on-line community

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

> >Specifically, what about
> >the majority of the community that is not on Lojban List?
>
> I am unaware of any North Koreans, Cubans, or New Zealand Maoris who are
> interested in lojban. All these people are living in places where computers
> are easily available. Encourage these folks to get an america online or
> compuserve account or make some other slipshod arrangement. If they are
> genuinely interested in lojban, perhaps they will get online. Maybe they do
> not understand how easy it is to participate in online discussion groups.

There are people who have better things to do with their time than read Lojban
 List, especially when it is dominated by the hypertechnical stuff we have here.

Note also that at the moment, two of the most skilled Lojbanists, Nick and
Jorge, are not able to be part of the list.  The community also consists of
technophobes - prolific Michael Helsem is one of these.  But a few of the
leaders of the community, people who come to LogFest every year, HAVE email
addresses and still choose not to be a part of Lojban List.  These include
(to name names) Tommy Whitlock (a board member and one of the founders of
the Lojban effort, as well as the other person besides Nora and me to do the
gismu word-making research), and voting members Karen Stein, John Hodges
(who has actually dropped in on the list a couple of times for short periods,
and Guy Garnett.  David Twery, another voting member, does not have an email
address because he has found that he is a net addict - if he gets online,
it consumes his life, and he is already prone to 80 hour workweeks.

Taking the other tack, of our source language communities, China and India
are almost entirely not reporesented on the net, and Arabic is poorly
represented.  Russia is up and coming as particpants in the net, but they have
a little economic problem %^(.  And the bottom line is that discussions on
the net,a nd this list are predominantly in English, thus disenfranchising
the world community that doesn't read and write that language.

Participating in an on-line discussion group requires more than occasional
net access.  Most people do not feel they should interrupt a conversation
when they are missing most of it, and net conversations often last weeks
or months, making most people witnesses to only part of the conversation.
Other people simply are not used to a medium of conversation where the
answer to what you say may not come back for a day or two (or if you are
not a committed netter and maybe only log on once every week or two, even
longer).  Lojban has the added difficulty in that many of the people not
only have net access and familiarity with the medium, they have all of our
materials from the Web or ftp sites, and frankly, it takes a long time to
weed through 12 meg of material when you have no idea what is most important.

The time may come when all significant communities in the world exist
primarily on-line,  and Lojban is probably closer to that state than most,
but I think it will be years before that ideal (if it is indeed a desirable
state) is close to reality.

lojbab