Space<---->Place

Space
         extending beyond
         familiarity
         detached
                      as abstract
                          object
                          described outside.
Place
         binds
         boundaries
                  to others
                  connections made
                                      felt
                                      described inside<-->outside.

Space is a common symbol of freedom in the Western world.  Space lies open; it suggests the future and invites action.  On the negative side, space and freedom are a threat.  A root meaning of the word “bad” is “open.”  To be open and free is to be exposed and vulnerable.  Open space has no trodden paths and signposts.  It has no fixed pattern of established meaning; it is like a blank sheet on which meaning may be imposed.  Enclosed and humanized space is place.  Compared to space, place is a calm center of established values.  Human beings require both space and place.  Human lives are a dialectical movement between shelter and venture, attachment and freedom.  In open space one can become intensely aware of place and in the solitude of a sheltered place the vastness of space beyond acquires a haunting presence.  A healthy being welcomes constraint and freedom, the boundedness of place and the exposure of space.  (Tuan, 1977, p. 54)

What is Space?

        Space comes from the “Latin spatium, from spatiari, to wander.  [It means] distance extending without limit in all directions; distance interval; interval or length of time; the universe outside the earth’s atmosphere; a set of points or elements assumed to satisfy a given set of mathematical postulates” (Webster’s, 1979, p. 1737).  To wander suggests a movement within distance without a certain course.  I drift along without connection or purpose.  Boundaries are guide posts lines between inside  and outside.  However if I wander, do boundaries become physical barriers rather than demarcations of inside and outside?  Do they have any meaning for me?  As students wander for the first time in a WCC, do they see boundaries?  What meaning do boundaries hold for them?

A lot of people were afraid to write [in WCC] because it [message] was in print and it was visible basically to the people within IET who were able to get in there and read it.  But yet, you never know what’s going to be pulled out and pushed some place some day. (Emma)

Contemporary cyberspace constitutes a space because it consists of a system of topological relations between virtual objects.  This space is a topological space, rather than a geometric space, because the relations between virtual objects in contemporary cyberspace are not, or not primarily, defined in terms of geometric distance.  The notion of a topological space has been rigorously defined in mathematical topography.  Roughly, a topological space is an abstract space in which objects are subjected to abstract ordering principles, that define connections and trajectories between objects even through these objects have no location in geometric space. (Brey, 1998, p. 254)

        Several students describe their experience of space in a WCC.

There was a sense of boundary [in WCC], but it was way out there.  It was like space is sort of a boundary and can't go on forever, but we're not quite sure where that boundary is…. It was just this feeling of great emptiness and loneliness because there weren't any connections being made to me, I had no sense of anyone else being there.  I'd been shot into space and was wandering around up there floating, "Hello!"  (Helen)

The type of question, I think, or the concern whatever the main issue is makes space. (Anne)

The sense of space that I had in this [WCC] was that they [the conferences] were definitely like pages and each message was just a part of the page.  It seemed to me that each message was it's own page. (James)

Conference Space

        The most common use of the word “space” by students is coupled with conference.  A conference space, in terms of the WCC software, functions as a discussion area that is designed around a topic or question.

We had several folders [in the WCC] to go to.  I think they [the faculty] were calling them "folders" or conference spaces.  One was called the “café” and one was for your different cohort and they had one that was more academic. (James).

One of my cohort members set up a conference space talking about our favorite books and so we talked about our favorite children's books and our favorite adult books and recommended reading.  It was just really neat to just browse through and say, "oh, I've always wondered about that!” “What's that like?" (Helen)

        Examining the interplay between in the conference space and not-in the conference space (on or look at) is interesting.  If I am “in” a space, I assume a boundary in which I can distinguish between inside (where I am) and outside (where I am not).

I just stayed in the conference space.  (Betty)

You might feel compelled to say something about the last comment on the conference space before launching [your comment], "Oh, by the way, so and so who said this, three days ago, I find rather interesting and I've been wanting to say something about it." (James)

I would have felt weird even looking at the conference space.  I didn't do it.  I never looked at anybody [outside my own group] like the Arlington conference space.  I didn't even look at it.  I didn't want to, it was their domain.  I didn't want to look at it or even contribute.  (James)

        Mitchell (1997) discusses the evolution of private and public spaces in the development of architecture and its extension to cyberspace.

It doesn’t rain in cyberspace, so shelter is not an architectural issue. But privacy certainly is. So the construction technology for virtual cities -- just like that of bricks-and-mortar ones--must provide for putting boundaries and erecting access controls, and it must allow cyberspace architects and urban designers to organize virtual places into public-to-private hierarchies…  The technological means to create private places in cyberspace are available, but the right to create these places remains a fiercely contested issue.  Can you always keep your bits to yourself?  Is your home page your castle?  These are still open questions.   (Mitchell, 1997, pp. 122-124)

What is Place?

        For the Greeks, place is known through myth.  The myth captures the sensuous feel and energy of place.  While the place had a topos or location, the chora was the essence of the place (Walter, 1988).  The essence was tied to the lived experience of the community.  Community exists not by merely shared physical places, but the socio-cultural context of Dasein (Heidegger, 1962/1952).  It is the chora, the sensuousness of the place that nurtured the community.  The sensuousness of the place was articulated through community stories or myths.  Myths are the collective stories of place.  It is the history of place not as object but as feeling and energy.  The place is invested with value.

        For Tuan (1977), place is an “enclosed and humanized space.”  Heidegger understands place to be located within an existential public use of equipment that is discovered in region.  Place is not only communal and localized, but it also has personal meaning embedded in the public meaning.  “When space feels familiar to us, it has become place” (Tuan, 1977, p. 73).   The students in the study rarely mention the word “place” to describe their experience.  When they use it, they either use it to describe a sense of communal location or have applied it in an idiomatic way.

I think that in the computer [WCC] the place is just having to scroll back.  The fact that it's up front, it makes it more immediate.  But if you were having a round table conference with various people, they're all in the same place at the same time.  Even though conversations might shift as long as it remains within the context of that topic or whatever they're talking about in the hours having elapsed, which usually don't, you can jump back and forth between the previous comments.  So I don't think there's any one person talking that isn't the immediate topic.  It's more fluid.  (James)

You know, "here we go, what's he going to say now?!" ... but when I realized that they weren't responding immediately, I knew that ... at times it was kind of a lonely place.  (James)

The more the trust is, the bigger the [WCC] place.  (Anne)

She’s the gathering place [in a small on-line group of professional meeting on-line over email].  She sets the tone.  (Anne)

        Students use the idiomatic phrases take-place and out-of-place in their comments that included place.

And more to the topic instead of this little inside conversation that seemed to be taking place. (Betty)

Just some people [in the WCC] maybe they just got this uncomfortable feeling that they were doing something out of place because you're next [to post a message in the WCC].  Should you go with the one before it?  I don't know. (James)

        The dominance of “space” over “place” in student descriptions of their experiences may suggest few close communal ties and interactions in the WCC.  How can educators help students create a gathering place rather than to exist within a space of virtual language objects?

Structure

Confined
             within electronic boundaries
             porous
             but defined,
we play out
             being together.

