Department for computer and systems sciences

Stockholm university
Royal Institute of technology	Original report no:
C-10166E-M6(H9)
December 1981

Revised and extended:
August 1984

Reprinted:
May 1993	

Experience with the use of the COM computerized conferencing system

By Jacob Palme

With help from Lillemor Adriansson, Martin Nilsson, Tommy Nilsson, Anders Sandberg, Torgny Tholerus and Mats Wallin

Abstract:

The COM computerized conferencing system has been in regular use on the DECsystem-10 computer at the Stockholm University Computing Center since March 1979. This report summarizes the result of a number of studies of the effect of the system. The report also summarizes the result of some other studies of similar computerized conferencing systems.

The report gives information about how much KOM (the Swedish language version of COM) is used, what it is used for, which people use it, the user opinions about the advantages and disadvantages of the system, and it compares cost with other communication media. The result shows that part of the communication in COM replaces communication previously conveyed by telephone, letters or meetings. Much of the communication in COM is however new communication. COM has changed the communication patterns and increased the communication between people at large organizational distance, especially for people younger than 40 years of age and among people who are not managers.

For many of its users, COM has meant an increase of the circle of people with which they exchange experience and ideas on a daily basis, and has meant that information and viewpoints can be both disseminated to and collected from more people faster than was possible before.

The Swedish language version of this report (report no C 10166) also contains as appendices full reports of those studies not presented in separate reports. Most of these appendices are not included in this English translation of the report. The English version of the report has however been updated with much new information not present in the Swedish version. 

Search key:

Electronic Office, Office Automation, Computer, Text Processing, Word Processing, Electronic Mail, Message Handling, Communication, Computerized Conferencing, Computer Networks.

When reprinting this report in 1993, some diagrams have been redrawn, but the text from the 1984 report is otherwise unchanged. 
1	Table of contents

1 Table of contents	
2 What is computer conferencing?	
3 The COM system, history and legal problems	
4 Some statistics on the usage of COM	
5 Number of readers/written text	
6 What is COM used for?	
7 Why people use or do not use COM	
8 Time delays measurements	
9 Which people use COM?	
10 At what time is COM used?	
11 Does COM replace other media?	
12 Is COM used from home terminals	
13 Organizational distance between users	
14 Cost of using COM	
15 Personal information in the COM system	
17 Opinions about COM among users and non-users	
18 Conference size	
19 Conclusions	
20 Who did what?	
21 References	
APPENDIX G.2: Times and frequencies for COM commands	
APPENDIX L: Change in life and work because of COM	

     (Note: Only appendix G.2 and appendix L is included in this
     English-language translation of the report, but the full list of
     appendices available in the Swedish version is included below for 
     information to English-language readers.)

      Appendix A: Classification of messages in COM
      A.1 Introduction
      A.2 About whom is personal information given
      A.3 Role of the person in personal information notices
      A.4 Subject of personal information notices
      A.5 Information which is given special protection in the
          Swedish Data Act
      A.6 The factual subject of COM notices
      Appendix B: Which people use the COM system?
      Appendix C: Is computer conferencing a substitute for
          other communication?
      Appendix D: Organizational distance for COM contacts
      D.1 Data collection, reliability
      D.2 Number of users, type of message
      D.3 Contacts at different organizational distance
      D.4 Contacts between FOA departments
      Appendix E: Passive and active COM users
      Appendix F: List of conferences in COM
      Appendix G: Time measurements of COM usage
      G.1 Time for reading and writing messages
      G.2 Times and frequencies for COM commands	50
      Appendix H: Costs for using COM
      Appendix I: How much does COM load the computer
      Appendix J: Cost comparison between COM and some
          other communication media
      Appendix K: A scenario of future COM usage at FOA
      Appendix L: Change in life and work because of COM	53
2	What is computer conferencing?

     Computerized conferencing will probably start to play a major role
     in the eighties in saving energy costs by reducing the need for
     travel, and in furthering international cooperation.

     A computerized teleconferencing system can be seen as something
     halfway between a conference and a very rapidly published
     newsletter. The system can be used by hundreds of people at diverse
     geographical locations. Each user must have access to a simple
     computer terminal; a typical user sits at this terminal once
     or twice a day.

     The system has a data base, consisting of a large number of text
     messages. Each such text message can contain any text written in
     ordinary human language which the author wants to put there. There
     are two main kinds of messages: the first, called a letter, is a
     message from one user to one or a listed number of other users. The
     second type, called a conference entry is stored in one of several
     computerized conferences. A number of users are members of the
     computerized conference. Each member normally reads all that is
     written in the conference and also can freely write messages into
     the conference, which are then made available to all the other
     members of the conference.

     The computer remembers which messages each user has already seen,
     and when users connect to the system, they will get all their new
     letters and all the new entries in the conferences they are members
     of. They can directly write their own messages, which will then
     immediately be stored in the database.

     It is important to note that rarely do all members of a compu-
     terized conference sit at their terminal at the same time,
     conducting an ordinary meeting but with written instead of vocal
     communication. Instead, a typical user connects once or twice a day
     at times suitable to this user, gets all news and writes any
     comments or new messages into the system. Thus, the system is in
     some ways more similar to a very rapidly published newsletter than
     to a conference.

     This figure shows the main principles of a computerized conferen-
     cing system. In the figure, users are members of activities, and 
     the system knows for the members what they have seen and not seen 
     in the activity.

2.1	Use of existing systems

     There is already much experience with the use of this kind of
     computer system, most for contacts between research people. There
     are systems in existence today which have several hundred active
     users and many thousands of messages written each month. The
     experience shows that actual and often intense discussions can go
     on between the users. The interaction is of course not as immediate
     as in face-to-face meetings, but this is compensated by the fact
     that a computerized conference can go on for months or years with
     interaction every day.

2.2	Some claimed advantages with computer conferencing

  •  You can take part in many on-going conferences using much less time
     than for face-to-face meetings.

  •  You can read and write at times suitable to yourself, when you have
     free time, or something to say or to ask for.

  •  You can skip messages of less interest and use the computer to help
     you select or search for what you want to read.

  •  You can get a large group of people to look at a proposal or a
     question and get their comments within a day or two.

  •  Because you save the time and cost of travel, much more intense and
     close cooperation is possible across geographical distances.

  •  People with different mother tongues often find it easier to
     understand each other by written than by spoken language.

  •  Computerized conferencing seems to work well in groups of fifty or
     a hundred participants, while it is well known that face-to-face
     meetings can be cumbersome with more than about seven participants.

     Computerized conferencing should not be seen as a replacement for
     face-to-face meetings, since experience with existing systems shows
     that most of the communication is of a new kind which would not
     have taken place at all if this tool had not been available. There
     are of course certain tasks, for example those including complex
     negotiations, where the fast and immediate interaction of face-to-
     face meetings is essential.

2.3 	Examples of computerized teleconferences:

  •  Exchange of experience between people with similar tasks but placed
     in different locations, for example exchange of experience between
     users of a common computer system or application including contacts
     with the developers and maintainers of the software.

  •  Collection of comments and ideas on suggestions and proposals from
     a geographically distributed group of people; for example,
     obtaining comments on a proposed change in the characteristics of
     a product from its users.

  •  Contacts in groups working toward a common goal but spread at
     different locations, for example, the members of a standards
     committee.

  •  Getting answers to questions by posing them to a group of people
     well-informed in the subject area of the question, for example,
     how to find a product with particular desired characteristics.

     The COM computerized teleconferencing system was developed by
     Torgny Tholerus and Jacob Palme at the Swedish National Defence
     Research Institute. Development of COM was moved to the Stockholm
     University Computer Centre (QZ) in July 1982.

2.4	Facilities of the COM teleconferencing system

Function              Implementation							

     Implementations       COM  has been in production usage for several years
                           at about 15 DECsystem-10 and DECsystem-20 instal-
                           lations. PORTACOM is under  development or field-
                           testing for Norsk Data Nord-100, Burroughs B 7800,
                           CDC Cyber/NOS, Digital Vax-11/VMS, IBM 370/VS1,
                           IBM  370/MVS-TSO, IBM/VM-CMS, Siemens 7.760/BS 2000
                           and Univac 1100 computers. PORTACOM will probably
                           also be implemented on Vax-11/Unix systems.

     User interface        Individually composed menus but in reality command
                           driven, since any command can be given to any menu.

     Help facility         "Help <command>" describes that command.

     Text data base        The text data base consists of a text directory
                           and a number of text items.

     Links between texts   "Comment" links can be established between text
                           items. Several comment links can refer to the same
                           item creating recursive tree structures.

     Conference data base  A conference consists of a list of members and a
                           list of links to text items. The same text item can
                           be  referred  to  from  several conferences. Links
                           from a conference to a text item can be of type
                           "Receiver" and "For information".

     Conference types      Conferences can be of several types, the most
                           important being: OPEN, where any user can join the
                           conference, CLOSED where the organizer decides who
                           can participate, RESTRICTED which are OPEN to some
                           users and CLOSED to other users, WRITE-PROTECTED
                           to which only the organizer can establish links
                           from text items, PROTECTED where all information
                           about the conference is hidden from non-members.

     User data base        A user has a list of conferences, in which that
                           user is a member. Every user has a "personal
                           conference" storing letters to and from this user.
                           One and the same text item can thus both be linked
                           as a conference entry to one or more conferences
                           and as a letter to one or more individual users.

     Name data base        The name data base contains names of users and of
                           conferences with links to the conference and  user
                           data bases.

     News control          For every user who is a member of a conference, the
                           system notes how far that user  has  read  in  the
                           conference. This marker is updated whenever a new
                           entry is read. A user can be automatically guided
                           through all new letters and all new conference
                           items, one conference at a time, but the user can
                           choose a different path for scanning news and can
                           modify the default path according to which confe-
                           rences with news are presented.

                           The same text item is not shown twice to a user,
                           even if the user is a member of two conferences and
                           the text item was sent to both conferences.

     Text item retrieval   By conference, writer, receiver, item number, item
                           range and (in PORTACOM) content. Comment chains
                           can be traversed. Browse facility available. Items
                           of interest can be marked by an individual who
                           wants to see them again later.

Function              Implementation							

     Name data base        Names of users and conferences can be matched
                           retrieval from abbreviated search words. In COM
                           version 6, general text search is also available
                           on the name data base.

     File system           Text items can be saved on files, files can be
     interface             submitted as entries or as command files.

     Text editing          Simple text editor built into the system. COM
                           version 6 also provides a facility for calling an
                           arbitrary external text editor.

     Terminal type modes   The system can be adjusted to different terminal
                           types.

     User modes            Some user interface facilities can be adjusted
                           according to individual user preferences.

     Tables and            Commands to print out lists of users and conferen-
     statistics            ces, lists of members of a conference and usage
                           statistics.

     Disk purging          Automatic facilities for removing old text items
                           when space is needed for new text items. (In COM
                           version 5: By running a disk purging program. In
                           COM version 6: Also old conferences and users are
                           automatically removed when space is needed for new
                           users or conferences.)

     Text interchange      GILT and RFC (Arpanet, CSNET, MAILNET etc.) MAIL
                           with other CBMS-es protocols available for COM, and
                           will be developed for PortaCOM.

     Special program       A "special program interface" is available which
     interface             allows computer programs to act as "users" in
                           reference to the system.

3	The COM system, history and legal problems

     The first computerized conference system in the world was probably
     the EMISARI system, which was developed by Murray Turoff in 1970
     for the American "Office of Emergency Preparedness". Turoff visited
     Sweden several times in the middle of the 1970's, told us of his
     experience and got a number of people in Sweden interested in the
     idea.

     To get more experience, the Swedish Board for Technical Development
     (STU) got a copy of the American computerized conference system
     FORUM (also known under the name PLANET) and installed it at the
     Stockholm University Computing Centre (QZ) in 1976.

     FORUM was used for a series of trials by STU and was also tested by
     the regular users of the QZ computing centre. The experience was
     positive, and at the same time the Swedish National Defense
     Research Institute (FOA) needed new communication tools because of
     a government decision to spread FOA geographically to five
     different Swedish cities. FOA made a number of tests with the FORUM
     system in 1977 and decided in November 1977 to develop a new such
     system.

3.1	The Swedish Data Act

     Immediately after this decision FOA contacted the Swedish Data
     Inspection Board. FOA visited the Data Inspection Board several
     times and discussed the system under development and asked for
     comments. The Data Inspection Board did not then have any
     objections, and so, in May 1978, FOA made a formal application to
     the Data Inspection Board for permission to use the system.

     The reason why such an application is necessary is that the Swedish
     Data Act requires a permission from the Data Inspection Board for
     all computerized Data Bases containing information on individual
     persons which can be identified directly or indirectly. This Act is
     intended to protect against invasion of privacy by misuse of such
     data bases, especially by combining information from several data
     bases.

     FOA at the same time found it important to get an evaluation of the
     advantages and disadvantages of the system and its effect on the
     work environment. FOA asked Gothenburg University to make such an
     evaluation. Gothenburg University was chosen to get an impartial
     evaluation by an organization not involved with the development or
     use of the system. This evaluation started in July 1978 with
     literature studies and pre-interviews with a trial group which was
     to begin using the COM system. The same group was interviewed one
     year later to make possible a comparsion of their expectations
     before using the system with their experience after having tried
     it. A large inquiry was sent out in 1980 to all who had used COM
     more than 10 times, and to a random sample of FOA employees who had
     never used COM. The result of the Gothenburg Evaluation was
     published in Adriansson 1980A and Adriansson 1980B (in the Swedish
     language), a short summary of some of the results has been included
     in chapter 17 of this report.

     The Swedish Data Inspection Board sent the FOA application for
     permission to use the system to the central trade union
     organizations in Sweden, LO (for blue collar workers), TCO (for
     clerical workers) and SACO (for academic graduate workers). These,
     especially LO and TCO, wrote in their replies that they were afraid
     of certain problems which might be caused by computerized
     conference systems. They feared that such a system might lead to
     less equality by making it more difficult for employees not
     accustomed to written communication and they were also afraid that
     the computer could be used for improper control of and spying on
     the employees.

