English Dept. Lecture on Online Communication

[Fraser Easton]

Dear Colleagues--

Please join us for a talk by Chris Reed, head of Research in the  
School of Computing at the University of Dundee, called "Time for a  
Good Argument" on Thursday Dec. 2nd at 4:30 pm in HH 232.  Please  
note that the topic of the talk is online communication.  Everyone is  
welcome.

Dr. Reed works in computational argumentation and is one of the  
editors of the new journal on Argument & Computation.  Below is the  
abstract of his talk.

Best, Fraser

Dr. Fraser Easton
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of English Language and Literature
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ont. N2L 3G1
Canada

519-888-4567  x 33359

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Time for a good argument

Chris Reed

Argument and debate form cornerstones of civilized society and of  
intellectual life. Processes of argumentation run our governments,  
structure scientific endeavour and frame religious belief. As online  
interaction usurps many traditional forms of interaction and  
communication, we would hope to see these processes alive and well on  
the web. But we do not. Current mechanisms for online interaction  
hamper and discourage debate; they facilitate poor quality argument;  
and they allow fuzzy thinking to go unchecked. Meanwhile, these same  
online resources are increasingly being trusted and adopted with  
little critical reflection. To address the problem, we need new  
tools, new systems and new standards engineered into the heart of the  
internet to encourage debate, to facilitate good argument, and to  
promote a new online critical literacy.