On Mediums of Communication

[italiceyeball]

A Medium Path

Sparked by an entry and its responses on writerslounge.

What is a community like that communicates mainly through written language? How is it different from a community that communicates audiovisually? These are the mediums of relationships. I claim that the people we communicate with through text are different from traditional relationships (So called face to face, tangible physical presence) in both subtle and fundamental ways.

Comments

[fredherman]

Media!

(Think differently! Especially when dealing with the Powers Who Are. Grr.)

They are different things, yes (and time was, I found this out the hard way). Each type misses something at the expense of something else.

Also: there's "community" like your average online discussion group, and there's the hypothetical "community" of (say) a species or culture that literally only communicates via written symbols--would that be possible? Say, if it had no other means of physical communication beyond body language, or not even that?

[fredherman]

Also, different protocols. If this were face-to-face, we'd probably have exchanged more surface detail by now (name, appearance, less detailed/more random chitchat), but with less depth to each individual comment.