     The Data Inspection Board decided in November 1978 to refuse the
     application from FOA for permission to use the system. Even if the
     fears of the trade unions had some influence on this decision, it
     was mostly based on a formal interpretation of the Swedish Data
     Act. This Act was clearly written for a conventional data base
     containing records with certain defined fields within each record.
     The Act requires that an application shall indicate clearly what
     kind of information is to be stored in the personal records, and
     the Data Inspection Board must, when it grants an application,
     issue directions specifying what kind of information is permitted
     in the personal records of the data base.

     The Swedish Data Act is however written in such a way that it can
     be interpreted to mean that also the mention of information about a
     human person in an ordinary text stored in the computer is personal
     information of the kind which requires permission by the Data
     Inspection Board. Thus, every mention of information about a human
     person in the text of a message in a computerized conference system
     would require permission by the Data Inspection Board. But since it
     is impossible to issue directions specifying what kind of infor-
     mation is permitted in ordinary textual messages, the Data Inspec-
     tion Board concluded that such a system could not at all be
     permitted.

     The Data Inspection Board did however grant a new application from
     FOA in March 1979 to use the system for a trial period of two
     years. In this application, FOA tried to comply with the Data Act
     by specifying a list of certain kinds of personal information which
     were to be forbidden in the messages stored in the system. Such a
     negative list of what is not permitted is easier to write than a
     positive list specifying all that is permitted in the messages. The
     list included for example that messages in the system were not
     permitted to include information about the political or religious
     beliefs of individuals or about their health. This was put into the
     list because the Swedish Data Act specifically says that the Data
     Inspection Board should be restrictive in permitting personal data
     bases containing that kind of information. The new FOA application
     which was granted by the Data Inspection Board also restricted the
     search facilities in the system and included principles for erasing
     old messages.

     At the same time, a member of the Swedish Parliament introduced a
     Bill in Parliament requiring a change in the interpretation of the
     Data Act. The bill said that the rights of individuals to
     communicate with each other on religious and political matters was
     protected by the Swedish constitution. Because of this, it was not
     reasonable to apply the Data Act in such a way that this right was
     impeded in a computerized system for communication, especially
     since the Data Act was never intended to be applied in this manner.

     The Data Inspection Board when granting the application for a two-
     year period of trial required FOA to report the results of the
     trial period when applying for use of the system after this period.
     Such a report was expected to include investigations of the fears
     expressed by the trade unions, and the evaluation made by
     Gothenburg University investigates in detail these fears. The goal
     of the evaluations made by Gothenburgh University (reported
     separately) and by FOA (reported here) was however also to
     investigate the value and usefulness of the system.

     Towards the end of the two year trial period, FOA sent in a new
     application to the Data Inspection Board for permission to use the
     system after the end of the trial period. This new application
     contained many hundreds of pages of documentation on effects of the
     system concluding that the risks with this kind of system were not
     large enough to make them unacceptable under the Data Act. In this
     new application, FOA again (as in the first, unaccepted application
     to the Data Inspection Board) claimed that personal information
     about individuals in the text of messages were not the kind of
     personal information which is covered by the Data Act. This time,
     the Data Inspection Board accepted this view, and the new
     application was thus granted without any need for directions
     concerning what kind of information is permitted in the text of the
     messages.

     The Data Inspection Board did however of course issue directions
     concerning the contents of the more formalized files within the
     system, such as membership lists for conferences.

3.2	The Swedish "Sunshine Act"

     Another Swedish law which influences the use of computerized
     conferencing systems is the so-called "Sunshine Act". This law,
     which is part of the Swedish constitution, says that documents
     available to government offices are public. By public is meant than
     any citizen is entitled to look at them, unless there is a specific
     paragraph in the Official Secrets Act forbidding public access to
     the document.

     The Sunshine Act applies to all documents within government offices
     except internal discussion papers during the preparation of a
     decision. If, however, these internal discussion papers contain new
     pertinent facts, they also become public.

     The application of the Sunshine Act to computerized conferencing
     systems has been tested in a decision which partly was taken in the
     highest Swedish administrative court. According to this decision,
     what is written in a computerized conference system is to be
     regarded as documents. Thus, any citizen is allowed to look at
     conferences with the exception of (i) certain internal discussion
     conferences within one government agency (ii) information which is
     secret according to the Official Secrets Act.

     Computerized conferencing might very much increase the amount of
     material which is publicly available according to the Sunshine Act.
     This can be seen from two viewpoints:

     (a)  Increasing use of computerized conferencing may make more
          information available to interested citizens who want to check
          on what is done in government offices. This is a positive
          effect in accordance with the intentions of the Sunshine Act.

     (b)  The knowledge that what is written may become publicly avai-
          lable may make people afraid of using computer conferencing.
          They may prefer to use face-to-face meetings or telephone
          conversations just because they do not like everything they
          say to become publicly available.

     Our experience, however, is that neither of these effects seem to
     be very important. Effect (a) does not seem to be very important
     since no one has ever used the Sunshine Act to get out information
     from the COM system. (A group of people once asked for information,
     but they never took out the information when it was made available
     to them. Perhaps their main interest was in testing the law, not in
     actually getting information out of the COM data base).

     Effect (b) also does not seem to be very important since the
     official publication of the legal decision that the Sunshine Act
     does apply to COM did not at all reduce the usage of COM.

4	Some statistics on the usage of COM

     When this is written (August 1981) the COM system has been
     installed on five computers in Sweden (plus some computers outside
     Sweden):

  •  The ODEN computer at the QZ center in Stockholm, used by FOA, by
     QZ and by researchers in the Stockholm area.

  •  The NADJA computer at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

  •  The AURORA computer at the University of Stockholm.

  •  The FILIP computer at department 3 of FOA in Linköping.

  •  The LIDAC computer at the Linköping University.

     The COM usage at the ODEN computer is however much larger than at
     the other computers. The statistical information in this report is
     mostly only on the COM usage at the ODEN computer. On the ODEN
     computer, there are two COM systems with separate data bases, one
     for Swedish-language messages and one for English-language
     messages. The Swedish language data base is presently much larger,
     and the statistics in this report only apply to that data base.

     All the COM systems except that at LIDAC are connected through a
     network allowing the transmission of messages between the systems.
     Messages transmitted to the ODEN computer from the other computers
     will sometimes influence the statistics in this report.

     During the period from March 1979 to October 1980, about 90 000
     text messages were written in or transmitted to the COM system at
     the ODEN computer.

     Number of users: The question "how many people are using the COM
     system at the ODEN computer" is not easy to answer. This is because
     the distribution of users across activity is very slanted:

        (Every *    60 !*
        represents  55 !*
        five        50 !*                                   *(>35)
        people)     45 !*                                   *
                    40 !*                                   *
                    35 !*                                   *
                    30 !* *                                 *
                    25 !***                                 *
                    20 !*****                               *
                    15 !*******                             *
                    10 !********    ** *                    *
                     5 !***************** ********** ****   *
                        +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+-
                        1    5   10   15   20   25   30   35

                        Number of COM sessions during March 1980

     The diagram shows that a large percentage of the users used COM
     only once a month. The number of users depends very much on whether
     these low-frequency users are included or not. The problem is not
     solved by including them, since this only poses a new question for
     a rather large volume of users with even lower frequency of usage.

     Definition of the concept "user"      Number of users during 1980

     Person who has used the COM
     system at any time.                   About 1000-2000 people

     Person who used COM at least
     once a month.                         About 400 people

     Person who used COM at least once
     every two weeks and not including
     people who are just testing the
     COM system and not coming back.       About 225 people

     In the rest of this report, the last of the three definitions above
     will be used. These users will be called regular users. This will
     in many ways influence the statistics presented. If all the low-
     frequency users are included, this will of course give lower means
     on how often a user accesses the system etc.

     During september 1980, all the COM users together used COM for a
     total time of 1909 hours or about 8 hours for each regular user.
     During the same month, 7740 messages were entered into the COM data
     base.

     Time per user: Regular users connect to the system in the mean twice
     every working day or ten times a week. Each session lasts for about
     10 minutes, which means that COM is in the mean used 20 minutes/
     working day or about 4 % of a full working day.

     Read- and write-activity. If you look at those 20 conferences, in
     which most entries were made during the period 1980-01-01--
     1980-08-03, then for an average meeting, 62 people had read any-
     thing from this meeting at any time during the time period and 47
     people had written anything to the meeting during the same time
     period.

COM usage at QZ

     QZ has when this is written (August 1984) about 1400 COM users all
     over Sweden, in most Western European Countries and in North
     America, writing more than 150 000 COM entries per year and reading
     more than two million COM entries per year. The COM usage has grown
     sharply ever since COM was first installed in 1979.

     The diagram below shows the total number of hours of COM usage/year
     at QZ:

5	Number of readers/written text

     A text item in COM can be sent to any number of people and confe-
     rences. The same text item can thus be both a letter and a confe-
     rence entry. When an item is sent to a conference, it can be read
     by many people who take part in that conference.

     Below, text items written between 1982-03-01 and 1982-06-30 are
     split into three categories, pure letters, where all the receivers
     are people, pure conference entries, where all the receivers are
     conferences, and mixed items, which were sent to at least one
     person and at least one conference. Of a total of 31780 text items
     written during this period, 4198 were erased and not available when
     the statistics below was calculated.

                               Pure      Pure        Items sent
                               letters   conference  to both con-
                                         entries     ferences and
                                                     individuals   Total
     Number of people
     receiving this entry
     as a letter                19667       -         1829         21496

     Number of conferences
     receiving this entry
     as a conference entry       -        10653       1531         12184

     Number of sent text
     items                      16512      9713       1357         27582

     Mean number of people as
     letter receivers           1.19        -         1.35          1.20

     Mean number of confe-
     rences as receivers         -         1.09       1.12          1.10

     During the statistics period, 31780 text items were written and
     584167 items were read, so the mean number of readers/text item was
     18.4. From this follows that the mean number of readers of a confe-
     rence entry by conference members was 43.9 and the mean number of
     readers of a letter by individual letter receivers was 1.20.

     Note that since some letters were also conference entries, the mean
     number of readers of all entries which had at least one letter
     receiver, including conference members of conferences to which some
     letters was sent, will be 4.5 assuming that such conference entries
     are read by as many people as ordinary conference entries.

6	What is COM used for?

     Number of conferences: On October 1, 1980, t,T>/were 219 conferen-
     ces in the system. The conferences were of the following types:

      93 Open conferences      In which any COM user can make themselves
                               a member

      11 FOA conferences       In which all FOA employees can make them-
                               selves members

       7 Write protected       Open conferences where only some people
         conferences           have write privileges

       3 Archive conferences   For selection of important entries
                               originating in other conferences

     100 Closed conferences    In which the organizer decides who is
                               allowed to participate

       5 Protected conferences As closed, but no information about
                               the conference is available except to its
                               participants

     Messages in COM are conference entries (available to all
     participants of a conference) or letters (sent to one or more named
     persons).

     During a statistics collection period in April 1980, the distri-
     bution of messages between letters and conference entries was:

                           Letters   Conf. entries  All messages

     Mean no. of readers     1.9       32.9          14.1

     Percentage of no. of
     written messages        61 %      39 %         100 %

     Percentage of no. of
     read messages            8 %      92 %         100 %

     Note the large difference between letters and conference entries.
     Although 61 % of all messages written in COM are letters, the
     letters represent only 8 % of all messages read in COM. Letters are
     however often more important to their receivers than conference
     entries, so the importance of letters is probably somewhere in
     between these two values.

     From the information in Appendix G, the time to read and write a
     message can be estimated:

                                    Conf. entries  Letters  All messages

     Time to write a message              296 sec  255 sec  267 sec

     Time to read a message                27 sec   49 sec   28 sec

     By combining this with the information above about what percentage
     of messages are letters and conference entries, the time spent in
     COM in various activities can be computed:

                                    Conf. entries  Letters  Total

     Time spent writing messages           17 %     23 %     40 %

     Time spent reading messages           51 %      8 %     60 %

     Total                                 69 %     32 %    100 %

     This shows that although only 8 % of all messages read are letters,
     still 32 % of the time spent using COM was spent for letter commu-
     nication.

     (Note: The figures above do not exactly agree with those given in
     chapter 14.2. This is because the figures above are partly based on
     statistics from another period (April 1980), and that the time
     spent on "other" activities have been added as an overhead to
     writing and reading in the table above. The figures in chapter 14.2
     were entirely based on statistics from September 1980. The mean
     number of readers/message was 36 % higher in September than in
     April.)

     Appendix A (chapter A.6) reports an investigation made on a random
     sample of entries from COM in May 1980. The population was for open
     conferences all open conferences, for closed conferences only those
     conferences in which I (Jacob Palme) was a participant. (Since the
     rules for COM forbids me to read entries in closed conferences of
     which I am not a participant.) This will, for closed conferences,
     introduce a bias towards conferences about the COM system itself,
     of which I, was a member because of my work, to a larger extent
     than other COM users.

      Open    Closed
      conf.   conf.   Subject-classification

      52 %    18 %    Computers, computer programming

                      How the COM system works, suggestions
      20 %    56 %    for improvements, planning of future
                      computer conferencing systems

      10 %    12 %    Private (road traffic rules, classified
                      advertising, spring feelings, protection
                      against insects etc.)

      10 %     4 %    Miscellaneous official business (economic
                      planning, weapons technology etc.)

                      Administrative matters (references,
       4 %     5 %    naming, address information, planning
                      of a business trip, planning of work.)

                      Subjects on the borderline between official
       3 %     2 %    and private business (Certain discussions
                      on social and language matters.)

       1 %     5 %    Working conditions etc.