For the “message” of any medium of technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. (McLuhan, 1964, p. 8)

A place is a unity of experience, organizing intercommunication and mutual influence of all beings within it.  Every place, then, implies a form of dwelling together, and all the realities in a place make a group of effective presences dwelling together.  Even though we rarely acknowledge them all, they participate in one another’s natures and contribute a topistic structure, a system of mutual immanence. (Walter, 1988, p. 23)

        Structure is from the “Latin structura a building, from structus, to heap together or arrange” (Websters, 1979, p. 1806).  I arrange pieces into a structure.  It is a whole arranged from parts. A structure can be re-arranged depending on how we choose to make meaning from the parts.  Thomas Kuhn (1970) in his study of the history of science describes the structure of scientific revolutions in terms of paradigms.   For Kuhn, a paradigm represents

accepted examples of actual scientific practice--examples which include law, theory, application, and instrumentation together--provide models from which spring particular coherent traditions of scientific research….  Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. (Kuhn, 1970, pp. 10-11)

Place, a chora, or primeval space, then is the unity of physique and morale, a location of shapes, powers and feelings.  Therefore, it is not only physical space, but expressive space as well--a container for feelings.  (Walter, 1988, p. 123)

The conference sites were all linear--linear overtime.  I think that in the computer the place is just having to scroll back.  It was structured like a book.  It just seemed like pages and each little box was like a paragraph. That was just the way it was set up and you were scrolling down a sheet.  Then, each little blurb was like a paragraph to me even though it might be multiple paragraphs and then it was just like, boom, boom, boom and it was all connected.  Scrolling is appropriate because it was like one sheet of paper.  That's the way I envision this electronic changing of this convenience, I mean it really feels like you're working with a piece of paper and then you go to the next page and turn it over. (James)

The cohorts were not restricted in places where they could go [in the WCC].  There were no rules.  You had access.  There was never a law on the Metanet [WCC].  No one actually said, "Okay, here's the rule book (like Roberts rule book).”  Or, “This is how it shall go.”  Some people they just got this uncomfortable feeling that they were doing something out of place because you're next you should go with the one before it. (James)

We would refer back [to messages in a conference space], but most of the time when people click on the conference, if you had 10 new [messages] and you posted, you were the last one.  Then somebody posted a new question and everybody responded to that one per se.   Then you do not remember what happened earlier unless the conversation is still going along.  We never had one good conversation that went along.  It was very segmented.  It was like a bunch of people talking in a room all at the same time.  You're walking around between conversations.  That's how I felt.  You can stop and jump in at any time. (Sally)

There's sort of an unspoken etiquette that you should respond to that last one [message in WCC]. Nothing was ever laid down in rules but it was almost like that's the way it should be.  You should, and I can't speak for everyone else, that it would be like disrespectful to ignore the most recent comment.  Well, it's almost like a snub.  Plus, I would look at it from my perspective.  If I spent some time, and if you're really into a conference space you could spend some time--I spent a lot of time thinking about how I'm going to respond to these things and may be doing some research and thinking about it.  I enjoyed it.  Part of the enjoyment was anticipating and waiting for responses from other people about my writing.  And so I know the feeling of having sort of laid it out and the next response had nothing to do with what just I wrote and feeling kind of "... okay, that was a waste of time.”  If it goes too much longer than it's like you've been ignored which, really, is the feeling ... if the next person doesn't say something about that to keep it alive then your ideas sort of get ignored. (James)

        Part of the structure of place are the feelings contained within it.  Most spaces encountered for the first time can be disorienting and intimidating.

I think there's a lot of intimidation with just the mechanics of being on-line. And because it's new and because technology is very intimidating to a lot of people, I think that sort of stops people from really participating like they might in conversation. (Betty)

How do human beings acquire the ability to thread their way through a strange environment, such as unfamiliar city streets?  Visual cues are of primary importance, but people are less dependent on imagery and on consciously held mental maps than they perhaps realize.  Warner Brown’s experimental work suggests that human subjects learn to negotiate a maze by integrating a succession of tactual kinesthetic patterns.  They learn a succession of movements rather than a spatial configuration or map.   (Tuan, 1977, p. 70)

How do students learn to negotiate on-line environments?  Is it predominately visual?  The on-line environment appears to be dictated by the visual world.  Students use the mouse and the keyboard to move from one place to another.  Do they use this tactile sense to help them negotiate the space?  What can we do in the design of WCC interfaces that will build depth into the process of orientation?

The integration of space is an incremental process during which the appropriate movements for the entrance and the exit, and for the intermediate localities, continue to expand until they are contiguous.  “When the subject is able to tread the maze without error (or only a few rare errors) the whole maze becomes one locality with appropriate movements.  What begins as a undifferentiated space ends as a single object-situation or place.   (Tuan, 1977, p. 72)

        I will never forget the vivid description of a young single mother’s experiences in a WCC.

I think of computer conferencing as a necessary evil…as something you’ve got to do.  It’s not fun.  It’s not interactive.  It’s just a tool.  It is an impersonal tool.  I use it and that’s it.  It’s funny that now that we are so computer literate, we are dying to meet the person.  I just want to meet the person.  I feel that I need that.  (Robinson, 1998, p. 38)

Orientation

Public Spaces

Everyone
             can see me
             in words etched
             in digital space
             permanent…yet fluid.
                                                I can’t change them once posted.
                                                I can’t predict where they will go.
What if…
             I say something stupid????
EVERYONE
             will know
             will see
             my nakedness exposed!!!

        What makes a space public?  Public comes from the Latin word puplicus from populus, people.  The Latin root for populus is plebs, the common people, and in Greek polys, many.  People refers to “all persons of a racial, cultural religious or linguistic group; persons belonging to a certain place, community or class; persons without wealth, influence privilege or distinction” (Websters, 1979, p. 1328).  “People” is a generic term used to group a number of individuals by common characteristics.  The students in this study are pursing their Masters degree from the IET Masters program and all are practicing teachers.  Do these similarities alone make them a people?  What molds us into seeing ourselves as part of a people?  How does this identification with group shape the learning?

        We are all embedded within a culture and understand human nature through the lens of that culture.  Heidegger suggests that

Dasein’s mineness is the public stand it takes on itself….  A particular Dasein can take a stand on itself by relating to this public understanding of human nature and its possibilities in three ways:  “ Dasein has either chosen these possibilities itself [owns up], or got itself into them [disown] or grown up in them already [fail to take a stand] (33) [12].” (Dreyfus, 1991, p. 26)

        Public means “belonging to, concerning or pertaining to the community as a whole; open to common use; known by, open to the knowledge of, all or most people” (Websters, 1979, p. 1456). For Heidegger, place is public and does not exist outside of the equipment used in the place.  Place is found through region, an area of equipment. Heidegger suggests that both there and here are public because of equipment.  “The boundary between my own environing world and a public one can be defined by modes of varied disposability” (cited in Dreyfus, 1991, p. 134).  Dreyfus writes that Heidegger for “the public presence of accessible things is a constant characteristic of everyday experience” (1991, p. 135).  Does the common use of WCC to communicate and collaborate create a public place?  Does the nature of the use of the equipment shape the public?

        Light and Smith (1998) describe public space in the following way:

Public space is in its broadest sense nothing more than space to which all citizens are granted some legal rights of access.  These rights are never absolute.  They are normally limited to the right to occupy public space for a finite time and to engage in certain unavoidable exchanges with the environment….  In a second more restrictive sense, public spaces are spaces in which citizens gather to form themselves into, and represent themselves as a public.  Architect Rowan Moore describes them as “space where the community acquires a sense of itself.”   (Light & Smith, 1998, p. 4)

Every now and then somebody would write something, somebody from Arlington [another IET program site], who you didn’t even know, would butt in.  It was like, “oh, by the way…” and then slam them or like a parent without tact.  It’s like you scratch your head and say, “What the hell are you doing here?! (James)

        WCC course spaces are open to common use by the faculty and students in IET.  To participate in the place, students must not only read the messages posted, but also write a response.  Once written, it is open to the community.  Everyone can see and read it.

I think people were afraid to post because everybody can read it.  There was a little fear there with everybody seeing everything they put on and they didn’t have a lot to say.  (Betty).

It [WCC space] was totally out there.  You might as well have been standing naked in the middle of the front lawn or the White House lawn or something.  You are just out there for anybody who has access to this conference space. (Sally)
 

If you are gonna write, there’s a graphical record to your thought.  You know.  You can’t take it back.  (James)

A lot of people were afraid to write because it was in print and it was visible basically to the people within IET were able to get in there and read it.  But yet, you never know what’s going to be pulled out and pushed some place some day.
(Emma)

[One faculty] knew the behind the scenes kind of scope of it [the number of postings by each student to the WCC space].  I could see [the faculty] sitting there with a tally board with our names on it seeing how many times we popped up.  I wrote her an e-mail.  I posted figuring okay, I have to get my guts and here's my voice and in front of everybody this is what I feel.   I feel that a lot of people aren't saying anything, but they feel the same way because they're telling me one-on-one but then they didn't get on the conference.  I think the question she posted posed a question about conferencing, if we liked it or not.   I put “no” and then told her.   Then I felt like she scolded me after that.   I don't remember what she said.  It seems sort of non-important right now.  At the time I cried.  I was like, “I can't believe she yelled at me in front of everybody”... I remember telling her, “what must the other professors think of me!”  (Sally)

