Conversations and Correspondences for Cooperation

Conversations for Cooperation refer to the perspectives on design of cooperative systems which rely on the today prevalent conversational analogy— i.e., viewing communication with and through computers as a conversation. Among those perspectives are the ones based on the “models of language use” of Clark and his colleagues. From my experience of Clark and colleagues’ models of the referring process when applied to computer-mediated communication (CMC), I try to show that the conversational prevalence (a) leaves aside aspects of other communication modes, in particular asynchronicity and “written-ness,” which are important in some CMC sites (e.g., Usenet News), and (b) leads to reject or neglect related communication models, especially “literary” models. I hence claim to also value “literary” models and analogies, especially correspondence, and suggest to adapt Clark and colleagues’ models to take more account of literary uses. So doing I suggest that designers adopt also the Correspondences for Cooperation perspective, to design “tools for correspondence” complementing the current “tools for conversation.”