Hi,
The very concept of "co-presence" implies the sharing of space and time. But it seems to me that "mutual manifestness" is a more general concept than "co-presence", in the sense that people may share a mutual cognitive environment without being "co-present" in the strict sense.
Sometimes Goffman remarks that face-to-face interaction is primary and other forms of communication are derived. So far so good, nothing new (but note that he doesn't say that speech must be involved; gestures, grunts, glances, etc., may be more than enough). Unfortunately, he didn't elaborate on the relations between "co-presence" and "mediated" communication. It would be interesting to see how interactive media such as mailing lists, newsgroups, chat rooms, online games, etc., could be approached from this perspective - for instance, by providing technological means by which a sense of "co-presence" is generated. "Virtual co-presence", anyone? ;-)
Rgrds,
Luiz Carlos Baptista
lucabaptista@sapo.pt
lucabaptista@hotmail.com
----- Original Message -----
From: mjmurphy
To: Luiz Carlos Baptista ; relevance
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2004 4:18 PM
Subject: Re: RT list: co-presence and mutual manifestness
I am not endorsing the view, but explicating Rousseau. In spoken language the participants in an exchange physically present to one another. They can percieve one another. This makes speaking a "better" form of communication (according to Rousseau) than writing because it is harder to lie, literally because it is harder to lie to a man's face. Again, from the very short quotation, Goffman seems to accent that to be "co-present" both parties must be physically present, speaking rather than writing. But perhaps not.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Jan 24 2004 - 17:56:57 GMT