No, it [WCC space] wasn’t safe at all because there’s too many people in it.  You know.  I think the number of people definitely affects your comfort level.  I could be on-line with my whole sorority and I still wouldn’t feel comfortable. (Sally)

It was like a bunch of people talking in a room all at the same time.  You know, you're walking around between conversations.   That's how I felt.  I mean you can stop and jump in at any time.  It’s like you're at a cocktail party with these three people, "oh, it's good to see you again..." and that's what people would do, "oh, it's nice to hear you again" or "oh, nice to see you on the Web,” “see you on-line." They would say things like that. (Sally)

It would be the cocktail party theory where you’re standing around.  There are people who are going to hear.  There are people who are not going to hear.  It’s not as public as standing up at the podium and lecturing to a crowd.  (Helen)

On-line [conversation], changed too much.   You couldn't get involved in anything.  The way I felt you would find something interesting.  You had 20 some people in your cohort all posting in the same conference.  If you were posting, you were responding to somebody's and somebody else might respond too, so you have three people there.  Then all of a sudden, somebody else realizes that it's getting close to the deadline and they've got to post so they do something totally irrelevant.  If we all feed off of each other, I think then it would be more a discussion.  (Sally)

“Americans spend very little time relaxing in the company of strangers,” and as people consume public spaces rather like french fries, thoughtlessly and without ceremony or considered pleasure.  Perhaps this is because Americans do not, for the most part, enter public spaces seeking knowledge of others or of the larger public.  They enter public spaces in pursuit of private ends--not as collective authors of history, but as individual authors of public lives. (In Light & Smith, 1998, p. 4)

Public space should be “educative,” a living tableau of “society’s inner contradictions,” of “economic, racial, and ethnic realities,” “all sorts of people, impulses, ideas, and modes of behavior.”  In the interest of social realism, public spaces should be "gritty and disturbing rather than pleasant.”  (Light & Smith, 1998, p. 4)

Private Spaces

In a quiet space
                safe
                from prying eyes
                of the other.
                In this private space
                I can be myself
                             whole
                             unafraid
                             of what makes me…
                             different.

        What is a private space?  Private is from “the Latin privatus, belonging to oneself, not public or pertaining to the state, from privare, to separate, deprive, from privus, separate, peculiar.  [Private is] belonging to, or concerning a particular person or group of persons; not known to the public; unconnected with others” (Websters, 1979, p. 1432).  Private is separate, peculiar, not open to everyone.   It is not restricted to one, but is restricted to a smaller set of the public.  What number of members of a group make a space private?  Does the number of students in a WCC create a sense of privacy in a WCC?

Not all attempts at intruding on or accessing a person’s space, not all interference with personal property and not all control of information concerning one’s life fall within the domain of privacy.  Only certain types of intrusion, information or control that affect one in a personal, intimate manner may turn into issues of privacy.  In other words, privacy protects what is personal or intimate. (van Manen & Levering, 1996, p. 66)

        In response to this basic need for privacy, students found ways of creating private spaces in one-on-one communication.   Private for several students is one-to-one interaction outside of the WCC space either by e-mail, phone or in person after classes.

My connections--more meaningful connections--would be interpersonal ones that were over email where they were kind of one-on-one.  I did not make any real connections with anyone in the conference [WCC]--only through email.  (James)

If the group were smaller and we knew we were locked [access was denied to others] and it was just our space, I think things like my email relationship with my faculty member would be more apt to happen in a space like that or certainly would have.  (James)

        One-on-one connections outside public conference spaces are safer.  Students do not feel as vulnerable or exposed.

I’m not going to let everybody in this whole group know that I didn’t understand that.  I would rather go to somebody and say, “Did you understand this?  Is this just me?”  And, they might say, “ I’m clueless too!  I can’t believe this.”  Or an e-mail--e-mailing somebody and saying to them, “Look, I’m lost.”  (Sally)

I emailed people I got to know in the class and said, “Hey, do you have any idea about this?”  A lot of assignments and a lot of things we did do through email.  Did you read the conferencing on such and such and such and such?  Do you know where it’s going?” Yes you never really got on a conference [WCC] and said, “ I have no clue as to where this is going.”  (Emma)

        Personal narratives are often shared privately by students.  Is it because the students feel it is inappropriate or too personal for a course space? Or, do they feel more exposed in their narratives?

We don’t talk about personal relationships.  We could, but we’ve just never done that.  If we’ve got personal problems we would e-mail direct rather than to the group.  We do handle personal stuff, but it’s not in the forum [WCC]. (Anne)

A lot of times we would e-mail back and forth to no particular person.  It could be anybody.  We had similar situations.  Sometimes with parents and they could understand why you were upset because of this particular mother.  (Betty)

        Oldenburg in The Great Good Place suggests that are three essential places in peoples lives: the place we live, the place we work and the place we gather for conviviality (the third place).

Third places exist on neutral ground and serve to level their guests to a condition of social equality.  Within these places, conversation is the primary activity and the major vehicle for the display and appreciation of the human personality and individuality.  Third places are taken for granted and most have low profile.  Since the formal institutions of society make stronger claims on the individual, third places are normally open in the off hours, as well as other times.  The character of this place is determined by its regular clientele and is marked by a playful mood, which contrasts with people’s more serious involvement in other spheres.  Though a radically different kind of setting for a home, the third place is remarkably similar to a good home in the psychological comfort and support that it extends. (cited in Rheingold, 1993, p. 25)

We fall into conversation, or even that we become involved in it.  The way one word follows another, with the conversation taking its own twists and reaching its own conclusion, may well be conducted in some way, but the partners conversing are far less the leaders of it than the led.  No one knows in advance what will “come out” of a conversation….  A conversation has a spirit of its own, and that the language in which it is conducted bears its own truth within it, i.e., that it allows something to “emerge” which henceforth exists. (Gadamer, 1994/1960, p. 383)

To conduct a dialogue requires first of all that the partners do not talk at cross purposes.  Hence it necessarily has the structure of question and answer.  The first condition of the art of conversations is ensuring that the other person is with us.  To conduct a conversation means to allow oneself to be conducted by the subject matter to which the partners in the dialogue are oriented.  It requires that one does not try to argue the other person down but that one really considers the weight of the other’s opinion.  Hence it is the art of testing.  But the art of testing is the art of questioning.   As we have seen that to question means to lay open, to place in the open.  As against the fixity of opinions, questioning makes the object and all its possibilities.  A person skilled in the “art” of questioning is a person who can present questions from being suppressed by the dominant opinion.  Dialectic consists not in trying to discover the weakness of what is said, but in bringing out its real strength.  It is not the art of arguing (which can make a strong case out of a weak one) but the art of thinking (which can strengthen objections by referring to the subject matter.  (Gadamer, 1994/1960, p. 367)

For the player, play is not serious: that is why he plays….  Play has a special relation to what is serious.  It is not only that the latter gives it its “purpose”: we play “for the sake of recreation,” as Aristotle says.  More important, play itself contains its own even sacred seriousness.  Yet, in playing, all those purposive relations that determine active and caring existence have not simply disappeared, but are curiously suspended.  The player himself knows that play is only play and that it exists in a world determined by seriousness of purposes.  Play fulfills its purpose only if the player loses himself in the play.  (Gadamer, 1994/1960, p. 102)

In/On//Out

On

On the computer,
I move toward
a space
   on
   connected by a matrix of lines
                            from my computer to yours.
On-line we communicate
                   through text left as shadows
                   of our coming
Existing outside the confines
                          and the comfort
                          of time and space.

        An interesting tension occurs in student descriptions between “on” and “in” when describing their experiences in WCC.  What is the difference between “being on” the computer, on-line or on the conference and “being in” WCC?  How does on and in provide clues to student experiences of space in an on-line learning environment?

        What does it mean to be “on?”  Merleau-Ponty suggests

When I say that an object is on a table, I always mentally put myself either in the table or in the object, and I apply them to a category which theoretically fits the relationship of my body to external objects.  Stripped of this anthropological association, the word on is indistinguishable from the word ‘under’ or the word ‘beside’. (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 101)

        Perhaps, considering the use of the telephone can be helpful in considering the student use of “on the computer” or being “on-line.”  When I talk on the phone, I never consider myself in the phone.  I have traveled past the phone, through the wires to the phone receiver of the person I am talking to.  My voice not only moves toward and to the person who I have called, but I am also connected and engaged in a conversation with the other person.  The person on the other end of the phone line is never here with me, but always there at a distance.  While we share the same time, we do not share the same location.  The phone has dis-embedded (Brey, 1998) the conversation from a shared physical space.  To talk on the phone is to be ever mindful of the phone as a piece of equipment that connects me via wires to and towards another.  I do not have the illusion, my body has traveled across the wires, but I often imagine the physical location of the person with whom I am talking.

