Computer Mediated Conversational Multitasking: Implications and Applications
Eli Dresner
Senior Lecturer in philosophy and communication
Departments of Philosophy and Communication
Tel Aviv University
2:00-3:30 pm on Friday, March 21, 2008
Indiana University Bloomington, Herman B. Wells Library, Room LI 001
Refreshments will be available prior to the talk at 1:45 pm.
Following the talk, all interested individuals, especially students, are invited to stay for a reception and informal discussion with the speaker.
ABSTRACT
Conversational multitasking - the participation in several concomitant synchronous conversations - becomes an increasingly significant communication competence. It is typically exhibited in textual conversation contexts on-line, such as chat-rooms and instant-messaging environments, where users are engaged in several conversations at the same time, but it obviously comes to affect also face-to-face situations in the workplace and the classroom. In this talk I discuss some of the perceptual underpinnings of conversational multitasking, present the results of several experiments examining some perceptual aspects of this phenomenon, and consider some of its implications. In particular, I suggest it is an interesting locus for examining the interplay between cognitive capacities, social norms and technology.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Eli Dresner (Ph.D. in Logic, University of California at Berkeley, 1998) is a senior lecturer in communication and philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University. His areas of interest in communication are computer-mediated communication and the philosophy of communication. In philosophy his domains of research are logic, the philosophy of language, and philosophical aspects of computation and measurement. He headed the program in Philosophy, Information and Digital Culture at Tel Aviv University’s philosophy department, and is a member of the academic committee of the university’s Netvision Institute for Internet Studies. For more information on Dr. Dresner, see: http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/philosophy/segel/EliDresner.html.