     100 %   100 %    Total

     Appendix F contains a list of all open and closed conferences in
     COM in which more than 10 entries were written during January-July
     1980.

     For some of these conferences, it is possible to classify the
     subject of the entries in the conference from the title of the
     conference. The table below is a subject classification of the
     conferences in this list:

     Group                  Number of    Number of  Percentage of
                            Conferences  entries    conferences  entries

     Computer usage etc.          60      6873       42.3 %       39.7 %

     Computerized conferencing    18      4274       12.7 %       24.8 %

     Not known                    26      3375       18.3 %       19.6 %

     Trade union internal usage   11       634        7.7 %        3.7 %

     Other official business      11       528        7.7 %        3.1 %

     Not official business         7       509        4.9 %        3.0 %

     Administration etc.           6       436        4.2 %        2.5 %

     Maybe official business?      1       346        0.7 %        2.0 %

     Work environment etc.         2       275        1.4 %        1.6 %

     Total                       142     17250      100.0 %      100.0 %

     The table shows that computer usage dominates, especially in the
     open conferences. The Gothenburg inquiry (see Adriansson 1980)
     shows that 83 % of experienced COM users, 62 % of less experienced
     COM users and 50 % of unexperienced COM users often used the
     computer for other things than COM - that is, they were computer
     users in other respects than as COM users. The reason for this is
     probably:

   • The initial difficulties in beginning to use COM is lower if you
     already know how to handle a computer terminal.

   • FOA has not to any large extent bought special computer terminals
     for COM usage, COM is thus mostly used from terminals which already
     exist and these terminals are placed where people work with
     computers.

   • Those who work in the computer area are a group of people who have
     a common interest of the kind for which a communication system like
     COM is useful.

     Note however (see Adriansson 1980) that only 3 % of the COM users
     said that "difficulties in learning to use COM" were a factor
     against using the system.

7	Why people use or do not use COM

     Adriansson 1980 shows that the most important reasons for not using
     COM is "I do not have time", "the discussions in COM do not
     interest me", "it is difficult to get hold of a terminal" and "I
     prefer oral communication". This result agrees well with investi-
     gations in other countries, which also indicate that the main
     factor determining whether a person selects to use and to continue
     to use a computer conferencing system or not is if they provide
     communication in areas of practical value to the user, and if this
     value is sufficiently large to overcome the difficulty of regularly
     connecting to the system, and if there are no other alternative
     better communication channels available.

     The real value for a person in a system of this kind will of course
     depend on whether the person can communicate through COM with a
     sufficiently large number of other persons with whom the person has
     a need to communicate. How large this group is depends on how large
     the need to communicate is in the group. If this need is large, and
     if alternative satisfactory communication means are not available,
     then COM may work even for a person who only communicates in a
     small group of e.g. 5-10 people, but for persons who use COM mainly
     for exchange of experience, communication with at least 30 other
     people seem to be necessary before they feel that the value of
     using COM is larger than the trouble.

     Note also that other communication channels are more difficult to
     use for communication in groups larger than a few persons. Meetings
     with more than 8 participants are difficult to arrange sufficiently
     often and also such meetings often are not very efficient for
     psychological reasons. Sending out a circular to many people is
     difficult and time consuming. Computerized conferencing on the
     other hand works efficiently even for fast interactions in groups
     of sizes from 20 to 100 persons.

     The conclusion is that for computerized conferencing to succeed, a
     sufficiently large group of people must be found. This group should
     be people who have a genuine personally felt need to communicate
     and for which other suitable communication media are not satisfac-
     tory. Such a group has been easiest to collect among the computer
     users, and this is probably one main reason why so much of the COM
     usage is in the area of computer usage.

     The most successful meetings not in the computer usage area are
     according to appendix F, "Using the Swedish Language", "Equality at
     work", "The AF Trade Union board", "Strange phenomena and their
     explanation" and "Risk estimation and evaluation".

     This fact agrees well with the theory above. Four of these five
     meetings have very general subject areas of potential interest to
     many people. The exception is "The AF Trade Union board". This is
     the board of one of the trade unions at FOA. In this case, the need
     for contact in this trade union in an organization spread out in
     four different cities was obviously large enough for it to work
     efficiently even though the group size was only 19 persons.

8	Time delays measurements

8.1	Time before a letter is read

     This table shows how long time it takes from the entering of a
     letter into COM until it is read by a letter receiver, based on
     statistics from 1982-02-01--1982-06-01. If a letter has more than
     one letter receiver, then the letter is counted once in the table
     for each letter receivers. Receivers who never read their mail is
     not included in the statistics.

     Time from                   Number of     Percentage of  Cumulative
     sending to                  receivers in  receivers in   percentage
     receipt                     this time     this time      of recei-
     of a letter                 interval      interval       vers

       - 9 min                   3109           14.0 %         14.0 %
     10-19 min                   1002            4.5 %         18.5 %
     20-29 min                    763            3.4 %         21.9 %
     30-39 min                    594            2.7 %         24.6 %
     40-49 min                    511            2.3 %         26.9 %
     50-59 min                    424            1.9 %         28.8 %
     1h-2h                       1879            8.5 %         37.3 %
     2h-3h                       1117            5.0 %         42.3 %
     3h-4h                        851            3.8 %         46.1 %
     4h-5h                        611            2.7 %         48.9 %
     5h-6h                        468            2.1 %         51.0 %
     6h-7h                        420            1.9 %         52.8 %
     7h-8h                        384            1.7 %         54.6 %
     8h-9h                        348            1.6 %         56.1 %
     9h-10h                       304            1.4 %         57.5 %
     10h-11h                      281            1.3 %         58.8 %
     11h-12h                      300            1.3 %         60.1 %
     12h-15h                      977            4.4 %         64.5 %
     15h-24h                     2862           12.9 %         77.4 %
     24h-48h  (1-2 days)         1764            7.9 %         85.3 %
     48h-72h  (2-3 days)         1006            4.5 %         89.9 %
     72h-168h (3 days - 1 week)  1609            7.2 %         97.1 %
     168h- (> 1 week)             647            2.9 %        100.0 %

     Total                      22231          100.0 %

     Median: 5.5 h. Lower quartile: 41.5 min. Upper quartile: 21.5 h.

8.2	Size and duration of comment chains

     The statistics in this chapter is based on all comment chains whose
     first entry was written between 1982-02-01 and 1982-06-01.

     An entry in COM often gets a reply or comment, and then there is a
     comment on the comment and so on causing a chain, or actually a
     tree structure of comments. The mean size and the mean time between
     the first and the last entry in such a tree is shown in this table.
     Note that also entries without comments, that is comment trees
     including only one entry, were included when computing this table.

     Number of   Number of   Mean tree     Mean time from first to
     people who  such trees  size          last entry in the tree
     read the
     entries

       1            6219     2.1 entries     2.0 days
       2             702     2.6 entries     2.1 days
       3             128     2.7 entries     1.5 days
       4              46     4.1 entries     2.7 days
       5              20     5.9 entries     4.4 days

     Partly con-     215     5.6 entries    13.6 days
     ference entry

     Conference     3308     3.9 entries     4.5 days
     entry

     This table shows the number of comment trees of different sizes for
     letters (column 2-4) and conference entries (column 5-7).

     Number of    Comment trees with      Comment trees with confe-
     texts in     letters of this size    rence entries of this size
     the comment  abso-  per-    cumula-  abso-  per-    cumula-
     tree         lute   cent    tive     lute   cent    tive

     1            3079   43.3 %   43.3 %  1436   43.4 %   43.4 %
     2            2206   31.0 %   74.3 %   633   19.1 %   62.5 %
     3-4          1253   17.6 %   91.9 %   611   18.5 %   81.0 %
     5-7           438    6.2 %   98.0 %   316    9.6 %   90.6 %

     8-10           94    1.3 %   99.4 %   121    3.7 %   94.2 %
     11-13          25    0.4 %   99.7 %    53    1.6 %   95.8 %
     14-16           5    0.1 %   99.8 %    34    1.0 %   96.9 %
     17-20          12    0.2 %  100.0 %    34    1.0 %   97.9 %

     21-25           3    0.0 %  100.0 %    14    0.4 %   98.3 %
     26-30           0    0.0 %  100.0 %    14    0.4 %   98.7 %
     31-50           0    0.0 %  100.0 %    26    0.8 %   99.5 %
     51-             0    0.0 %  100.0 %    16    0.5 %  100.0 %

     Total        7115  100.0 %           3308  100.0 %

                                For letters   For conference entries

     Median number of text
     items in a comment tree    2             2

     Lower quartile             1             1

     Upper quartile             3             4

     Excluding entries without any comment on them (only including trees
     with more than one entry in them):

     Median number of text
     items in a comment tree    2             3

     Lower quartile             2             2

     Upper quartile             3             5

     Note: When comparing the cost efficiency of (a) ordinary telephone
     calls (b) computer mail and conference messages, the amount of
     interaction is important. A telephone call may be more efficient if
     many interactions are needed, but computer messaging may be more
     efficient if fewer interactions are needed. According to one
     estimate, when only two people are involved in a communication
     process, telephone calls will be more efficient than COM if more
     than four interactions are needed. It is therefore interesting to
     note that only 8.1 percent of the comment trees for letters in COM
     include more than four interactions. Some of these comment trees
     may include letters with more than one recipient, in which case COM
     is more efficient than telephone calls even for much more than four
     interactions. The impression is thus that COM users intuitively
     tends to use COM for such communication where COM is the most
     efficient medium.

     Note 2: The distinction between "letter" and "conference entry" is
     not sharp in COM, since the same entry can be sent to both a confe-
     rence and a person. When the statistics in the table above were
     compiled, comment chains in which some entries were sent as mail,
     some as conference entries were not included. Trees where all or
     most entries were sent to a conference were counted as conference
     trees even if there was one or more people who also got the entries
     in the tree as letters.

     The table below is similar to the previous table, but instead of
     showing the number of comment trees of different sizes, it shows
     the number of entries which are part of comment trees of different
     sizes.

     Number of    Entries in trees with   Entries in trees with confe-
     texts in     letters of this size    rence entries of this size
     the comment  abso-  per-    cumula-  abso-  per-    cumula-
     tree         lute   cent    tive     lute   cent    tive

     1            3079   19.7 %   19.7 %  1436   11.2 %   11.2 %
     2            4412   28.2 %   47.9 %  1266    9.9 %   21.0 %
     3-4          4202   26.9 %   74.8 %  2068   16.1 %   37.2 %
     5-7          2465   15.8 %   90.6 %  1839   14.3 %   51.5 %

     8-10          824    5.3 %   95.8 %  1072    8.4 %   59.8 %
     11-13         292    1.9 %   97.7 %   624    4.9 %   64.7 %
     14-16          73    0.5 %   98.2 %   501    3.9 %   68.6 %
     17-20         217    1.4 %   99.5 %   628    4.9 %   73.5 %

     21-25          71    0.5 %  100.0 %   324    2.5 %   76.0 %
     26-30           0    0.0 %  100.0 %   389    3.0 %   79.0 %
     31-50           0    0.0 %  100.0 %   963    7.5 %   86.5 %
     51-             0    0.0 %  100.0 %  1728   13.5 %  100.0 %

     Total       15635  100.0 %          12838  100.0 %

                                For letters   For conference entries
     Median size of the tree
     to which an entry belongs   3             7

     Lower quartile              2             2

     Upper quartile              5            22

     Excluding entries without any comment on them (only including trees
     with more than one entry in them):

Median size of the tree

     to which an entry belongs  3             9

     Lower quartile             2             3

     Upper quartile             6            28

     The statistics below is based only on comment trees with at least
     two entries. For comment trees with one entry, the time difference
     between the first and the last entry would of course always be
     zero.

     This table shows the time difference between the entering of the
     first and the last entry in a comment tree, letters in column 2-4
     and conference entries in column 5-7.

     Time from    Entries in trees with   Entries in trees with confe-
     first to     letters in interval     rence entries in this interval
     last entry   abso-  per-    cumula-  abso-  per-    cumula-
     in tree      lute   cent    tive     lute   cent    tive

     0-9 min       317    7.9 %    7.9 %    55    2.9 %    2.9 %
     10-19 min     176    4.4 %   12.2 %    52    2.8 %    5.7 %
     20-29 min     126    3.1 %   15.3 %    40    2.1 %    7.9 %
     30-39 min     101    2.5 %   17.8 %    34    1.8 %    9.7 %
     40-49 min      79    2.0 %   19.8 %    25    1.3 %   11.0 %
     50-59 min      69    1.7 %   21.5 %    21    1.1 %   12.1 %
     1-2 h         312    7.7 %   29.2 %   110    5.9 %   18.0 %
     2-3 h         204    5.1 %   34.3 %    72    3.8 %   21.8 %
     3-4 h         161    4.0 %   38.3 %    59    3.2 %   25.0 %
     4-5 h         106    2.6 %   40.9 %    50    2.7 %   27.7 %
     5-6 h          92    2.3 %   43.2 %    40    2.1 %   29.8 %
     6-12 h        235    5.8 %   49.0 %   109    5.8 %   35.6 %
     12-24 h       702   17.4 %   66.4 %   287   15.3 %   51.0 %
     1-2 days      429   10.6 %   77.0 %   229   12.2 %   63.2 %
     2-3 days      246    6.1 %   83.1 %   135    7.2 %   70.4 %
     3-4 days      168    4.2 %   87.3 %   102    5.4 %   75.9 %
     4-5 days       96    2.4 %   89.7 %    74    4.0 %   79.8 %
     5-6 days       94    2.3 %   92.0 %    53    2.8 %   82.6 %
     6-7 days       60    1.5 %   93.5 %    43    2.3 %   84.9 %
     1-2 weeks     160    4.0 %   97.4 %   132    7.1 %   92.0 %
     2-3 weeks      34    0.8 %   98.3 %    44    2.4 %   94.3 %
     3-4 weeks      20    0.5 %   98.8 %    20    1.1 %   95.4 %
     > 4 weeks      49    1.2 %  100.0 %    86    4.6 %  100.0 %

     Total        4036  100.0 %           1872  100.0 %

                        For letters       For conference entries

     Median             13 hours          23 hours

     Lower quartile     1.5 hours         4 hours

     Upper quartile     2 days            4 days

9	Which people use COM?

     About 70 % of all COM users on the ODEN computer were, in the year
     1980 FOA employees. The rest are mainly employees at universities,
     public research institutes or the Swedish defense.