We become discarnate when we talk on the phone--each party to the conversation is “sent” without accompanying body, in every word that is spoken.  The on-line participant is incorporeal in the same interactive way as the telephone conversationalist.  (Levinson, 1999, p. 6)

I guess it was after these confrontations on-line, the other one, the conversation, that I felt that when I went through and discussed my feelings of the situation.   Why I couldn't do that on-line?   Maybe it wasn't personal enough.  Maybe it wasn't sincere enough.  How can you be sincere if it's just a posting? (Sally)

Maybe it’s because I can see your expression.  I can feel.  I can see what you do with your hands, your eyes your face and on-line you can’t see that. (Betty)

        While on-line, I have to take the action of “getting-on” or “logging on” to the WCC space.

At least the first year and a half of the [IET] program, I would almost religiously get on and check everything [new messages in WCC].  (James)

No, because I could not get on [to WCC] every single day. (Emma)

You might feel compelled to say something about the last comment on the conference space before launching, "oh, by the way, so and so who said this, three days ago, I find rather interesting and I've been wanting to say something about it," but that might throw everybody off a little bit. (James)

        Once students get on to the WCC, the conference spaces are based on a purpose.

There very quickly became a social space and an academic space based on their purpose.  I mean, you wouldn't find people in the first year talking slang and jargon and just regular people-speak in the epistemology space.  (Helen)

In our homework discussions, they [faculty] told us they weren't going to be there [WCC], that that was our space and that was a much freer space.  There was no one to impress and there was no grade being assigned based on the number or quality of our contributions.  It was safe to talk to each other. (Helen)

I couldn't tell you all the conferences we were in.  There were conferences on the books that we read and conferences on morality.   There were several on professionalism, certainly conferences on epistemology and conferences on technology. (James)

In<-->Out

Boxes within boxes
each boundary has
                        an inside
                        an outside…
I am inside my office.
        I sit outside the computer.
I move inside the computer screen.
            I am outside on-line places I have no password.
I am inside the on-line course site.
        I am outside your small group space.
I am inside myself peering outside…
Inside, I am apart of.
Outside, I wonder…
In a moment, I can move from inside to outside? ? outside to inside
                      dancing amongst the boundaries
                      of boxes within boxes.

        Heidegger discusses “in” both in relation to spatial location and Being-in.  Dreyfus suggests “in” from a sense of spatial location is categorical for Heidegger. In this sense, “in” means “in-clusion, being in; spatial inclusion (She is in the house.); and logical inclusion, class membership” (1991, p. 43).   This categorical sense is characterized by indifference.

        Students described themselves as located “in” the conference space.

I had that sense of people in the room kind of thing, everybody stepping up to the podium and saying their thing. Whereas, everybody wrote it down and walked out of the room. (Helen)

I couldn't tell you all the conferences [WCC topic discussion spaces] we were in. (James)

Perpetually and practically, the worlds of outside and inside are mutually exclusive.  One cannot be in both at the same time. And yet they border directly on each other….  The great challenge to the architect, then, derives from the paradoxical contradiction between (1) the mutual exclusiveness of autonomous, self-contained interior spaces and an equally complete outer world, and (2) the necessary coherence of the two as parts of the indivisible human environment.  (Rudolf Arnheim, cited in Casey, 1993, p. 124)

        Bachelard (1964/1958) suggests that there is a dialectic between inside (intimate space) and outside (indeterminate space).  The boundary line between inside and outside can easily be reversed.

Outside and inside are both intimate--they are always ready to be reversed, to exchange their hostility.  If there exists a border-line surface between such an inside and an outside, this surface is painful for both sides.  The center for “being-there” wavers and trembles.  Intimate space loses its clarity, while exterior space loses its void, void being the raw material of possibility of being.  We are banished from the realm of possibility. (Bachelard, 1964/1958, pp. 217-218)

This ‘Moebius effect’ takes place in several different registers: between public and private, personal and shared, subjective and objective, map and territory, author and reader, etc…  Place and time blend together.  Clear boundaries give way to fractalized divisions…. The sharing of resources, information, and skills does indeed result in such indecision and active blurring of boundaries, oscillating between outside and inside. (Levy, 1998, pp. 33-34)

        Within this blurring of boundaries, students felt an instantaneous change of being inside and outside in a WCC.  To describe these abrupt changes that were directly merely by the click of a mouse, the students used jump.  They seemed to be trying to capture movement within a world that defied the usual physical boundaries of moving from one place to another.

It was [participating in a WCC] very much a rotating, jump in, jump back out-- say your thing and then move back out of the way. (Helen)

I was lost in a sense that I just had no focus of what the conversation  [in WCC] was suppose to be like.  Yes ... in and out ... just trying to figure it out on my own so I could jump in.  (Betty)

It [conversation in WCC] was very segmented.  It was like a bunch of people talking in a room all at the same time. You know, you're walking around between conversations. That's how I felt.  I mean you can stop and jump in at any time. (Sally)

        Heidegger’s sense of “in” as it relates to “Being-in” is an existential sense characterized by concern.

Being-in on the other hand is a state of Dasein’s Being; it is an existentiale.  So one cannot think of it as the Being-present-at-hand of some corporeal Thing (such as a human body) ‘in’ an entity which is present-at-hand.  Nor does the term “Being-in” mean a spatial ‘in-one-another-ness’ of things present-at-hand, any more than the word ‘in’ primordially signifies a spatial relationship of this kind. ‘In’ is derived from “innan”--“to reside”, “habitare”, “to dwell”. ‘An’ signifies “I am accustomed”, “I am familiar with”, “I look after something”.  It has the signification of “colo” in the senses of “habito” and “diligo”.  The entity to which Being-in in this signification belongs is one which we have characterized as that entity which in each case I myself am [bin].  The expression ‘bin’ is connected with ‘bei’, and so ‘ich bin’ [‘I am’] means in its turn “I reside: or “dwell alongside” the world, as that which is familiar to me in such and such a way.  “Being-in” is thus the forma existential expression for the Being of Dasein, which has Being-in-the world as its essential state. (Heidegger, 1962/1952, pp. 79-80 [54])

        While our common usage of the word “in” reflects the spatial definition that locates one entity in a location of space inside of another, Heidegger wants to extend the notion to a basic existential condition.  In the first sense, “in” suggests a boundary in which there is a dialectic between in(side) and out(side).   In an existential sense, there is only an “in” in terms of “Being-in.”  It is not possible to “Being-out.”  The Cartesian boundary between subject and object does not exist.  Can students “Be-in” a WCC?

Well, I'd say that we're in the conference [WCC] just like you're in a conversation if you have a sense of putting something forward and having a piece.  Just like I'm sitting here, I'm in our conversation because I'm actively contributing to it.  You're in the conference if you're saying something, but you're outside of the conference if you're just observing because you're not actively involved in it. (Helen)

Maybe it [WCC] got better.  I don't know I dropped out.  I was completely, almost 100% never around.  (Sally)

I'd usually get ... commit group suicide, so to speak.  It's when you just drop out for a while.  (James)

        “Being-in” for Heidegger is to be involved.  Involve comes from the “Latin involvere, to roll-up, wrap up; in, in and volvere, to roll” (Websters, 1979, p. 967).  When I am involved, I am wrapped up within and into what I am doing.  I do not set myself apart from the other.  Involvement exposes me to others in its connection to who I am.  Students feared being exposed “in” WCC.  How do we help students celebrate “Being-in” a WCC both in terms of involvement and the fear of exposure that may come with it?

        The text, my words, can be pulled out, moved and printed in a WCC.

