Computer Friendships

become gregarious and adopt his dormmates as extended family. “Without his e-mail postings, this might never have happened,” Rich Holeton says. “We might never have learned what a thoughtful guy he is.”

Holeton (A.B. ’75) found a number of surprises that jolt conventional wisdom about computer communication in research he conducted of Rinconada’s e-mail discussions for the 1995-96 academic year. Instead of being an “either-or” situation, where time spent on computers takes away from time spent with others, e-mail extended and added to personal conversations, drawing in new members of the community, he found.

“The computers became a tool for building, rather than destroying, social relations,” he said.

Residents used the e-mail discussion list, along with meetings, hallway conversations, phone calls and notices posted on the walls, to organize and publicize events, find lost keys, trade jokes and call out players for that quick game of Frisbee. They used this computer grapevine, along with conversations and dorm meetings, to hammer out community issues like how much noise is too much during study hours. They added e-mail to the traditional bull session when they wanted to talk about social and political issues ranging from a grape boycott to date rape. When a dormmate died suddenly, the e-mail list was one of the ways they shared their grief.

Several studies have been made of computer-mediated communication in virtual communities linked by work or common interest, but Holeton said to

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