     The diagrams below are based only on FOA employees. COM usage statistics
     are based on those who have used COM more than 20 times between August
     1979 and July 1980. Comparison is made with members of working groups
     within FOA, because these groups are a main form for communication
     across organizational borders which can be compared with the COM usage.

     See further appendix B.

     Percentage of persons who are managers in different groups

     Percentage of people above 40 years of age in different groups

     Percentage of people with university education in different groups

     If you compare with the situation before COM was introduced (when
     the working groups were the principal form of group communication
     across department borders within FOA) then COM has increased the
     possibility to communicate for young people who are not managers
     and for people without university education.

     FOA has only to a very limited extent acquired special terminals
     for COM usage. COM is therefore mostly used by those employees, who
     for other reasons have access to a terminal. This is one reason why
     university graduates, who use computers as research tools, are
     overrepresented among the COM users.

  

     Every mark in the picture above represents one person who has read
     more than 500 messages in COM from August 1979 to May 1980. Even
     if the write and the read activity varies much among the COM users,
     the results do not indicate that the COM users can be partitioned
     into an active writing part and a passive reading part.

     The activity varies much between different COM users. The 50 % most
     active COM users represent 78 % of all sessions with COM. Also the
     proportion between written and read messages varies, so that some
     people write more in proportion to what they read than others.
     There are however few "pure readers" in COM, the percentage who
     write messages in less than 5 % of all sessions with COM, is 6 % for
     those who have used COM 20-99 times, and 1.5 % for those who have
     used COM a hundred times or more.

Is everything in COM written by a few active participants?

     To investigate whether this statement is true or not, an investi-
     gation was made on all messages (both letters and conference
     entries) written in COM in the period 80-11-01 to 81-04-11 by
     persons who were in the COM data base at the end of the period.

     The statistics do not include messages transferred automatically
     from other computers.

     Number of  Percentage of           Number of  Percentage of
     People     written messages        People     written messages

         10      39.6                       130     88.8
         20      54.1                       140     89.9
         30      61.6                       150     91.0
         40      67.5                       160     92.0
         50      71.9                       170     92.9
         60      75.5                       180     93.6
         70      78.0                       190     94.3
         80      80.6                       200     94.9
         90      82.7                       210     95.4
        100      84.4                       220     95.9
        110      86.0                       230     96.3
        120      87.5                       240     96.7

     In total, 660 persons had used COM some time and were still kept in
     the COM data base. Of these 660 persons, 480 persons had written at
     least one message. Note however, that many of the 660 persons were
     people who had tried COM once or twice in a demonstration. The
     number of regular users who come back every week or so was only
     about 250.

     The above statistics show that certainly some people write a lot.
     The result could be summarized to say that (defining an active COM
     user as a person who uses the system at least twice a month):

     Percentage of     Have written this
     active COM users  percentage of messages

         8 %              50 %
        25 %              75 %
        63 %              90 %

10	At what time is COM used?

     The object of this study is to investigate at what time of day,
     that the COM system is used. The COM data base does not contain the
     times when users enter the system. The COM data base does however
     contain the date and time when:

     a) A letter or a conference entry is written
     b) A letter is read (but not when a conference entry is read)

     These dates and times will here be used as approximations of the
     time when COM is used. The result is based on everything written in
     COM during the four-month period 1982-03-01--1982-06-30. Texts
     which were written into COM by transfer programs which automati-
     cally transfer texts from other computer conference systems are not
     included in the statistics on writing times, since the COM data
     base notes the time when such texts are entered into the COM data
     base, not the time when they were actually originally written.
     Texts written by computer programs and not by humans are also not
     included - such texts are too a large extent written during the
     night, since the computer is used more by terminal users during the
     night and more by batch programs during the night. And some batch
     programs report their results by writing COM entries. Thus, the
     number of entries written during the night would be higher if texts
     written by computer programs were included.

     COM has both a Swedish-language and an English-language data base.
     Only the Swedish-language data base was used for the statistics
     reported here, which means that there will be little interference
     from people using COM from other time zones. In the English-
     language COM system, some entries are written in the middle of the
     night, Western European time, by people in America.

     Note: In 1983, QZ opened COM up for usage by hobby computer users
     for a special low price after 20:00 hours in the evenings and on
     Saturdays and Sundays. This has probably meant an increase in COM
     usage at those periods of time. The statistics in this chapter was
     however collected before this special price was introduced.

COM usage on work days:

     Note: By work day is meant monday to friday except holidays.
     The diagram is based on statistics from 25118 written texts 
     and 20249 read letters.

COM usage on weekends and holidays:

     The diagram is based on 3338 written texts and 1904 read letters.

     Summary in main categories:       Written texts    Letter readings

     Work days during office hours
     between 08:00 and 16:59          17614 = 61.9 %    14814 = 66.9 %

     Work days outside office hours    7504 = 26.4 %     5435 = 24.5 %

     Weekends and holidays             3338 = 11.7 %     1904 =  8.6 %

     Total                            28456  100.0 %    22153  100.0 %

     The reason why letters are more often read during office hours is
     that COM users normally read letters as soon as the letters arrive,
     and most letters arrive during office hours. Writing of text is not
     so much controlled by the information you get. Probably the reading
     of conference entries, which we do not have statistics for, would
     be a little more common outside office hours than the reading of
     letters.

11	Does COM replace other media?

     According to an inquiry made to the writers of a random sample of
     messages in COM in May-June 1980, COM replaces other media
     according to the following table. Note that the question here was
     which other medium would have been used instead of COM to perform
     the communication done in COM.

     The figure above shows the percentage of written messages which
     replaced and did not replace other media.

     The figure above shows the perecentage of read messages which
     replaced and did not replace other media.

     The figure above shows the percentage of the time spent using COM
     which replaced and did not replace other media.

     Comment: Important to note is that COM to a large extent does not
     replace other communication media. Instead, COM represents new
     communication which would not have been feasible without COM. COM
     has thus not only or mainly meant the transfer of communication to
     a new medium. COM has also meant a change in whom people communi-
     cate with, probably also in what they communicate with these people
     about.

     Some understanding of what the new kind of communication is can be
     gained from the following chapters.

     Another investigation with a similar question asked instead what
     people believed they had done previously on the time now spent in
     COM. Thus, this question studies how people spend their time before
     and after COM, not, as the previous question, what medium they
     would have used for communication if they could not use COM.

     (Methodology described in appendix L.)

     Here is a table of which activities COM users claim that COM usage
     replaces:

      23.2 % Telephoning                    2.1 % Leisure
      12.1 % Letters, circulars, messages   2.0 % Newspapers
       7.5 % Dead time                      1.4 % Eating
       6.2 % Computer programming           1.4 % "Don't know"
       5.4 % "Other work" (not specified)   1.4 % Planning
       5.4 % Committee, conference          1.1 % Breaks
       4.7 % Nothing                        0.7 % Small talk
       4.3 % Television                     0.5 % Technical development
       4.2 % Research                       0.5 % Radio listening
       3.7 % Face-to-face talks             0.5 % Physical exercise
       3.3 % Journals                       0.4 % Travel
       2.7 % Books                          0.2 % Friends
       2.5 % Hobbies                        0.2 % Family			

       2.4 % Sleeping                     100.0   Total

     Here is the same result grouped into fewer larger categories:

      23.2 %  Telephoning
      12.1 %  Letters, circulars, messages
      10.9 %  Computer programming, research, technical development
       9.3 %  Leisure, sleep, eating, hobbies, family, friends, exercise
       8.0 %  Books, papers and journals
       7.5 %  Dead time
       5.4 %  "Other work" (not specified)
       5.4 %  Committee and conference meetings
       4.8 %  Television and radio
       4.7 %  Nothing
       3.7 %  Face-to-face talks
       1.8 %  Breaks, small talk
       1.4 %  "Don't know"
       1.4 %  Planning
       0.4 %  Travel									

     100.0 %  Total

     Comment: Interesting to note is that although this kind of system
     is usually called "Computer conference system" or "Electronic mail
     system" only 5 % replaces conferences and 12 % replaces mail.
     Instead, COM also replaces a number of other activities. Notable is
     telephone with 23 %, mass media 13 % and non-work 9 %.

     To what extent does COM replace face-to-face meetings? 10.2 % of
     the time replaces activities which clearly are face-to-face
     meetings in the list above. Another 4.6 % replaces activities which
     may or may not contain face-to-face meetings, like "breaks" or
     "eating". We can thus from this investigation only say that between
     10 and 15 % of the time in COM replaces face-to-face meetings.

12	Is COM used from home terminals

     The results below are from an investigation made in May 1982 (see
     also Appendix L).

     31 of 85 persons, or 36 %, had used COM at home some time. Many of
     them had however only used COM at home very little, e.g. taking a
     terminal to home once or twice to show the system to friends or
     something similar. Only 20 % of the respondents did more than 10 %
     of their COM usage at home. Of those who had used COM at all at
     home, 24 % of their COM usage was at home and 76 % at work. Of all
     COM usage, only 9 % is done from the home, and 91 % is done at
     work.

     The distribution of COM usage at home and work is shown below:

     No use at home    63.5 %
      0 - 10 % at home 16.2 %
     10 - 20 % at home  5.4 %
     20 - 30 % at home  5.4 %
     30 - 40 % at home    0 %
     40 - 50 % at home  1.4 %
     50 - 60 % at home  2.7 %
     60 - 70 % at home  1.4 %
     70 - 80 % at home    0 %
     80 - 90 % at home    0 %
     90 -100 % at home  4.1 %
                              
     Total            100.0 %

     The question about what kind of work was done at home was answered
     by 24 of the 36 persons who had used COM at home. The distribution
     of work tasks at home for these 24 persons were:

13	Organizational distance between users

     FOA is organized into five main departments plus an administrative
     office. Every main department is organized into a number of insti-
     tutions, and every institution is organized into sections. To
     investigate the organizational distance, we studied how large a
     percentage of the contacts through COM goes between people in the
     same main department, between people in different main departments
     and between people inside and outside FOA in April 1980. The result
     is shown in the following table (more information in Appendix D):

                            Letters  Conf. entries  All messages

     Within one FOA main
     department              46 %        18 %          21 %
     Between FOA main
     departments             14 %        29 %          28 %
     Between people in
     and outside FOA         31 %        40 %          39 %
     Both reader and
     writer outside FOA       9 %        13 %          13 %
     ---------------------------------------------------------
     Total                  100 %       100 %         100 %

     Note the large difference between letters and conference entries.
     Letters go to a much larger extent between people at a low
     organizational distance, while conference entries to a much larger
     extent go between main departments or between FOA employees and the
     external world.

     The difference between a letter and a conference entry is that when
     you write a letter, you tell the computer explicitly the names of
     the people to which the letter is to be sent. For conference
     entries you choose receivers for your entry by indicating a subject
     (= the title of the conference) and the message will then be sent
     to all people who have indicated interest in this subject (by
     becoming members in the conference). It is then easy to understand
     that conference entries to a larger extent reach people who do not
     know the writer personally.

     You can thus say that a communication system based on letters to
     receivers named by the writer of the letter will get much
     communication within small groups of people who know each other
     well, while computerized conference systems of the COM type will
     cause more contacts between people at a larger organizational
     distance.

               CLOSED GROUPS                    OPEN CONTACT PATTERN

     The figure above shows the type of contacts which occur, to the left
     inside small closed groups and to the right also at larger organi-
     zational distance within the organization.

     A common observation among COM users is that they have become less
     isolated, less dependent on small, closed groups. Organizational
     sociologists claim that organizations where most of the contacts
     are in small, closed groups tend to be more conservative and find
     it more difficult to develop and accept changes than organizations
     with good contacts at larger distances. Allen 1977 finds for
     example that consultants with more external contacts produce more
     successful results. COM has had this effect of increasing the
     amount of contacts at larger organizational distances.

14	Cost of using COM

14.1	Cost per user hour

     When comparing the cost with other media, it is easiest first to
     compute the cost per hour that one person sits in front of one
     terminal connected to the COM system. The costs below include all
     costs except wages for the person sitting in front of the terminal
     using COM. The costs are the costs to FOA, because of the tariff
     structure of the computing centre the costs are higher for external
     users. Costs are given in Swedish Kronor at the 1980 price level.
     To convert to U.S. dollars, divide by 5, to convert to U.K. pounds,
     divide by 10.

                            Basic       Marginal
                            cost        cost
                            (a)         (b)

     Computer time for
     interactive COM
     usage                  32.70 kr    27.79 kr

     Computer time for
     printouts etc.          0.83 kr     0.70 kr

     Disk area with
     the COM data base       1.95 kr     1.65 kr

     Terminal, connection,
     computer terminal port  5.49 kr     5.49 kr

     Printing terminal       1.11 kr     0.60 kr

     Computer network costs  7.70 kr     0.00 kr

     Computer time for
     program development     2.69 kr     1.40 kr

     Personnel time for
     program development    14.20 kr    14.20 kr

     User education          2.80 kr     1.40 kr

     Total cost          about 70 kr about 53 kr

     (a) This "basic cost" only includes the additional costs to FOA
     because of using the COM system. However, half the cost of a
     computer network between FOA departments in different cities is
     also included, even though this network would probably be kept
     for other applications even if COM was not available.