Basically just the people within IET were able to get in there and read it.  But yet, you never know what's going to be pulled out and pushed some place some day. (Emma)

It [the messages posted in WCC] became more detached from the person when I printed it out because they had to come out of the computer. (Helen)

(T)here

Where am I?
My body is here.
Planted in this place.
I can feel     the weight of my body in the chair
                   the keyboard on my fingertips
                   the carpet upon my feet.
I can smell  the turkey soup cooking on the stove
                   the dog’s breath as he licks my face
                   the potpourri steaming in the pot.
I can hear   the mantle clock ticking as it measures time
                   the footsteps of my husband as he moves about upstairs
                   the click of the dog as he crosses the wood floor.
I can see     the computer screen as the words appear one by one
                   the dog as he lays beside me waiting for me to move
                   the sunlight as it plays upon the coffee table in patterns of light and shadow.
I am here…home.
Where are you?
Here or there?
Where is there?
There separate from me yet….
It is still part of here…
The dog that I smell, hear, see…
is here as I sense him--take him into my body
but, always there--separate.
Where am I?
(T)here?

        One of the fundamental ways that I understand myself to be in a place is in the directional dyad of here-there.  I find myself within an encompassing figure-ground field of here-there, (t)here.  My body is the focal point--here--through which I perceive all else as there.  The question, “Where am I?” suggests for Whitehead that the question is, “Where are the other [there] places? [I] have my own body, but [I] have lost them [the other places]” (1978, p. 170).  “There” provides a context for locating “here” within the whole.  For Casey (1993) there are many theres for each here.

Some of these theres are actual, that is, situated in currently perceived parts and places of my surrounding world.  Other theres are only virtual; I might perceive them were I to move to the appropriate locations. (Casey, 1993, p. 54)

        For, Levy (1998) in telepresence the tangible body is both here and there.

The projection of the image of the body is generally associated with the notion of telepresence.  But telepresence is always something more than the projection of an image.  The telephone, for example, already functions as a telepresence device.  It does not merely convey an image or representation of the voice; it carries that voice.  The telephone separates voice (the audible body) from the tangible body and transmits it to a remote location.  My tangible body is here, my audible body, doubled, is both here and there.   The telephone already actualizes a partial for of ubiquity.  The audible body of my correspondent is also affected by the same act of doubling.  So we are both, respectively, here and there, but the distributions of our tangible bodies intersect. (Levy, 1998, p. 39)

The mirror is a utopia, a placeless place where “I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal virtual space, that opens up behind the surface;…a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself there where I am absent…” But the mirror is also a real place, a heterotopia: “It makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there.”  (Boyer, 1996, pp.78-79)

        Casey (1993) suggests five modes of here-being: here in part, here of my body proper, here of my by-body, regional here, and interpersonal here (pp. 52-53).

        Within my own body I can choose to localize here as a part of the whole (here in part).

Although we may not be accustomed to thinking of a particular body part as the habitual locus of a here in relation to other body parts as theres, the fact that such a here-there relationship indicates that the body, taken as a single intact entity, is itself a place. (Casey, 1993, p. 52)

        The students describe their body place “here” in relation to an on-line environment as sitting.

I tried to get on every other night and I mean within those two days.  Oh, my goodness, 25-30 postings and I'm thinking, "I have to sit here and read all these?” (Emma)

        The second mode of here-being for Casey (1993) is the here of my body proper--“the body as a unitary entity” (p. 52).  It is as a whole body that I sense myself as located in a place that is here.  When I say, “I am here,” I understand myself, as a whole body, to be located in a particular place.  Is it possible to project this sense of here-being to an on-line environment?  In virtual reality, it is possible to em-place myself into a digital space through the use of a helmet, gloves, sensory suits, etc.   My senses are projected into and directly tied to this digital space.   Am I here (in this virtual place) of my body proper?  Is it possible to be so involved in an on-line environment that I stand with my body in this place as here?

        Casey’s (1993) third mode of here-being is here of my by-body--“a hereness that moves with and by my body…. Every time I move my body out of a stationary posture, I experience such a here” (p. 53).  This sense of here is resident in the body, but also extends outward from the lived-moving body.  The extension is limited to the actions I can consider within a given place.  It is this sense of hereness that most easily translates into WCC.  When I am in a WCC, I can move from one conference to another and one message to another. It is through my own bodily agency and choice that I click and move.  I have the feeling of being here through movement toward a goal as it is framed within a screen-place.   While I am here on-line, I am also here sitting in front of my computer moving and shifting my body.  Can one be here in both senses?  Does this sense of here operate in a figure-ground relationship where one sense of here is more focal than another?  Or, can we only have one sense of here-being at any given point in time?

        James is the only student in the study who placed himself “here” in WCC.

It felt sometimes like, “Well, I'm in.  This is it.  I'm the only one here." (James)

        The fourth mode of here-being is regional here-- “a concatenation of places that, taken together, constitutes a common and continuous here for the person who lives in and traverses them” (Casey, 1993, p. 53).    A region is a collection of places that I associate personally--I em-place and identify myself within and among these places.  I can move to any place within my regional here.  Implicit to any region is the existence of other-region or there region--a region that is set apart from my regional here by a boundary.  Is there a regional here in a WCC?  What forms the boundaries in on-line environments?  In some WCC, the name of the conference designates the boundary or region.  If you do not belong to the name (e.g., Cohort One) then it is inappropriate to enter and participate in this place.  While the name forms a boundary, the boundary is permeable--porous.  It is like the entrance to a town where the road does not keep others out, but individuals not regionally here are considered there.

        When I use WCC in my teaching, I form small group discussion and individual journal areas that have restricted access.  Only those students who are given access to the place can read and respond in that space.  The access restriction is like a security gate that only allows certain designated persons in.  The dividing line between here and there is not penetrable.  The place is private not public.

        In the WCC space used by the students in this study, the boundaries only kept out those who were not part of all three sites involved in the IET program.  The students felt that students and faculty from other sites should not be admitted into their space.  James voices his sense of regional-here in a WCC.

Every now and then somebody would write something, somebody from Arlington who you don't even know, would butt in.  It was like, "oh, by the way . . . " and then slam them or a parent without any tact.  You scratch your head and say, "what the hell are you doing here?!" (James)

        The students describe interpersonal relations with others, except in two cases, the students describe as “there.”  Other is only present “there” separate from me.

It's [WCC] like you are in a shopping mall.  You're aware there are people around you, but you're really not focusing in on them.  And if somebody asked, "What do they look like?"  You couldn't say, but you know they're there.   There's an entity that I'm talking to or communicating, or a couple of them, but I don't see them-- either.  They're just there.  (Anne)

It's very much like a there and not there kind of thing.  And, again, I really do think it became just another piece of paper that I had to read because of the way I categorize things it becomes another piece of IET paper.  This was different and when you only have two responses at a time, it makes it easier for you to note, at least it made it easier for me to say, "Paul, okay, I think I know ... yeah, all right I know who he is."  And then I would read through it and say, "Sounds like him. Doesn't sound like him?"  (Helen)

        It is not unusual to feel not connected to other in the WCC “there.”

Aloneness.  There is nobody next to me. No feeling of physical support--you know, someone on either side of me either holding me up or something like that.  It was just this feeling of great emptiness and loneliness because there weren't any connections being made to me, I had no sense of anyone else being there.  I'd been shot into space and was wandering around up there--floating. "Hello! Hello, anybody out there ?!" (Helen)

        The students perceive faculty as “there” not “here” in their comments.

It all depended on whether or not we knew that the teacher was going to be there.  In our homework discussions they told us they weren't going to be there, that that was our space and that was a much freer space.  (Helen)

So we knew they [the faculty] were there and I found myself at times being limited.  (Emma)

Big brother was the professors - we all knew they were there watching.  (Sally)

It was almost like a talking bulletin board.  You could go there like any college bulletin board and read a message and think how interesting and it could have been there for years because nobody cleans that bulletin board off.  You go to respond to that person and you get those little tear off  number sheets at the bottom and that person doesn't live there anymore or there's not that number.  It's tidbits of information that could  really be interesting.  You could pick and choose but yet the ones you choose  might not always be accessible or even that person might say "Oh yeah, I figured that out."  Not relevant to that person anymore.  If I did see something that was interesting I'd rather go up and talk to them about it or E-mail them ... not in front of the whole group. (Sally)

 Up/Down

I stand
             bridge
             between
             earth and sky.
Above me
             Halloed by clouds
             fluffy
             unfettered
             closer to an ultimate.
Below me
           the earth
           meets my feet
                           solid
                           grounded in
                                           the everyday.

