[435 words]

[1]  I agree with Ken Friedman that email discussions gain much if at least
some of the messages are carefully thought, even spell-checked, and are
well-crafted without losing the freshness and directness of 'written
conversation'.

[2]  I've reluctantly left other discussion lists because they consisted
largely of hastily written remarks, sometimes hostile to outsiders. This
new medium, if treated seriously as Ken describes it, can be seen to
resemble the writing of early scientific journals and letters in which
people simply said what they had done and what they thought about it
(without expectations of 'publish or perish'!) and I like that very much.
I've often recommended it to research students as an easy, modest and yet
excellent way to write a dissertation or a thesis (instead of trying to
state and prove a grand theory in impersonal abstract language).

[3]  It seems to me that electronic communication is very well suited to
the DRS - more so than is publication on paper.  Is this because our topic
is more up to date? I like to think so.

[4]  If one thinks a posting may be too long for some subscribers one may
perhaps assist them by stating the number of words at the start and by
numbering the paragraphs, thus making it easier to skim and to jump from
place to place?

[5]  But it's difficult to resist the temptation to send an email message
the moment it's written. I sent my own message re 'theories of theory'
before I'd
slept on it. The next day I was sorry to see several mistakes or
mis-fingerings - so I'll take this opportunity to correct one of these as
it obscured what I meant to say (the omitted word is in CAPS):

[this part of paragraph 9 should read: ]
'...(or as I prefer to call it 'the collective design OF everything')...'

And now I've written that I fear there may be some mistakes in this posting
that I just didn't spot!

[6]  However, the email convention of not worrying about mistakes (if the
intended sense is obvious) is I believe constructive - it allows a
non-literary or non-academic kind of colloquial writing to arise in place
of the former convention that published writing has to be 'professional'. I
like the idea that everyone who can write a letter is 'a writer' - no
longer do you have to have written a published article or a book -
something which many people may feel is completely beyond them though on
the net they may write freely and in public. Viva!


john chris jones





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