     (b) This "marginal cost" is the additional cost if FOA increases
     the usage of COM beyond the present level.

14.2	Time for using COM

     Since the wages of the people communicating is often the largest
     cost, cost/effectiveness estimates will very much depend on the
     time for a communication process using different media. Unfortu-
     nately, this time is difficult to measure, especially if you want
     to measure not only the time per word but the time for producing a
     certain result.

     To measure the time for using COM we modified the COM system so
     that it stored the times for performing different commands in a
     file during a five day period in the beginning of September 1980
     (Appendix G).

     We found that the COM user time at the terminal is distributed in
     the following ways on different activities:

     Activity                          Percent      Group of activity

     Reading new entries                  53 %
     Reviewing previously seen entries     6 %        61 % reading
     Administration of reading             2 %

     Writing of entries                   27 %        27 % writing

     Table printouts                       5 %

     Miscellaneous                         8 %

     Total                               100 %       100 % total

     When using these results, the following simplifying assumptions
     are made:

  •  We do not subtract the time when a COM user is sitting in front of
     a terminal connected to COM, but is actually doing something else,
     like talking over the telephone. This approximation means that we
     overestimate the time for using COM by not more than about 15 %.

  •  We do not consider that actions like taking out table printouts
     from COM, reviewing old messages etc, have any value of their own.
     All the time spent on such activities is thus added as an overhead
     on the time for writing and reading messages. This approximation
     means that we overestimate the time for using COM by not more than
     about 18 %.

  •  We do not include in the time for COM usage the time when a person
     reads COM messages printed on paper without being connected to the
     computer. This approximation means that we underestimate the time
     for using COM by not more than half a percent.

  •  We do not include the time when a COM user uses a separate text
     editor to edit messages which are later entered into COM. This
     approximation means that we underestimate the time for using COM by
     not more than half a percent.

     With these simplifying assumptions we find that a mean message in
     COM (with a mean length of 292 characters or 50 words), takes 266.9
     seconds to write and 28.4 seconds to read (for each reader).

     The time per communicated word through COM is thus 5.38 seconds for
     writing the word and 0.57 seconds to read it (for each reader).

     Note that this is the time per new word communicated from the
     author to the reader (not the time per word communicated between
     the computer and the computer user, the latter time is much smaller).

14.3	Cost comparisons with other media

     If you use the cost of 70 kr/user hour (see chapter 14.1 above) for
     the COM system and 85 kr/user hour for the salary of the COM user
     (this was the mean salary in 1980 for a FOA employee including
     social costs.) you get the following results (divide by five to
     get costs in U.S. dollars, by ten to get costs in U.K. pounds):

                                          COM, ter-      Salary of the
                                          minal, net-    COM user at
                                          work, computer his terminal

     Cost for one person using COM for
     one hour at a terminal               about 70 kr    about 85 kr

     Cost to read a COM message
     (mean time = 28.4 seconds)           about 0.55 kr  about 0.67 kr

     Cost to write a COM message
     (mean time = 266.9 seconds)          about 5.20 kr  about 6.30 kr

     Total cost for a mean COM message
     for all 19.18 readers.               about 16 kr    about 19 kr

     Total cost per reader for such
     a mean message                       about 0.82 kr  about 0.99 kr

     Cost for a message with only one
     reader, including time for both
     the writer and the reader (mean
     writing time = 255 seconds, mean
     read time about 52 seconds)          about 6 kr     about 7 kr

     As is shown in the investigation in chapter 11 above, more than half
     of the COM usage is new communication, which would not have taken
     place if COM had not existed. Part of the COM usage is however a
     replacement for letters, telephone calls and face-to-face meetings.
     Even that COM usage which is not a replacement for other commu-
     nication can of course be compared with the cost which would have
     occurred if this communication had taken place using other media.
     See also appendix J.

     Cost comparison with face-to-face meetings

     Group size 33 participants (= average COM conference):

     Conference system: Long writing time but short reading time:

     Writing    Reading
     3.6 min.   32 times 0.47 = 15.0 min.

     Face-to-face meeting: Shorter speaking time but longer listening
     time:

     Speaking and listening: 33 times 1.7 = 56 minutes

     Group size 12 participants (= large face-to-face meeting):

     Conference system: Longer writing time but shorter reading time

     Writing    Reading                      Total time
     3.6 min.   11 times 0.47 = 5.2 minutes. 3.6 + 5.2 = 8.8 minutes.
  
     Ordinary meeting: You talk faster than you write, but you listen
     slower than you read:

     Total time for talking and listening: 12 times 1.7 = 20.4 minutes.

     Travel costs and computer costs are not included in the comparison
     shown in the figures above.

     Comparing with face-to-face meetings (and with the reservation that
     COM is not always suitable as a replacement for face-to-face
     meetings), it seems as if the result of the cost/effectiveness
     estimate will depend on the number of participants in the meeting,
     on how many of these have travel times and travel costs and on how
     large the need for communication is within a single group.

     Since the time to write a word in COM is about 10 times as long as
     the time to read a word, while at an ordinary meeting, the time to
     talk and to listen to a word is the same, the effectiveness of COM
     as compared to face-to-face meetings will increase with more people
     participating in the meeting (See Hiltz/Turoff 1978 page 410ff). An
     exact estimate is difficult to make since more words are used to
     convey the same amount of information in vocal as in written
     communication (two to three times more words according to Hiltz
     1980).

     The reason why the reading time is shorter in the conference system
     is not only because people read faster than they listen, but also
     because a conference system allows every participant to decide how
     much time to spend on each message. You can read carefully items of
     importance and skip items with information you already know or
     which is of no interest to you.

     This difference is not only an efficiency factor. It is also
     important psychologically. With twelve participants, as in the
     example above, every person uses about a third of his/her time
     giving information and about two thirds of the time receiving
     information, in the computer conference system. In an ordinary
     face-to-face meeting, they would on average talk 8 % of the time
     and listen 92 % of the time. Communication works psychologically
     better with computer conferencing, because you are not forced to be
     a passive listener as much as in face-to-face meetings. This also
     means that computer conferences can work well even in group sizes
     of 30-100 people which would be very difficult to manage in face-
     to-face meetings.

     This fact is also one reason why people who regularly use computer
     conferencing systems feel that a whole new vista of contacts and
     communication has been opened for them. Group communication in
     large groups was simply not psychologically possible for them
     before, at least not so much in so little time as with computer
     conferencing.

     The marginal cost of letting one person more take part in the
     communication is much lower with computer conferencing than with
     face-to-face meetings. This makes it economically possible to have
     larger group sizes, which means that more people can contribute
     with ideas and thus improves the quality of the result.

     It does however seem as if COM is more effective than face-to-face
     meetings if at least one of the following three conditions are
     fulfilled:

     a) The number of people who participate in and benefit from the
        communication is larger than 15. (The mean number of readers of
        a mean conference entry in COM is about 32).

     b) At least two of the participants had to travel from another
        city, or a conference telephone connecting more than three
        different cities was used.

     c) The group had a need for sporadic contacts, not really enough
        to require regular face-to-face meetings, and most of the group
        participants take part in several different COM meetings.

     With the same reservation, it does seem as if face-to-face meetings
     are more cost effective than COM if all the following three
     conditions are fulfilled:

     a) The number of participants is less than 5.

     b) No participant had to travel from another city.

     c) The meeting had productive matters to discuss for two hours
        or more.

     Between the above conditions for COM to be more cost effective than
     face-to-face meetings, and for face-to-face meetings to be more
     cost effective than COM, there is a wide area where we do not know
     for sure which medium is most cost effective.

Cost comparison with a telephone call

     Telephone call:
Not
there		Not
there		Not
there		There	

       2.6 +         2.6 +         2.6 +         5.5 +
       1.0 min.      1.0 min.      1.0 min.      1.0 +
                                                 4.5 min.

     Total: 22 minutes.

     Conference system:

     Writing 4.2 min.  Reading 0.5 min.

     Total: 4.7 minutes.

     Notes:

     (a) Several messages in a conference system are often necessary
         to replace one telephone call.

     (b) If more than two people are involved in the communication,
         the time cost for telephone increases much more than the
         time cost for the conference system.

     If you compare with telephone calls (data from appendix H), then
     the cost for such a call (including several unsuccessful calls,
     according to Uhlig 1979, only 28 % of all call-ups get you into
     contact with the person you are seeking), including the working
     time for the person involved, the cost for telephone exchange
     operators and for the telephone call itself, a mean telephone call
     lasting 4.5 minutes costs about 30 kr for a local call and about 35
     kr for an interurban call in Sweden.

     The cost of a mean message in COM with only one receiver, measured
     in the same way (Cost for computer, terminal, COM usage etc. plus
     working time for involved people) is about 13 kr. When comparing
     these figures, note that one telephone call can often accomplish a
     communication corresponding to several COM messages. What is most
     effective will thus depend on whether the communication can be
     accomplished with three or less COM messages. Thus, short simple
     messages are more effective in COM while more complex interaction
     requiring direct contact between the two people will be more
     effective using the telephone. Note that this cost comparison is
     for communication between just two people. If three people are
     involved, requiring two successive telephone calls, then the
     telephone cost will double while the COM cost will only increase
     marginally (from about 13 to about 14 kr). A three-people simul-
     taneous telephone connection is even more costly and also even more
     costly in time to arrange.

     If you compare COM with letters, messages written on paper and
     circulars, then COM is cheaper, especially for rather short
     messages and when there is more than one receiver of the message. A
     letter in COM with one receiver (including the wage cost for both
     writer and reader) costs about 13 kr, while a typical ordinary
     letter according to Uhlig 1979 takes about 53 minutes to produce,
     which represents a cost of about 75 kr.

     The fact that it is so simple and cheap to send information copies
     of letters in COM to other people than the main receiver of the
     message means that this facility is used very much. The mean number
     of readers of a letter in COM is not 1 but 1.9 people.

     A circular with 16 receivers will probably cost more than a hundred
     kronor in working time for production, copying, mailing etc. while
     the corresponding cost in COM is about 21 kr (including wages for
     the sender but not wages for the reader of the message). However,
     several COM messages are probably often used to convey information
     which would have been combined in one longer circular.

     The least saving occurs when comparing COM with short handwritten
     messages, but even in that case, COM does not seem to be more
     expensive than mail. COM is however several times faster, and this
     will of course also represent a value.

14.4	Cost estimate of a COM conference

     This comparison can be seen as a practical example to illustrate in
     more detail the cost comparisons in the previous chapter and in
     appendix J.

     To study the cost of COM as compared to face-to-face meetings, one
     conference in COM was randomly selected. This comparison is some-
     what artificial, since the same kind of communication would surely
     not at all have occured without COM. The costs are in the 1982
     price level and in Swedish Kronor (SEK). One SEK was approximately
     0.17 US dollars when this was written (august 1982).

     The members of the selected conference were geographically distri-
     buted according to the following table:

          Place          Number of members

          Stockholm           21
          Linköping            6
          Uppsala              5
          Oslo                 1
          Lund                 1

     This includes all members of the conference except 4 people who
     were members but had more than 10 unread notices, and three appren-
     tices. Note: The entries in this conference were also transferred
     automatically to another computer, but the people participating
     remotely through the COM system at that computer are not included
     in the evaluation below.

     In this conference 268 entries were written from 1982-02-08 to
     1982-06-30, a period of 142 days. The mean number of entries per
     day is thus 1.89. The time to say in a face-to-face meeting the
     same things which are written in an average COM entry is very
     approximately 1.7 minutes. One face-to-face meeting every second
     month lasting 103 minutes each time might thus provide the same
     communication as this COM conference. However, to be able to
     communicate only once every second month is not comparable to the
     many times faster communication in COM. A fair comparison would be
     to compare COM with a face-to-face meeting once a week or more
     often, but then the length of this face-to-face meeting would only
     be 12 minutes, and it is not reasonable for so many people to
     gather at one place for a 12-minute face-to-face meeting!

     The cost of COM usage is also not easy to calculate, because this
     depends so much on the existing technical infra structure in the
     organization using COM. If COM can share an existing technical

     infra structure with other computer applications, the COM cost will
     be much lower than if COM is introduced in an organization without
     any such technical infra structure. Thus, the COM cost for the
     Swedish National Defense Research Institute has been estimated to
     80 SEK/hour of COM usage, while the cost for an organization
     without all technical infra structure may be twice as much or even
     more if the organization will use COM very little.

                        Cost of COM conference      Cost of face-
                                                    to-face meetings

                        When COM can   If COM can-  Meeting   Meeting
                        share costs    not share    once a    once every
                        with other     such costs   month     second
                        applications                          month

     COM cost/hour        80 SEK        160 SEK
     for one user
     (including compu-
     ter time, termi-
     nal, network
     cost etc.)

     Travel cost/
     meeting, ticket
     and per diem                                   2841 SEK  2841 SEK

     Total technical
     costs/month        2720 SEK       5440 SEK     2841 SEK  1421 SEK

                        User time for COM usage     User time per month
                        one person one month in     for one member in
                        this conference:            face-to-face meetings.

                        Writing entries  6.08 min   During meeting:
                        Reading entries 26.57 min   51.5 min  51.5 min
                        Total time      32.65 min
                                                    Travel time:
                                                    245.3 min 122.6 min
     Total for all
     34 participants    18.5 hours                  168.2 h   98.7 h

     Cost of this time
     assuming a per-
     sonell cost of
     100 SEK/hour (1)   1850 SEK       1850 SEK     16820 SEK 9870 SEK

     Total of perso-
     nell and techni-
     cal cost (sum of
     underlined items
     above)             4570 SEK       7290 SEK     19661 SEK 11291 SEK

     (1) Note: According to Swedish government rules, a much lower pay
     of only 22 SEK/hour was assumed for travel time when travelling
     outside normal office hours.