        I stand upright against the force of gravity pulling downward.  “Up” and “above” are a triumph of evolution--I stand and orient myself despite gravity.  “Down” and “below” are of the earth--solid.

“Place” would not be place as we know it without the critical distinction between up and down; nor would our bodies be “lived” as they are without a comparable distinction in a specifically somatic function.  (Casey, 1993, pp. 80-81)

bivalent phenomenon whose loci are indeterminate.  We witness this indeterminancy not only in language--e.g., in such phrases as coming right up to me” or walking down the street,” where in the exact locations of the “up” and “down” in relation to “me” or “the street” are indeterminate--but in concrete perpetual situations as well.  In these situations, the bivalence is redoubled: the up and (to a lesser degree) the down are projected out onto the axis of the before and behind. (Casey, 1993, p. 77)

        Up and down in an on-line environment is determined by the location of information on the screen.  I move up and down by scrolling through information.  It passes “up” as I work my way “down” to the bottom of the screen.  While I orient myself with my body in terms of up and down, the screen appears to serve this orientation function.  It frames the world from which I am presented information.

It just seemed like pages and each little box was like a paragraph that was just the way it was set up and you were scrolling down the sheet. (James)

I was more actively involved in the conversation [in the WCC] if I could scroll up and scroll down. I felt more of a participant because there was something to do other than flip through something that was obviously someone else's words. (Helen)

        Up and down can also correspond to “up there” on the computer in WCC or “down-loaded” on to my computer.  Students sit down on a chair in front of their computers, but put information “up there” in the WCC for all to see.

But by being up there [in a WCC], my team mate and I found, through our computers at school, we could print whatever was new and she and I went through and really read it and highlighted things.  (Emma)

I think when I first started this I always had this feeling that there other people around, hanging up there [in WCC]. (James)

It was something that I down-loaded to the computer printer. (Sally)

I had this image that once you've written what ever it is you're going to write and you've posted it into the conference site [WCC], you're the headline.  This is the one that everyone's going to see so you're like in bright neon.  You're there, that's it, you're on. Boy when you're like the next one up, that's when you're out you're on a marquee because you're out in the open and everybody can see you. They're going to see you.  You're the first thing they're going to see. (James)

        Students also use “up” idiomatically to describe the process of creating a structure.

One of my cohort members set up a conference [WCC] space talking about our favorite books and so we talked about our favorite children's books and our favorite adult books and recommended reading. (Helen)

You're communicating sort of one way with someone either alive or dead.  But with a Web there's a dynamic going on.  I mean, something that's still living.  It's still going.  I think because of the way it's set up.  (John)

Spatialization metaphors are rooted in physical and cultural experience: they are not randomly assigned. A metaphor can serve as a vehicle for understanding a concept only by virtue of its experiential basis….  For example, MORE IS UP has a very different kind of experiential basis than HAPPY IS UP or RATIONAL IS UP.  Though the concept of Up is the same in all of these metaphors, the experiences on which these UP metaphors are based are very different.  It is not that there are many different UPS; rather, verticality enters our experience in many different ways and gives rise to many different metaphors.  (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, pp. 18-19)

Back/Front

I can see
         in front of me clearly
         facing forward
                       ahead
                       up front
                       first.
In back of me…
             shadow
             dimly lit
             past through
             once ahead
             now left behind.

What lies ahead of me or behind me is delimited.  Typically it is a finite sector of my visual (or auditory or tactile) field, a locale in my near sphere and often just before or just behind me; at the most, as something ahead of me that is viewed from here where my body is.  (Casey, 1993, p.83)

The terms of spatial organization, the words “before” and “behind,” “above” and “below” are usually taken from man’s intuitions of his own body: man’s  body and its parts are the system of references to which all other spatial distinctions are indirectly transferred.  (Cassirer, cited in Casey, 1993, p. 82)

        One of the most distinctive traits of ahead or front is that “we look and touch, move and manufacture, primarily in front of ourselves” (Casey, 1993, p. 83).  I can not conceive of doing anything behind myself.  How would I be able to accomplish this feat given the orientation of my body?

 “Ahead” [or front] signifies the most concertedly intentional--and thus the most broadly effective--aspect of our bodily insertion into place.  Indeed, the single most potent expression of corporeal or operative intentionality is found in facing forward. To be bodily “directed toward”--in the phrase Brentano applied to the mind alone--is to be actively engaged in, or at least open to, what lies before us.  We are ahead of ourselves not just in time, but also in space.  Or rather, in place.  For I face a world of particular places, not a totality of neutral spaces.  In this always already configured world, I take up a succession of “advanced positions,” each of which entails a concrete corporeal connection to one or several places toward which I am tending. (Casey, 1993, p. 84)

You're connected for a brief instant and then you're both going in different directions.  You'll make the point.  I'll make the point with the person that came in front of me and then with the next posting it's gone. (Helen)

I think it has to do with time and place.  In the computer, the place is just having to scroll back.  The fact that it's [posted message in WCC] up front, it makes it more immediate.  (James)

Yeah, it would be a more intimate conversation like you and I sitting down in my kitchen and talking, but instead I feel like I'm putting it out for all--like singing an aria in front of this huge audience. (Helen)

If I did see something that was interesting [in WCC], I'd rather go up and talk to them about it or e-mail them--not in front of the whole group.  (Sally)

Sight is the most definitive sense when it comes to dealing with places in front of us.  Seeing directs us to what is be-fore us, and it is by seeing that we (quite literally) con-front phenomena, meshing our active and percipient bodies with the presented front sides of encountered objects (Casey, 1993, p. 84).

        “Back” (or behind) is not as intrinsically important because it can not be seen or touched.  It is the shadow side where I feel vulnerable to attack.  What I can not see is difficult to know.  If I blindfolded myself, I would have to depend on my sense of touch and sound to orient myself.  Sound surrounds and can be more difficult to distinguish direction with precision.  I could speculate that without sight everything would appear to be as behind.  However, upon reflection, I am oriented in the direction I face. Without sight, I would distinguish front and back based on my body orientation.

Because it is for the most part out of sight (and often difficult to touch), “the back-field disappears,” bringing with it a factor of hiddenness.  The hiddenness itself is of two sorts.  On the one hand, it refers to that wish is behind my body as not-present-in-perception: a hidden object or person, something “out of view” because it fails to fit into the fore field of my vision.  On the other hand, the hiddenness includes the backward depth of my own body, i.e., part of all of my backside.  Both of these modes of hiddenness are body-based, since the first exists in relation to  my body and the second forms part of  my body.  What is behind is on “my other side,” the side from which I feel most vulnerable; hence my fear of being “stabbed in the back,” of being gossiped about “Behind my back.”   (Casey, 1993, p. 85)

        Behind is only mentioned by students in terms of a sense of faculty presence.  The students feel like they are watched from behind.   They connect watching to judgment.    Students use the word “behind” to describe the sense of vulnerability in faculty presence on-line.  Students do not know when the faculty are there, what the faculty are looking at, how they are being judged.  The faculty are over and behind them.  Behind can in this sense capture power-over as a force that is not up front, but behind controlling.  How can faculty be perceived as “up front” by the students in a WCC?

        Students use “back” to describe location in a different sense.  Back is the location of the messages among a list of other messages in a discussion.  If a message is back in the list, it is not present, but takes on a temporal sense of past.

The conferencing [WCC], it's not spatial at all.  It's just like time.  So if you miss something, you're out of the conversation.  You're little comment back here four days ago might no longer apply.   Or if you want to comment about something the person that commented about your comment three days ago, that might just be completely out of context from the last comment.  (James)

 “Back” is also used by students to describe movement.

[A conversation in a WCC is] very much a rotating, jump in, jump back out--say your thing and then move back out of the way. (Helen)

I think that in the computer [WCC] the place is just having to scroll back.  The fact that it's [a message] up front, it makes it more immediate.  But if you were having a round table conference with various people, they're all in the same place at the same time and even though conversations might shift as long as it remains within the context of that topic or whatever they're talking about in the hours having elapsed, which usually don't, you can jump back and forth between the previous comments. (James)

 In a WCC discussion, there is a back and forth movement that is not uncommon in classroom discussions.  It describes the interaction of responses between students.
Whatever I said to [message] #10 up there may not get on for a while to respond back to me.  (Emma)

That's really the way it was. "Hello, anybody out there?!"  Because I wasn't receiving anything back, I had no sense of my dimensions or my boundaries-- no resistance, no nothing.  (Helen)

I know that I have been heard, that I am apart of the whole--recognized--when another person responds to me.  A response in a WCC is a written comment relates to something that I have written by another.  Without a response, it is as if my voice is not heard.  I do not exist.

