video, animation, and sound) and other hypertext "documents" stored in different locations to be linked together for easy access by the user. Hypertext documents can also be written and stored on an individual computer within a software program like Storyspace or Hypercard, and they can be written collaboratively by more than one student in any environment where the computers are networked, as in a computer classroom or on a local-area network (LAN).

I need to emphasize here an important aspect of hypertext: it is a form of electronic writing that is "native" to the computer -- hypertext cannot be "translated" into print and still retain its integrity as hypertext (both email and transcripts of MOO conversations can be later printed out on paper as texts). Consequently, in the last decade, some fairly extravagant claims have been made about this new technology for writing, everything from the pronouncement by Robert Coover in the New York Times that hypertext writing portends "The End of Books," to the epigrammatic "arguments" of Taylor and Saarinen throughout Imagologies: Media Philosophy that hypertext, along with all other forms of electronic writing, is producing a cultural paradigm shift. What I want to claim about hypertext is considerably more modest: it has a democratic "bent" which lends itself to deliberative discourse, in that by its very "nature" hypertext writing accommodates a multiplicity of voices, requires from the reader an interaction with the text, and fosters a sense of continuous collaboration among members of any given discourse community. And in its most recent incarnation as the World-Wide Web, hypertext facilitates and increases the public's access to information, as well as allowing anyone with access to the Internet to "publish" his or her own text in cyberspace. As Stuart Moulthrop points out in "You Say You WQnt A Revolution? Hypertext and the Laws of Media," hypertext is all about connection, linkage, and affiliation" (6).

If I were writing a hypertext right now, for instance, instead of an essay in traditional print form, I would be able to include in my text the actual "voices" of those who have something to contribute to the discourse (both positive and negative) about computer-mediated communication in general and hypertext in particular. I could do this by creating links to the texts of those "others," so that the readers of my essay could then, by simply using a mouse to "click" on a particular reference or name or even icon of some kind, go to another "page" where those texts are located. Or not -- readers make the choice of how and in what order they want to "view" hypertext documents. Even in the most restrictive of hypertexts, readers cannot be passive because must make decisions about what "paths" they want to take through the text, including the decision to read the text in a print-like linear fashion. 16

In addition, my own hypertext document could be linked by any number of other people to any other page, for example one that "gathered" together information on computers, electronic writing, and composition. This new "page" could then, perhaps, be seen as a work of collaboration between members of the composition community. Finally, my hypertext document (in all of its manifestations) could allow readers to add their own voices, in the form of suggestions, criticism, annotations, new links, or something else entirely. In a sense, hypertext compels us to take account of the different perspectives of other people, whether we are on the Web or in the composition classroom, thereby potentially strengthening the democratic nature of our interactive and collaborative discourse with them.

I suppose that "potentially" is one of the essential words in my claim that electronic writing can help foster the kind of deliberative discourse necessary to a democracy. Although I am certainly not alone in my thinking about computer-mediated communication, I do have some reservations along the same lines as these of Crawford Kilian about "newsgroups" (similar to email discussion lists):

A newsgroup discussion starts out with a fresh and vigorous attack on a genuine issue; within 24 hours it degenerates into a flame war of insults, nitpicking and abuse. Or it veers off into a blind alley of aimless debate. "Highjackers" take over, uploading torrents of incoherent prose about issues unrelated to the newsgroup's purpose. It doesn't happen all the time, but often enough to frustrate users who want to use the group for its stated purpose. (18-19)

Kilian believes that part of the online discourse problems have to do with the idea that we haven't developed the right "register" yet for "talking" online; in other words, we haven't figured out how discourse in cyberspace "differs from other discourse." The idea of register has to do with question we need to answer about the overall context of a discourse situation -- what is the subject of the discussion, writing or speech? And what is the relationship between the participants in the discussion? Unless we learn how to answer these questions, as we communicate more and more through computer mediation, the problems with discourse in cyberspace will only get worse.17

In Kilian's view, "some of these problems are inherent in present technology; others reflect the attitudes of some of those attracted to the medium. And still others include mistaken attitudes and habits we bring from other kinds of communication" (18). Problems caused by "present technology" may, in the very near future, be alleviated. However, that leaves the problems caused by humans, many of which seem to be the result of the inexperience of users and of the need for "constructed" knowledge about how best to discourse in cyberspace. I think it is our responsibility as writing teachers to begin now to acquire and to construct the (contingent) knowledge that will allow us to help our students to enter the discourse community of cyberspace, which may be virtually where our best hope for sustaining a deliberative democracy now and in the future may exist.

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