15	Personal information in the COM system

     The Swedish Data Act, which controls the storage of information
     about individual persons in computers, has created interest in the
     existence of such information in COM (see chapter 3 above). Such
     personal information could be misused, e.g. by making improper
     collections of personal information, even though such improper
     collections are easier to make from a systematic data base than
     from personal information which spuriously occurs in ordinary text.

     An investigation of the occurrence of such individual personal
     information in COM in May 1980 is reported here. The results are
     presented in more detail in Appendix A.

     The study was based on a random sample of COM conference entries.
     157 entries from open conferences were randomly sampled. Another
     57 entries from closed conferences were randomly sampled but only
     from those conferences where I was a member (since I am not
     entitled to read in other closed conferences). The total sample is
     thus 214 COM conference entries.

     131 of these 214 entries, or 61 %, contained some personal infor-
     mation. The total number of personal information items was 174,
     since some entries contained more than one such item. The concept
     "personal information item" was interpreted in a wide sense. Not
     only "My opinion is ..." but also "It would be better if ..." was
     interpreted as personal information (about the opinions of the
     writer). The borderline is still not sharp. If someone writes "I
     have modified X", then this was counted as personal information,
     while the line "X has been modified" was not interpreted as per-
     sonal information, even though the reader in most cases would under-
     stand who had made this modification.

About whom is information given?

     Percentage  Category

       63 %      Information about the writer of the message him/herself

       17 %      Information about someone else who is a member of the
                 same COM conference or will in some other way read the
                 information him/herself in COM

        1 %      Information about another COM user, who is however not
                 a member of this COM conference and will thus not read
                 the entry.

       16 %      Information in minutes from face-to-face meetings about
                 a person who does not use COM, but who will get the
                 minutes sent to him/her and thus read the information

        3 %      Other information about people not using COM

      100 %      Total

     Thus only 4 % of all personal information items in COM would not be
     read by the person, about whom the information was given.

Role classification

     Percentage  Role

      34 %       Work tasks (Example: "N.N. was present at the meeting",
                 "I have been using encryption", "I read in the news-
                 paper about", "I can call and ask them for the cost of
                 the transports".)

      16 %       Wishes, demands (Example: "How can I split a line into
                 two using VIDED", "I do not believe any more bugs will
                 occur, but please report immediately if there are any",
                 "Mr. Grange inquired about security in the system").

       2 %       Nominations (Example: "Bengt Olsen was appointed chairman").

      21 %       Opinions (Example: "Mr. Kalin suggested that the word
                 'operator' should be reserved", "Marianne Janning
                 suggested the use of MIC", "The Chief of the Army was
                 present and had no objections").

      17 %       Knowledge (Example: "I do not believe that the change
                 will cause any problems").

       3 %       Quotes (usually in minutes from face-to-face meetings
                 published in COM).

       1 %       Politeness (thanks, excuses, praise).

       2 %       COM presentations (all COM users are asked by the system
                 to input a short personal presentation, to be made avai-
                 lable to other COM users).

       3 %       Miscellaneous (Example: "Protection against insects").

16	An American group dynamic comparison between face to-face meetings and computer conferencing

     Here is a short summary of Hiltz 1980 plus some remarks made by
     Hiltz and Turoff during the conference "International Symposium On
     Office Automation - Emerging Office Systems: Why Some Work and
     Others Fail." at Stanford University in March 1980.

     Computer conferencing will influence the way in which an
     organization works (not only provide a new medium for the same
     communication in the same organization as without computerized
     conferencing).

     Whether the introduction of computer conferencing into a community
     of people will succeed or not depends on many factors. The most
     important of these factors is whether the attitude towards coworkers
     in an organization is "we want to help each other" or "other people
     want to steal my ideas". In the latter kind of community, computer
     conferencing has less probability of succeeding.

     In one experiment in using computerized conferencing in a standards
     group with representatives of several companies, each participant
     had the goal of getting a standard in agreement with the products
     of that company, but without revealing their own plans to their
     competitors. Use of computerized conferencing in this competitive
     group did not work well. After modifying the computer system to add
     a special form of interaction based on anonymous entries, the
     conference system worked much better in this group.

     Hiltz 1980 describes a series of experiments with computerized
     conference systems. 80 test persons were split into 16 groups of 5
     people in each group. Two problems to solve where selected. One of
     the problems was of a more technical nature (what should be
     included in an arctic distress kit) and the other a more socially
     oriented problem (how to handle a human-relations conflict at
     work). Every group solved one of the two problems with the aid of
     computerized conferencing and the other problem in a face-to-face
     meeting of equal length. Every other group began with one or the
     other of the two problems, and with one or the other of the two
     media, according to a statistical test plan to reduce the bias
     introduced by the order in which the two media and the two problems
     were tested.

     The quality of the results produced by the groups were evaluated by
     experts in the subject area of the problem. These found that the
     mean goodness of the solutions arrived at in a given time was
     equally high whether the groups had arrived at the result through a
     face-to-face meeting or a computerized conference meeting.

     In the human-relations problem, groups could arrive at solutions
     which were more punishment-oriented or more positive and generous.
     The experts evaluating the solutions agreed that the punishing
     solutions were less good. The computerized conference groups
     arrived at positive solutions a little more often, and at punishing
     solutions a little less often. And when a group using computerized
     conferencing could not agree, this was more often because a
     minority disagreed with a punishment-oriented solution arrived at
     by the majority of the group.

     The probability that the decision arrived at by the group is shared
     by all participants is much larger after a face-to-face meeting
     than after a computerized conference. The probability that the
     whole group gets caught in a risky or extreme solution is larger in
     face-to-face meetings. This could be because of the psycho-social
     climate in a face-to-face meeting, or it could be because those
     persons who easily dominate in a face-to-face meeting (by stating
     their views eagerly) also are those people who most often favor
     more extreme and risky solutions.

     The probability for a dominating leader to emerge in the group and
     succeed in getting everyone to agree with him/her is higher in a
     face-to-face meeting. The equality between participants in getting
     to say their views is larger with the computerized system. This was
     so even though some of the participants had difficulties learning
     to master the new technique of using the computer.

     The probability that the women in the groups change their views to
     agree with the opinion of the men in the group was higher in a
     face-to-face meeting than when using the computer system.

     The frequency of different statements was also counted:

  •  The number of statements expressing agreements with some other
     participant was larger in face-to-face meetings.

  •  The total number of ideas and solution suggestions was larger when
     using the computer system.

  •  Group participants asked other participants to explain what they
     meant more often in face-to-face meetings.

  •  Questions to the group members about their opinions were more common
     with the computer system.

  •  The total number of words used was two or three times as many in
     the face-to-face meetings as with the computerized system. Note
     however that the quality of the result was the same even though
     fewer words were used with the computer system. Repetitions and
     reiterations are probably more common in spoken communication -
     with written communication, the reader can re-read the same message
     several times even though the writer does not write it more than
     once.

     When asking the participants afterwards what they thought about the
     different media, they said that both were equally nice, but many of
     them observed that it was more difficult to reach consensus with
     the computerized system.

     When evaluating the results from the Hiltz experiments, one caution
     is that the participants had no previous experience with compu-
     terized conferencing and only got a short introduction before the
     experiment started. The result with experienced computerized
     conference system users might be different.

17	Opinions about COM among users and non-users

17.1	Introduction

     The institute of psychology at the Gothenburg University have
     studied the effects of the system through both interviews and
     written inquiries.

     The results of these investigations have been reported separately
     (in Swedish) in Adriansson 1980A and Adriansson 1980B.

     Here is a summary of some of the results in these reports.

17.2	Summary of the interviews

     A group of researchers who had at that time little or no COM
     experience were interviewed in 1979. They were asked about what
     kind of effects, positive and negative, that they expected that the
     COM system would have on them and their work situation.

     The interviewer found that the interviewees in general had positive
     expectations. They expected that the system would give a larger
     contact surface and give better cooperation within the geogra-
     phically distributed department. Some time gains were also expected,
     mostly by a reduction in the need for travel. The most important
     disadvantages expected were the lack of immediate feedback, the
     risk of a too large information flow and that the system would be
     dominated by computer experts communicating with each other.

     Following a decision by the Swedish Data Inspection Board, the
     system had to be closed down in November 1979. (It was opened again
     in March 1980.) An interview was then done with the same group. Now
     they were asked in what way the closing down of the system
     influenced their work situation. Some questions were also put about
     risks of  infringement on personal integrity from the COM system.
     Most of the interviewees experienced a lack of information when the
     system was not any more available. The risk of  infringement on
     personal integrity was thought to exist - as in other media - but to
     be rather small. The interviewees thought that COM could further
     the efforts to create a more democratic work organization. Half of
     the interviewees thought that there was a risk that those employees
     who had less experience with the use of computer terminals and with
     written communication would be put at a disadvantage, while the
     other half of the interviewees did not expect that any group would
     be experience such disadvantage.

     One year later, those members of the group who were now COM users
     were interviewed to evaluate their practical experience with COM
     against their expectations in the previous interview. The general
     opinion was that the positive expectations had been fulfilled or
     were beginning to be fulfilled, while the negative expectations
     were mostly unfounded. That is, the contact surface had widened,
     the cooperation within the department had increased (all did not
     agree on this) and time gains had been made. Some disappointment
     was expressed that so few of the employees had begun to use the
     computer system. In some cases, they thought the cause of this was
     technical problems.

     One interesting result was that in the initial interview, before
     beginning to use COM, several interviewees said that they thought
     that the lack of "body language" communication would be a disadvan-
     tage with COM. However, after experience with the system, the
     interviewees did not any more express this particular misgiving
     about it.

     In connection with the initial interview, a written inquiry was
     sent to administrative personnel at FOA. Questions were posed about
     how the COM system could influence equality between different
     groups, how the work of the trade unions would be influenced, how
     the work environment would be influenced and about personal
     integrity aspects. The results showed that these questions were
     perhaps put too early, since many of the people had not very much
     experience with COM. In spite of this the investigation can be
     valuable in showing expectations of would-be COM users. The general
     result was the same as that expressed by the interview group.
     People thought that COM would give the employees more influence on
     their work situation by making it easier for them to get informa-
     tion and state their views. The risk for infringement on personal
     integrity was thought to be small. As in the interview group,
     opinions were split on whether COM would favor or restrain various
     groups of people.

17.3	Summary of the large written inquiry

     The large written inquiry was sent to all people who had entered
     COM more than 10 times in the period 1979-08-01--1980-03-31. The
     inquiry was also sent to a random sample of FOA employees who had
     not used COM at all in the indicated period. The population was
     divided into the following five groups:

     Group A: Experienced users, who had entered COM more than 99 times.

     Group B: Less experienced users, who had entered COM 34-99 times.

     Group C: Inexperienced users, who had entered COM 10-33 times.

     Group D: Never used COM, a random sample of non-users.

     Group E: Stopped using COM, who had used COM 10 times or more
              but not used COM during the last two months.

     Group A and B got the full inquiry, the other groups got simplified
     inquiries, since detailed questions about COM qualities were not
     thought meaningful to people with little or no COM experience.

     Group E was very small, only 16 people. The other groups each had a
     size of about 70 people.

     Most of the people who had not used COM gave as a reason a lack of
     time and of interest in the subjects discussed in COM, and a
     preference for written communication. The same reasons were given
     by those who had only used COM a little as reasons why they were
     not using COM, and also by a small group of people who had been
     using COM but had stopped using it.

Effect of COM on the work environment

     Most of those who used COM were of the opinion that the system had
     caused a positive change in their work situation, while those who
     were not using COM did not think that the existence of COM had
     influenced their work situation neither positively or negatively.

     The need to be able to use a typewriter and the requirement for
     written communication was not thought to be any important
     impediment for using COM either by users or non-users.

     Positive effects from COM (A= experienced, B = less experienced users)

     This diagram shows the percentage of respondents who said that this effect
                          increased due to COM            decreased due to COM

     Negative effects from COM (A = experienced, B = less experienced users)
     
This diagram shows the percentage of respondents who said that this effect
                        increased due to COM            decreased due to COM
     
18	Conference size

     One aspect which should be studied more is the optimal conference
     size. Our experience is that a computer conference seems to work
     best in group sizes between 10 and 80 participants in COM. Note
     that in face-to-face meetings where every participant has equal
     right to speak, the optimal size is known to be 3-7 participants,
     while psychological problems occur with larger group sizes.

     Here is an hypothesis of the cause of this effect; In a face-to-
     face meeting, the problems with larger group size occur because:

     Many participants think that too much time is spent giving infor-
     mation they already have got or discussing subjects on which they
     have already made up their mind. In a face-to-face meeting, they
     have to sit and listen to this, while in a computer conference
     system they can easily skip entries of less interest to them.

     Many speakers in face-to-face meetings hesitate to say things
     because they are afraid that other participants are not interested,
     are in a hurry to get somewhere else. Because it is so easy for a
     reader in a computer conference to skip reading entries, the social
     pressure on participants against writing messages is also lower.

     A computer conference participant can spend more time formulating
     his/her entry so as to be concise and easy-to-understand. This
     increases the time spent by the writer, but lowers the time spent
     by the reader in getting the message, and will thus increase the
     efficiency with larger reader groups.

     In a face-to-face meeting with 5 participants, each participant
     will on average speak 1/5 or 20 % of the time. As is shown in
     chapter 6 above, the mean time to write a conference entry is 11
     times longer than the mean time to read the entry. Thus, a computer
     conference has to have a size of 56 participants before the average
     time spent writing gets as low as 20 %. Humans will probably for
     psychological reasons be more efficient if a reasonable part of
     their time is spent giving information, while they are disatisfied
     and inefficient if they have to spend too much time passively
     receiving information. And a computer conference system can have
     larger group sizes without getting to low average time spent giving
     information.

19	Conclusions

19.1	General

     People who hear about computerized conference systems, but have no
     experience of their own with such systems, have a tendency to see
     the systems mainly as a replacement of other communication -
     telephone calls, letters, face-to-face meetings or newspapers. This
     reaction is natural - you try to understand something new by
     relating to something you already know.