In the moment of recognition, we see and hear ourselves in reversibility: mirrored by others, we see ourselves from where they are; echoed by others, we listen to ourselves with their ears.  (Levin, 1989, p. 165)

Knowing oneself is grounded in Being-with, which understands primordially.  It operates proximally in accordance with the kind of Being which is closest to us--Being-in-the-world as Being-with; and it does so by an acquaintance with that which Dasein, along with Others, comes across in its environmental circumspection and concerns itself with--an acquaintance in which Dasein understands.  Solicitous concern is understood in terms of what we are concerned with, and along with our understanding of it.  Thus in concernful solicitude the Other is proximally disclosed.  (Heidegger, 1962, p. 161 [124])

When one’s knowing-oneself gets lost in such ways as aloofness, hiding oneself away, or putting on a disguise, Being-with-one-another must follow special routes of its own in order to come close to Others, or to ‘see through them.’ (Heidegger, 1962, p. 161 [124]

Mist said, “Well, I’ve been observing a particular list for the past several years.  I feel like I’m part of the community, but I don’t participate at all.”
 I [Markham] wondered how that was possible, but then thought of my parents.  They feel like part of a town, yet they don’t participate actively in it.  I asked, “Ahh…why do you feel like you are part of the community?”
 [Mist] “I feel like I know the people who post regularly--they have definate personalities.”
 [Markham]”How would you describe your level of commitment to this group?”
 [Mist] “Well I feel part of the group in a superficial way, but at a deeper level, I know I’m not.  But I’ve been tempted to go spy on one of their face-to-face get togethers.” (Markham, 1998, p. 153)

Screen Space

In front of…
             shaped within a rectangle
                         projected
             images move across
             representations of…
             on my screen.
On my computer screen
            I watch worlds pass by
            connecting with the flick of a mouse
            my on-line world is transformed
                              as  a tool
                                   a world of work
                                   a world of information
                              as a virtual world of simulation
                                   a world of play
                              as a real world of being
                                   a world of relationships.
All of these worlds dance upon my screen
Each intertwined with the other--
A screen space
A view.

It is computer screens where we project ourselves into our own dramas, dramas in which we are producer, director, and star.  Some of these dramas are private, but increasingly we are able to draw other people.  Computer screens are the new location for our fantasies, both erotic and intellectual.  We are using life on computer screens to become comfortable with new ways of thinking about evolution, relationships, sexuality, politics, and identity.  (Turkle, 1995, p. 26)

        The computer screen dictates the dimensions of my view of computer worlds.  I am not only confined by the actual dimensions of the screen window, but also the screen resolution settings change my view.  What do you see when you turn on your screen?  If your computer is off, there is nothing to see.  The screen is an output device that displays electronic bits and bytes onto the screen.  If my computer is on, my “desktop” appears on the screen. I gain access through a screen metaphor that mimics an office space.  This two-dimensional space allows me to quickly find pieces in my personal computer world.

        I can open multiple windows--software programs that give me a view of different possibilities in my computer world.  I can have open at one time e-mail, word processing, my internet browser, a graphics tool, and my on-line classroom space (WCC).  Each enable me to be in this computer world in a different way. The screen becomes not only one window, but multiple windows to view virtual worlds.  How does this post-modern metaphor of multiple windows shape the way I interact in this space?  Does this sense of multiple landscape influence the depth at which I pursue information?  Do students loose a sense of focus within the multiple windows that are available to them?

        Window comes from the Old Norse word vindauga; vindr, wind, and auga, eye (Websters, 1979, p. 2095).  A window is an eye or small opening that allows air or wind to enter.  A window in a computer is a small opening into a world that extends well beyond the confines of my own computer.  Another country across the globe can be viewed on my screen in a matter of seconds.  It enters into my computer space where I can click on the links and even talk to someone I have never met.  The window allows me to let computer worlds in through the eye of the screen.  It is as if I am (t)here.

        Metaphor comes form the “Greek metaphor, a transferring to one word the sense of another, from metapherein; meta, over, and pherein, to hear” (Websters, 1979, p. 1132).  Lakoff and Johnson suggest “that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” (1980, p. 3).  How is the ordinariness of metaphor lived out in and on the computer?  Has the use of metaphoric language that applies to the computer morphed and changed the shapes of the original metaphoric tension?  Do computer metaphors shape how we organize information and learn?

In the Poetics, Aristotle defined metaphor as the act of “giving the things a name that belongs to something else.”  The crucial element of this formula is the difference that exists between “the thing” and the “something else.”  What makes a metaphor powerful is the gap between the two poles of the equation.  Metaphors create relationships between things that are not directly equivalent.  Metaphors based on complete identity are not metaphors at all.  In traditional interface design, a computer “window” bears a kind of superficial resemblance to a real-world window, but it’s the difference between the two that make the metaphor a successful one.  There’s a necessary distance between the real and virtual window that makes the analogy useful to us. (Johnson, 1997, p. 59)

In ancient times, the term interface sparked awe and mystery.  The archaic Greeks spoke reverently of prosopon, or a face facing another face.  Two opposite faces make up a mutual relationship.  One face reacts to the other, and the other face reacts to the other's reaction, and the other reacts to that reaction, and so on ad infinitum.  The relationship then lives on as a third thing or state of being.  The ancient term prosopon once glowed with mystic wonder.  The word suggests as spiritual interactions between eternity and time.  (Heim, 1993, p. 78)

The personal computer was just that, a personal computer, designed from the ground up to be used by a single individual, which is why most modern graphic interfaces draw so heavily on the imagery of desktops and closed-door offices.  The desktop metaphor is by definition a monadic system; it belongs to the individual psyche the way Freud’s case studies do, and that inwardness can make it harder to think in more social, more communal terms.  (Johnson, 1997, p. 222)

        Brenda Laurel (1993) uses metaphor and Aristotle’s Poetics to extend possible structures of interface and interaction.  She suggests that drama offers an interactive model for designing computer interfaces.  For Laurel, interactivity depends on frequency of interaction, range of choices available, the significance of the choices, and the feeling of participation in an action.  Theater offers an interactive model in two ways: 1) it represents the action of multiple agents and 2) a model that is familiar, comprehensive and interesting.   In addition, drama offers an overall interface metaphor of common ground based on action and agency rather than focusing on the functionality of the computer as tool.

        Students access a WCC through their computer screen.  Since the environment is textual, the experience of reading is very different on screen than on a piece of paper.

You're reading it in a different frame too.  You're reading it on a screen.  That's somehow different.  Even though when you pick up a letter somebody wrote, you're touching the thing that they actually touched.  It somehow remains.  But when it's on the screen, somehow it's just words that have traveled.  It's not that piece of paper.  It's just their words have traveled. (Martha)

        The screen also limits what can be seen or read.  “The critical problem is that present CRT [screens] displays have some very serious limitations--they are restricted in size, in resolution (pixel size), and in color rendition and accuracy” (Robertson, 1998, pp. 144-45).

It [the messages you saw] was controlled on just the screen! (Helen)

There was no way I was going to read everything on the screen so I just printed it all out and even then I didn't read it all.  (James)

I would go back a couple more times to see if someone in the second or third posting had gone back and said something about it [the message I posted].  Once there had been three postings.  I would know once it [my message] was off the screen, I knew it was in oblivion. (Helen)

My main complaint [about modern interfaces] is that metaphor is a poor metaphor for what needs to be done.  At PARC we coined the phrase user illusion to describe what we were about when designing user interfaces.  There are clear connotations to the stage, theatrics, and magic--all of which give much stronger hints as to the direction to be followed…. Should we transfer the paper metaphor so perfectly that the screen is as hard as paper to erase and change?  Clearly not. (Kay, cited in Johnson, 1997, p. 59)

        Movement within information on a screen engages students in the environment.  Helen feels more involved and connected through actions she takes that appear on her computer screen.

