Last month, moderating a panel for Canadian film I was more than a bit embarrassed when two (of the four) speakers -- a theatrical acquisition executive and the head of cable television network -- spent a large portion of their time thumbing away on their Blackberries under the table. But this behavior has become the norm. Who hasn't attended a movie recently where the dark space of the theater was suddenly set aglow by so many lit PDA screens? As the rudeness of the real world pushes its way into cyberspace, more than a few people are calling for a truce.
Tonight I am attending the book launch party for David Shipley and Will Schwalbe's
Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home, a guide to how to bring civility and style to cyber communications. While the text promises to be The Elements of Style for a new generation, I wonder how many will really mind their e-manners in the future. And in the New York Times this week, Brad Stone in his piece "A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs" surveys the growing call for civility in the blogosphere, and an established code of behavior. In the piece, David Weinberger, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, suggests “The aim of the code is not to homogenize the Web, but to make clearer the informal rules that are already in place anyway." On his own site,
Joho the Blog, Weinberger makes guests agree to set of guidelines -- for example, "you cannot post hate speech, profanity, abusive language, personal attacks, comments that disrupt the community, sexually explicit materials, ..." -- before they can leave a comment.
# posted by Peter Bowen @ 4/12/2007 09:25:00 AM
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