     One important result from the investigations is that most of the
     COM usage is not a replacement of existing communication but
     rather new communication which would not have occurred without COM.

     The results of the investigations show that experienced COM users
     see COM as a new medium providing certain new communication
     possibilities, but also a medium which (like all other media) is
     not suitable for all kinds of communication needs, and is therefore
     best used where it is suitable.

     Probably COM has caused a small increase in the total time spent in
     communication activities. COM is however not a dominating
     communication media for most of its users - the mean COM user is
     connected to COM for 20 minutes each working day, and will in that
     time read 22 messages and write 1 message.

     The investigations show that COM has meant more information
     exchange between people at large organizational distances. This is
     most marked for non-managers and for people aged less than 40 years.

     COM is mostly used for:

     Exchange of experience between researchers within different fields
     of research. COM has here meant that researchers with the same
     interests but at different geographical locations have gotten
     better possibilities to exchange experience and test their results
     and ideas on other researchers.

  •  Exchange of letter messages, especially for small and simple
     messages which can be distributed quickly in this way.

  •  Information copies; messages which without COM would have been sent
     to one or very few people are in COM often stored in such a way
     that more people are reached.

  •  Contacts and discussions in working groups. These groups usually
     also have face-to-face meetings, and COM is used between these
     meetings.

  •  Contacts within trade unions inside the FOA research institute. COM
     is used both for general meetings for all trade union members and
     for closed meetings for the board or other smaller groups within
     the trade union.

     There is less dominance of a few people on the communication
     process when COM is used. According to the views of the COM users,
     the system gives more people better possibilities of saying their
     views, reduces the risk that the ideas of someone are forgotten and
     gives increased influence to the trade unions.

     A person who uses COM will get more contacts with other people, and
     this means that new ideas will spread more easily and the organi-
     zation will easier grow and adjust to a changing environment.

     Ordinary face-to-face meetings work less well if there are more
     than eight participants, all having equal rights to talk. In COM
     however, it seems as if a meeting with 50 or more participants will
     work, even though more than half the participants in such large
     meetings will at one time or another write something in the
     meeting.

     For decision processes, the main impact of COM has been more
     thorough discussions and collections of ideas and arguments before
     the decision. The final formal decision is almost never taken
     directly using the COM system.

     Most COM users do not think that COM means an increased risk of
     control, performance control and unauthorized snooping, but there is
     a minority who believe in such risks.

     The cost of using COM is about 70 Swedish kronor per hour or about
     0.80 kronor per read message. COM is thereby cheaper than telephone
     calls for small and simple messages, cheaper than ordinary letters,
     and cheaper than face-to-face meetings if the group size is 15 or
     more people or if some of the participants had to travel to get to
     the meeting.

19.2	Authoritarian or democratic attitudes

     When designing communication processes in an organization, this can
     be done with an authoritarian or a democratic attitude towards
     human relations. This table shows some of the differences:

     Authoritarian attitude            Democratic attitude

     People are lazy and undependable  People are dependable, can be
     and must be watched and           motivated and control them-
     controlled.                       selves.

     The main goal with the informa-   All employees shall get support
     tion system is to give better     from the information system.
     support for the managers.

     Efficiency in the performance     The functionality and possibil-
     of work elements must be in-      lities for growth of the
     creased.                          organization shall be aided.

     Work tasks should be split into   Work tasks are organized so that
     many small elements, where each   changes and new needs are easier
     employee only gets the informa-   to handle, by promoting high
     tion necessary to perform his     competence and flexible contact
     /her element.                     and organizational patterns.

     Traditional administrative computer systems often cause a division
     of work into small elements for different employees, and they are
     often designed to give every person only exactly the information
     needed to perform a certain task. The systems are often difficult
     to modify for new kinds of information or for new kinds of
     treatment of the information. Thus, the design of traditional
     computer systems is more in accordance with the authoritarian
     attitude.

     Computerized conference systems give much freedom for each user to
     choose what information they store in the computer, where the
     information is sent and what information they take out. They can
     easily start using the system for a new kind of task, e.g. by
     opening a new conference in the system for the new tasks or writing
     about it in a letter message. Thus, computerized conference system
     are more in accordance with the democratic attitude.

19.3	Conclusions for the future

     Most likely, computer-mediaded message systems of different kinds
     will be one very important communication medium in the future. They
     will not out-compete all other media, but will be an additional
     alternative in the spectrum of different media available to modern
     man. People will in each case choose the medium best suited to each
     communication need.

     The increased use of computer communication media will cause many
     changes in the social communication patterns. Groups of people who
     cooperate on an intimate daily basis will often be distributed
     geographically at large distances within a country or in different
     countries or even different continents.

     Computer media will also change the pattern of control of communi-
     cation. More communication direct between low-level people in an
     organization will decrease the importance and function of managers.
     A computer-based message system in fact will in some ways perform
     automatically the functions today handled by managers of collecting
     and distributing information within an organization.

     The ease of establishing communication groups electronically
     between people in different organizations will also decrease the
     importance of an organization (government agency or commercial
     company) in organizing human activities. Ad-hoc groups with
     participants from different organizations will occur and solve
     problems in ways perhaps not envisaged by their managers. We
     already have much experience of this kind of work distribution
     among the COM users.

     All this may be frightening to people who have never used computer
     conferencing systems. But our experience is that people will easily
     adapt to the new environment. And all these cross-country and
     cross-organization contacts will make an organization more
     efficient by increasing its ability to find the best new ideas and
     methods. Thus, those organizations which succeed in using this new
     medium well will have a great advantage compared to those who do
     not in surviving in a rapidly changing world.

20	Who did what?

     Torgny Tholerus programmed most of the COM system and most of the
     programs for the collection of statistics on COM usage.

     Chapter 17 reports on research done by Lillemor Adriansson and part
     of the text is translation of text written by her.

     Stefan Cederholm and Martin Nilsson have written some statistics
     programs. Section G.2 in appendix G is a transcript made by the
     program Martin Nilsson wrote.

     Chapter 16 reports research performed by Roxanne Hiltz, Murray
     Turoff and their co-workers.

     Mats Wallin, who programmed part of the COM system, has also
     written appendix B and made the investigation reported there.

     The figure in chapter 9 was drawn by a computer program written by
     Mats Ohlin.

     Tommy Nilsson has written appendix J and Anders Sandberg appendix K.

     The rest of the report was written by Jacob Palme.

21	References

     (More complete bibliographies can be found in Palme 1978 and
     Adriansson 1980A.)

     Adriansson 1980A: Gruppkommunikation via dator: Inledande socialpsykolo-
                       giska studier på KOM-systemet vid FOA. Rapport 1. By
                       Lillemor Adriansson, Gothenburg Universitet. FOA 5
                       rapport C 56023-H9(M3), November 1980. (This reports
                       summaries what has been written about computerized
                       conferences and reports on a series of interviews with
                       COM users.)

     Adriansson 1980B: Gruppkommunikation via dator: Inledande socialpsykolo-
                       giska studier på KOM-systemet vid FOA. Rapport 2. By
                       Lillemor Adriansson and Lennart Sjöberg, Gothenburg
                       University. FOA 5 rapport C 56024-H9(M3), November
                       1980. (This report presents the results of a written
                       inquiry sent to all COM users and to a selection of
                       FOA employees who do not use COM. It also reports on a
                       series of interviews with managers in FOA reporting
                       their opinions about COM.)

     Adrianson 1982:   Gruppkommunikation via Dator: Uppföljande social-
                       psykologiska studier på KOM-systemet vid FOA.
                       Rapport 3. FOA rapport C 10216-H9(M6), September
                       1982.

     Adrianson/Söderström 1983: Meddelande att läsa. Datorbaserade text-
                       kommunikationssystem på sex svenska företag.
                       TELDOK rapport, April 1983.

     Allen 1977:       Managing the Flow of Technology. By Thomas J.
                       Allen. MIT Press 1977.

     Balson 1982:      Computer-based Conferencing Systems for Developing
                       Countries. Report of a workshop held in Ottawa,
                       Canada, 26-30 October 1981. Edited by David Balson,
                       Robert Drysdale and Bob Stanley. Published by
                       the International Development Research Centre,
                       Box 8500, Ottawa, Canada K1G 3H9.

     Uhlig/Farber/Bair 1979: The Office of the future. Communication
                       and Computers. North-Holland Publishers 1979.

     Bowallius 1980:   Rapport över utvärdering av telemötessystemet
                       KOM ur aspekterna integritets- och arbetslivs-
                       frågor. By Lars Bowallius, Jacob Palme, Arne
                       Sundström, Mette Holmgren, Andrew Medin and
                       Astrid Ohlson. FOA 1 rapport C 10162-M6(H9),
                       November 1980. (Aspects of the Swedish Data Act
                       on the COM system are investigated as well as
                       certain misgivings about the system proposed by
                       some trade unions).

     Hiltz/Turoff 1978: The Network Nation: Human Communication via
                       Computer. Addison-Wesley Publishers 1978.

     Hiltz 1980:       Face-to-face vs. Computerized Conferences: A
                       Controlled Experiment, av S.R. Hiltz, K. Johnson,
                       C. Aronovitch och M. Turoff. New Jersey Institute
                       of Technology, August 1980.

     Hiltz 1981:       The Impact of a Computerized Conferencing System
                       on Scientific Research Communities, Final Report,
                       by S.R. Hiltz, New Jersey Institute of Technology,
                       June 1981.

     Hiltz/Turoff 1981: The evolution of user behavior in a computerized
                       conferencing system. Communications of the ACM,
                       November 1982, vol. 24, no. 11, pp 739-751.

     Hiltz/Kerr 1981:  Studies of Computer Mediated Communications Systems:
                       A Synthesis of the Findings, by Starr Roxanne Hiltz
                       and Elaine B. Kerr. New Jersey Institute of Technology,
                       August 1981.

     Hiltz/Johnson/Turoff 1982: The effects of formal human leadership
                       and computer-generated decision aids on problem
                       solving via computer: A controlled experiment.
                       New Jersey Institute of Technology, December 1982.

     Kerr/Hiltz 1982:  Computer-Mediated Communication Systems, Status and
                       Evaluation, by Elaine B. Kerr and Starr Roxanne Hiltz,
                       Academic Press 1982.

     Palme 1978:       Datorstödda telekonferenssystem, av Jacob Palme,
                       FOA 1 rapport C 10090-M3(E5, H9), Maj 1978.

     Palme 1979A:      COM Teleconferencing System - Concise Manual,
                       by Jacob Palme, FOA 1 report C10129E-M6(E5),
                       October 1979.

     Palme 1979B:      COM Teleconferencing - Advanced Manual, by
                       Jacob Palme, FOA 1 report C 10157E-M6, November
                       1980.

     Palme 1980A:      När lyckas kontorsautomatisering? Rapport från
                       symposium, by Jacob Palme, FOA 1 rapport
                       C 10152-M6(H9), Maj 1980.

     Palme 1980B:      The COM teleconferencing System, Functional
                       Specification, by Jacob Palme, Stefan Arnborg,
                       Lars Enderin, Carl Meyer and Torgny Tholerus,
                       FOA 1 rapport C 10164-M6(H9), November 1980.

     Palme 1983:       Computer Conferencing is more than Electronic
                       Mail, by Jacob Palme, EUTECO, European Telein-
                       formatics Conference, North-Holland 1983.

     Palme 1984A:      You have 134 Unread Mail! Do You Want To Read
                       Them Now? by Jacob Palme, IFIP WG 6.5 Conference
                       on Computer Message Services, Nottingham,
                       England, 1984, Edited by H.T. Smith, North-
                       Holland 1984.

     Palme 1984B:      Survey of computer-based message systems, by
                       Jacob Palme, Proceedings of the IFIP Interact'84
                       conference, North-Holland 1984.

     Uhlig 1979:       The office of the future, av R.P. Uhlig, D.J.
                       Farber och J.H. Bair, North-Holland 1979.

     Wetterberg 1983:  Kommunikation via datorer. IDAK, Institutionen
                       för ADB, Tekniska Högskolan och Stockholms
                       Universitet.

     Wikström 1980:    Rapport över utvärdering av telemötessystemet
                       KOM ur nyttoaspekter, av P. Wikström, J. Palme,
                       L. Cervin, T. Nilsson, A. Ohlsson, S. Jahnberg
                       och M. Ottoson. FOA 1 rapport C 10163-M6(H9),
                       December 1980. (This report is an investigation
                       of whether the COM system has been useful
                       and advantageous for the FOA research institute
                       or not.)

     Wilson, P.A.:     Introducing the Electronic Mailbox. National
                       Computer Centre Publications, England, 1983.

APPENDIX G.2: Times and frequencies for COM commands

     The statistics below are based on a random sample of all COM
     commands given (in the Swedish language version of COM, KOM) during
     a five-day period in september 1980.

     Commands which took more than 30 minutes to complete are not
     included in the statistics.

     Since people may do other things while sitting logged in to COM,
     the statistics may exaggerate the time to perform some commands.

     Note that because of the way COM works, users are guided into using
     those commands which come first in a menu. Those commands are
     marked with an * below.

     All times in the table are given in seconds.