I feel closer to it.  I don't know if it's just because the computer screen is closer to my face.  It's got the pretty colors.   But I feel like there's a closer connection between me and my thoughts and there are less steps involved to posting my own ideas.  Which sounds really stupid, but it felt I was more actively involved in the conversation if I could scroll up and scroll down.  I felt more of a participant because there was something to do other than flip through something that was obviously someone else's words. (Helen)

        The location on the screen determines for the students a sense of time and presence.

There seemed to be levels of immediacy.  Like the most immediate is when you're on the screen contributing to the conversation and less immediate or still in the conference is when you have contributed, but aren't in it at this moment--not being in it is having not posted anything at all. (Helen)

Presence is on the screen.  Yeah, it's on the screen.  It's what you're seeing right now. (James)

        The computer screen does not always evoke a sense of presence for the students.  For Anne, the other students have lost a sense of humanity.

There was no voice, it [a message posted in a WCC] was just words on a screen.  There was no humanity in it for me. (Anne)

Movement--Between

I move in computer spaces
            starting from one place
                                 here
            reaching out in my mind seeking another place
            going there from here.
            Once (t)here
                       I travel within
                                   then jump
                                   through to another there.
 

Movements such as the simple ability to kick one’s legs and stretch one’s aims are basic to the awareness of spaces.  Space is experienced directly as having room to move.  Moreover, by shifting from one place to another, a person acquired a sense of direction.  Forward, backward and sideways are experientially differentiated, that is, know subconsciously in the act of motion.  Space assumes a rough coordinate frame centered on the mobile and purposive self. Human eyes which have bifocal overlap and stereoscopic capacity, provide people with a vivid space in three dimensions. (Tuan, 1977, p. 12)

Movement is intrinsic to place--thus to what is often taken to be the very paradigm of the lasting and the unmoving in human experience.  As holding and marking the stages in a journey, places exhibit notably stationary virtues.  But as the loci of engaged motion--both the more conspicuous motion of moving between--places and the more subtle motion of being-in-place. (Casey, 1993, p. 280)

        Move comes from the Latin, movere.  It means “to change place or position; to set or keep in motion; to arouse or stir the emotions” (Websters, 1979, p. 1176).  When I move from my bed to the shower in the morning I have physically changed place or position.  When I move from one hyperlink location to another on the Web, it is as if I have traveled or moved, but I remain in one place.  The change in place is a change in view upon my screen.  Is it this change of view that gives me a sense of movement?  I am still located in the chair in front of my computer screen.  I  have not moved physically.  Yet, I feel that I have explored the world.  Is the movement in imaginative leaps prompted by changes in images?   Have I moved any-where?  Are different views that appear on my screen any-where?  Are they just part of the choices I select to be part of my computer world?  Perhaps, I pull them to me.  They move to me; yet, they never leave the computer that houses their code.  What moves?  How do students perceive themselves moving in a WCC?

Electronic media make it possible to be physically located in one place while simultaneously perceiving aspects of other places.  In this way, they enable partial permeation of places by each other, in that features in one place are available as objects of perception (and sometimes even use) in another place. (Brey, 1998, p. 249)

For the house is our corner of the world. As has been said, it is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word. (Bachelard, 1964, p. 4)

Familiarity is a characteristic of the past.  The home provides an image of the past.  Moreover in an ideal sense home lies at the center of one’s life, and center connotes the origin and beginning. (Tuan, 1977, p. 128)

        Students begin from their body space of sitting in front of the computer.  We base our sense of here on a connection to our present body orientation.  While I may feel like I move to another place, it is always in reference to where I am--in terms of my body--where I have started.  My ability to view my computer screen is never separate from the body.  I can not see or think or imagine without my body.  It may not be the focus--operating in the background, but it is always grounding me in the here.   My body calls me back to the source of my existence.

Because I sit there for hours sometimes [interacting in WCC] and not realize that my shoulder hurts because I’d been in the same position for so long until it really hurt bad.  (Betty)

        To be apart of a WCC, students first must connect their computer to the computer that houses the WCC system.  This connection is often referred to by students as getting on or in.

I tried to get on [to the WCC] every other night and I mean within those two days.  (Sally)

At least in the first year and half of the program, I would almost religiously get on and check everything ... I mean everything, it was fun ... I really enjoyed it (James)

        To get-in to a WCC has a slightly different nuance.  I not only connect or get on to the Internet and the computer that houses the WCC, but I have a sense of entering a place.  It suggests there is a place to get-in to--a place where I will participate or gather with others.  It is a place with boundaries that suggest an in and out for me.

There's 20 people and only 20 people are getting in this conference site and we know everybody and everybody knows everybody else.  And even if we don't know everybody, we're going get to know them through this conference space and we're all gonna contribute the same assignments. (James)

        From a beginning space I go “to”.  Going “to” is a movement that propels me between places--from one place to another.  “To” suggests an intention that is directed toward an end point already in mind.  Students express the notion of going “to” the WCC conference space as going in-to.  Not only do they feel themselves moving to an end point--the WCC--, but they also understand themselves entering in-to the WCC.  They arrive, but enter at the same time.

I turned on the computer with the intent of going into the Caucus [WCC system]. That's where I'm heading.  I'm not doing word processing. I'm not playing games. I'm going into the Caucus.  I'm going into George Mason or I'm doing something with IET.  (Anne)

Once you've written what ever it is you're going to write and you've posted it into the conference site, you're like the headline.  This is the one that everyone's going to see so you're like in bright neon.  You're there, that's it, you're on. (James)

In posting [a message to a WCC conference space], I would rewrite and rethink and snaz it up before posting it.  (Sally)

 Once students are in the WCC space they move “through” the space.
One of my cohort members set up a conference space talking about our favorite books and so we talked about our favorite children's books and our favorite adult books and recommended reading.  It was just really neat to just browse through and say, "Oh, I've always wondered about that. What's that like?"  (Helen)

Even if we don't know everybody, we're going to get to know them through this conference space.  (James)

I would read through it [a messaged posted to the WCC space] and say, "Sounds like him.  Doesn't it sound like him?" (Helen)

        Casey suggests that, “What matters is the movement itself as well as the fact that all movement, short of a perpetuum mobile, know a terminus.  Implaced and continually re-implaced, journeying comes to term eventually.  It finds its way back to place” (1993, p. 290).  For Casey, ends of journeys can be characterized as either homesteading or homecoming.

In homesteading, I journey to a new place that will become my future home-place.  The homesteading place is typically unknown to me, or known only by accounts given by others who have preceded me….  All that matters is that I commit myself to remaining in the new place for a stretch of time sufficient for building a significant future life there, sometimes for several generations….  In homecoming, what matters most now is the fact of return to the same place.   (Casey, 1993, p. 290)

Well, my team mate and I found, through our computers at school, we could print the conferencing.  We couldn't do it on our lap tops because neither one of our computers were compatible with our lap top, but we found out that, at our jobs, we could.  I'll tell you, every day, one of us, we took alternate days and we would print whatever was new and she and I went through and really read it and highlighted things.  (Emma)

 So it [the message in a WCC] became more detached from the person when you printed it out because it had to come out of the computer.  (Helen)

        Of course, homecoming from a WCC is to get-out and return home to my computer where I am seated in front of the computer screen.  The most drastic way to get out of a WCC is to shut off my computer.  I no longer have a connection with the pattern of bits and bytes on my computer screen.  It is as if the world of electronic magic has died--turned black--to be resurrected with the flick of a switch.  Less drastic, the student disengages from the Internet and uses the computer for another task unrelated to the WCC (e.g., word processing, drawing, etc.).  Finally, I can move to another location on the Web that is not related to the WCC.  I accomplish this with the flick of a mouse.  The WCC does not have a firm structure to contain me within its boundaries.  The porous container leaks into the larger sea of the Internet.

        While the WCC has a home page that students use to enter the course conferences, the students do not need to return to this home page to exit the program.  The home page is different than a home.  I do not return to the home page in the sense of ending the journey.  I return to begin the journey.  At the end of the journey, students always return to the here located in their body location.  While they may journey on the Web with a sense of both here and there (Levy, 1998), they always return to the body, the here that grounds them in their perceptions.  They finish their tasks, turn off their computers, and move in the world of their bodies.