Computer-Mediated Communication: Human Relationships in a Computerized World

Chesebro, James W. and Donald G. Bonsall

ISBN 10: 0817304606 / ISBN 13: 9780817304607

Published by University Of Alabama, 1989

About this Item

Hardcover in Very Good condition with Very Good dustjacket. 275p.

Seller Inventory # UPLINE066019

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Computer-Mediated Communication: Human Relationships in a Computerized World
• Publisher: University Of Alabama
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0817304606
• ISBN 13: 9780817304607
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition (?).
• Condition: Used: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Sociology

About this title

Synopsis

Human beings have developed many different relationships with computers, each suggesting a different kind of political relationship between the human user and the computer. On one end of the continuum, the human user dominates the computer-human communication process. On the other end, the computer dominates. As computers become increasingly "user friendly", they will tend to dominate the process. Computer-mediated communication is gradually, but decisively, altering the values and ideological structure of American society. Computer-mediated communication systems generate a rhetoric of terminologies that permeate the ways people think and talk not only about technology but also about their own psychological, interpersonal, social, legal, economic and political systems. This "rhetoric of computer technology" is increasingly viewed as the "vocabulary of progress" and the "discourse of the powerful", and it reinforces the American commitment to science and technology as "god terms" of the American vision, ultimately promoting pragmatism as the dominant ideology and philosophy of the United States.