CMC and the Nature of Human/ Machine Interface

Computer mediated communication (CMC) is fundamentally different from other modes of informational exchange. The presence of those with whom one communicates is not completely known. Their identities are in question, easily created, and changed by CMC users themselves who are not constricted by geographical or political boundaries. CMC represents a new form of communication—a “cyborg discourse” consisting of dynamic interplay of words, symbols, and metaphors. Participants in CMC engage in a unique human/technology interface that operates in a disembodied environment. It appears as a world without a history, dominated by connections. This chapter seeks to briefly describe and assess CMC’s philosophical significance and its influence upon communication theory. Once regarded as either the advent of a blissful utopia or the death of human intercourse, CMC has come to be seen as a phenomenon with wide-ranging possibilities, one that has recast communications as a coding problem.