     Total number of characters to the computer: 414873
     Total number of characters from the computer: 15107171
     Total number of commands: 26982

Logical grouping of commands:

  Percent/Total time/Mean time/Median time    (Group)command

   1.54      14800     35.7       16.0        (Administration of reading)

   0.64       6517     37.9       15.5     *  Only (read last)
   0.27       3475     47.6       25.0        (Read) file
   0.24       1091     16.5        9.0        Skip (all comments)
   0.24       2225     34.2       17.0        Save (entry)
   0.06        537     31.6       23.0        Archive (entry)
   0.05        821     63.2       53.0        Read messages
   0.03        134     14.9       11.0        Scan (news)

  Percent/Total time/Mean time/Median time    (Group)command

  66.74     415262     23.1       13.0        (Reading new entries)

  30.63     156787     19.0       12.0     *  (Read) next comment
  21.03     131006     23.1       13.0     *  (Read) next entry
  12.66      93406     27.4       15.0     *  (Join) next meeting
   2.35      24087     38.1       22.0     *  (Read) next letter
   0.09       9976    433.7      235.0        (Read all) news

  Percent/Total time/Mean time/Median time    (Group)command

   6.77      50702     27.8       12.0        (Reviewing)

   5.49      44536     30.1       14.0        Review (entry)
   1.28       6166     17.8        8.0     *  (Read) next marked (notice)

  Percent/Total time/Mean time/Median time    (Group)command

   0.59       2929     18.4        7.0        (Administration of writing)

   0.22        769     12.8        5.0        Information (copy to)
   0.12        724     21.9        8.0        Add receivers
   0.08        259     11.8        5.0        Move entries
   0.07        776     40.8        7.0        Subtract receiver
   0.07        176      9.8        8.5        Delete (entry)
   0.02        187     31.2       20.5        Internal mail (FOA)
   0.00         38     38.0       38.0        Write messages
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        (Set) expiration (time)

  Percent/Total time/Mean time/Median time    (Group)command

   7.42     209370    104.6       38.0        (Writing entries and letters)

   1.73      64849    138.9       71.0        Comment (on entry)
   1.16      38389    122.6       56.0        (Send a) letter (to)
   0.85      35148    152.8       89.0        Answer (privately)
   0.59      11479     71.7       30.0        (Re-)type (the entry)
   0.45       7971     65.9        6.0        (Remove last) line
   0.41        842      7.7        3.0        Cancel (it)
   0.79       4992     24.0        5.0        Enter (it)
   0.36      24577    250.8      141.5        (Type new) entry
   0.35       8010     84.3       27.0        (Remove last) word
   0.33       8310     94.4       44.0        (Re-) type (the letter)
   0.16       1815     43.2        7.0        Submit (file)
   0.13        811     23.2        5.0     *  Continue (writing)
   0.03       1612    179.1       67.0        Change subject
   0.03        219     24.3       13.0        (Submit) file
   0.01         20      5.0        5.0        Finish (entry)
   0.01       1105    368.3      137.0        Change presentation (of)
   0.01        180     60.0       18.0        Continue
   0.01         15      7.5        7.5        Message (to letter writers)
   0.00         26     26.0       26.0        (Make) inquiry
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Insert (entry)

  Percent/Total time/Mean time/Median time    (Group)command

   3.95      35677     33.4       15.0        (Table printouts)

   1.76      17064     35.8       19.0        (Get) status (of)
   0.94       5033     19.9       11.0        Present
   0.79       4577     21.5        9.0        List (all) news
   0.30       3563     44.0       28.0     *  List active (meetings)
   0.09       3644    158.4       80.0        List (public) meetings
   0.02        680    113.3      125.0        List private (meetings)
   0.02        356     59.3       57.0        (Get) system information
   0.01        295     73.8       79.5        List commands
   0.01        270     67.5       62.0        List information
   0.00        195    195.0      195.0        List (all) persons
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Inactive activities
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Active activities

  Percent/Total time/Mean time/Median time    (Group)command

  12.99      62273     17.8        2.0        (Miscellaneous)

   4.65        938      0.7        0.0        Quit
   2.14       8589     14.9        6.0        Join (meeting)
   1.11      32435    108.5        6.0     *  Wait (for news)
   0.50         30      0.2        0.0        Begin (with new) name
   0.39       1065     10.2        2.0        Mark (the notice)
   0.30       1672     20.9       16.0        (Become) member (of)
   0.29       1038     13.1       11.0        (Something) else
   0.23       1767     28.0        3.0        Unmark (the notice)
   0.19        850     16.3       11.0        Erase (activity)
   0.17        825     17.6       12.0        Withdraw (permanently from)
   0.14         58      1.5        1.0        Change page size
   0.10        539     20.7        6.5        (Get) daytime
   0.09        204      8.2        1.0        Change expert (level to)
   0.08         62      2.8        1.5        (Set) terminal (type) display
   0.07          3      0.2        0.0        Call English COM
   0.07        744     41.3       27.5        Something else
   0.07        155      8.6        7.0        Reassign output (to file)
   0.05        344     26.5       13.0        Leave COM
   0.04        474     47.4       33.0        Add participant
   0.03        694     86.8       53.5        Create (new meeting)
   0.03          2      0.3        0.0        Call mini COM
   0.02        233     38.8       35.0        (Get) help
   0.02          2      0.4        0.0        Call new COM
   0.01        220     73.3       44.0        Change name (of)
   0.01         92     30.7       27.0        Change password (of)
   0.01        463    231.5      231.5        Organize meetings
   0.01        110     55.0       55.0        Change parameters
   0.01         21     10.5       10.5        Organize meetings
   0.01          0      0.0        0.0        Call travel compensation
   0.00         39     39.0       39.0        Change membership
   0.00         12     12.0       12.0        Change organizer (of)
   0.00          4      4.0        4.0        Compute
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Begin (from new) number
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Call type writing course
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Call 3rip
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Change type (of meeting)
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        (Set) terminal (type) no display
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Set terminal (type)
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        (Define) group
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Exclude participant
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Call old COM
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Call program

All commands sorted by frequency:

  Percent/Total time/Mean time/Median time    Command

  30.63     156787     19.0       12.0     *  (Read) next comment
  21.03     131006     23.1       13.0     *  (Read) next entry
  12.66      93406     27.4       15.0     *  (Join) next meeting
   5.49      44536     30.1       14.0        Review (entry)
   4.65        938      0.7        0.0        Quit
   2.35      24087     38.1       22.0     *  (Read) next letter
   2.14       8589     14.9        6.0        Join (meeting)
   1.76      17064     35.8       19.0        (Get) status (of)
   1.73      64849    138.9       71.0        Comment (on entry)
   1.28       6166     17.8        8.0     *  (Read) next marked (notice)
   1.16      38389    122.6       56.0        (Send a) letter (to)
   1.11      32435    108.5        6.0     *  Wait (for news)
   0.94       5033     19.9       11.0        Present
   0.85      35148    152.8       89.0        Answer (privately)
   0.79       4992     24.0        5.0        Enter (it)
   0.79       4577     21.5        9.0        List (all) news
   0.64       6517     37.9       15.5     *  Only (read last)
   0.59      11479     71.7       30.0        (Re-)type (the entry)
   0.50         30      0.2        0.0        Begin (with new) name
   0.45       7971     65.9        6.0        (Remove last) line
   0.41        842      7.7        3.0        Cancel (it)
   0.39       1065     10.2        2.0        Mark (the notice)
   0.36      24577    250.8      141.5        (Type new) entry
   0.35       8010     84.3       27.0        (Remove last) word
   0.33       8310     94.4       44.0        (Re-) type (the letter)
   0.30       3563     44.0       28.0     *  List active (meetings)
   0.30       1672     20.9       16.0        (Become) member (of)
   0.29       1038     13.1       11.0        (Something) else
   0.27       3475     47.6       25.0        (Read) file
   0.24       1091     16.5        9.0        Skip (all comments)
   0.24       2225     34.2       17.0        Save (entry)
   0.23       1767     28.0        3.0        Unmark (the notice)
   0.22        769     12.8        5.0        Information (copy to)
   0.19        850     16.3       11.0        Erase (activity)
   0.17        825     17.6       12.0        Withdraw (permanently from)
   0.16       1815     43.2        7.0        Submit (file)
   0.14         58      1.5        1.0        Change page size
   0.13        811     23.2        5.0     *  Continue (writing)
   0.12        724     21.9        8.0        Add receivers
   0.10        539     20.7        6.5        (Get) daytime
   0.09       9976    433.7      235.0        (Read all) news
   0.09       3644    158.4       80.0        List (public) meetings
   0.09        204      8.2        1.0        Change expert (level to)
   0.08        259     11.8        5.0        Move entries
   0.08         62      2.8        1.5        (Set) terminal (type) display
   0.07        776     40.8        7.0        Subtract receiver
   0.07        176      9.8        8.5        Delete (entry)
   0.07          3      0.2        0.0        Call English COM
   0.07        744     41.3       27.5        Something else
   0.07        155      8.6        7.0        Reassign output (to file)
   0.06        537     31.6       23.0        Archive (entry)
   0.05        821     63.2       53.0        Read messages
   0.05        344     26.5       13.0        Leave COM
   0.04        474     47.4       33.0        Add participant
   0.03        134     14.9       11.0        Scan (news)
   0.03       1612    179.1       67.0        Change subject
   0.03        219     24.3       13.0        (Submit) file
   0.03        694     86.8       53.5        Create (new meeting)
   0.03          2      0.3        0.0        Call mini COM
   0.02        187     31.2       20.5        Internal mail (FOA)
   0.02        680    113.3      125.0        List private (meetings)
   0.02        356     59.3       57.0        (Get) system information
   0.02        233     38.8       35.0        (Get) help
   0.02          2      0.4        0.0        Call new COM
   0.01         20      5.0        5.0        Finish (entry)
   0.01       1105    368.3      137.0        Change presentation (of)
   0.01        180     60.0       18.0        Continue
   0.01         15      7.5        7.5        Message (to letter writers)
   0.01        295     73.8       79.5        List commands
   0.01        270     67.5       62.0        List information
   0.01        220     73.3       44.0        Change name (of)
   0.01         92     30.7       27.0        Change password (of)
   0.01        463    231.5      231.5        Organize meetings
   0.01        110     55.0       55.0        Change parameters
   0.01         21     10.5       10.5        Organize meetings
   0.01          0      0.0        0.0        Call travel compensation
   0.00         38     38.0       38.0        Write messages
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        (Set) expiration (time)
   0.00         26     26.0       26.0        (Make) inquiry
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Insert (entry)
   0.00        195    195.0      195.0        List (all) persons
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Inactive activities
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Active activities
   0.00         39     39.0       39.0        Change membership
   0.00         12     12.0       12.0        Change organizer (of)
   0.00          4      4.0        4.0        Compute
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Begin (from new) number
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Call type writing course
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Call 3rip
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Change type (of meeting)
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        (Set) terminal (type) no display
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Set terminal (type)
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        (Define) group
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Exclude participant
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Call old COM
   0.00          0      0.0        0.0        Call program

APPENDIX L: Change in life and work because of COM

     1. QUESTION TEXTS

     The following two questions were put to a sample of COM users:

     Question texts translated to English:

          (480550)  82-05-23  19:21  Jacob Palme FOA1
          Receiver: COM enquiry group
          [rende:  Enquiry for Norwegian Telecom

          The Norwegian Telecommunications has asked me to make an
          enquiry about COM usage. The replies will only be published as
          statistics, where you cannot see who answered what. The
          questions will be put to all who are members of this COM group
          conference, which was started for this enquiry.

          Please do not withdraw from the group. More questions will
          come during the forthcoming weeks.

          (480552)  82-05-23  19:22  Jacob Palme FOA1
          Receiver: COM enquiry group
          Enquiry with answers to Replies on COM enquiry
          Subject: Question A: Use of COM at home

          1) Have you used COM from a terminal at home?

          Only answer question 2 and 3 if you answered YES to question 1.

          2) How large percentage of your COM usage during the last year
             has been from home?

          3) Which work tasks do you perform at home? Is it the same
             tasks as at work, or different tasks?

          (482768)  82-05-26  18:55  Jacob Palme FOA1
          Receiver: COM Enquiry group
          Enquiry with answers to Replies on COM enquiry
          Subject:  What has decreased when COM has increased

          Here is the second enquiry question.

          A day has only 24 hours. So the time you use for running COM
          must mean a decrease in some other activity. Perhaps you tele-
          phone less, because you can use COM for communication instead.
          But you might also reduce something quite different, like
          sleeping less or watch TV less.

          Here are some examples of activities, which might have
          decreased to get time for COM:

          Telephoning, writing and reading letters, other writing, face
          to face meeting with other people (committee meetings,
          meetings with friends, with family, in societies), reading
          newspapers and journals, reading books, other reading,
          listening to radio, looking at TV, exercising, eating,
          sleeping, hobbies, research, computer programming etc.

          Which activities do you believe has decreased with the time
          you now use for running COM?

     Question texts in original Swedish version:

          (480550)  82-05-23  19:21  Jacob Palme FOA1
          Mottagare: Enkätgrupp om KOM
          Ärende:  Enkäter för Norska Televerket

          Norska televerket har bett mig göra en enkät om KOM-s
          användning. Svaren kommer enbart att publieras i statistik-
          form, där det inte framgår vad en viss enskild person svarat.
          Frågorna kommer att ställas till alla som är medlemmar i den
          här KOM-gruppen, som skapats enbart för detta ändamål.

          Jag är tacksam om du inte utträder ur gruppen. Det kommer några
          fler frågor under de närmaste veckorna.
          (480550)

          (480552)  82-05-23  19:22  Jacob Palme FOA1
          Mottagare: Enkätgrupp om KOM
          För kännedom: -Jacob Palme.  Mottaget: 82-06-02  15:19
          Rundfråga med svar till Svar på enkäter om KOM:
          ärende:  Fråga A: KOM-användning hemma

          1) Har du använt KOM från en terminal i hemmet?

          Svara bara på fråga 2 och 3 om du svarat JA på fråga 1.

          2) Hur många procent av din KOM-användning har du det senaste
             året gjort hemifrån?

          3) Vilka slags arbetsuppgifter är det du utför hemma? Är det
             vissa arbetsuppgifter som du utför hemma, och andra på
             jobbet, i så fall hur skiljer de sig?

          (482768)  82-05-26  18:55  Jacob Palme FOA1
          Mottagare: Enkätgrupp om KOM
          Rundfråga med svar till Svar på enkäter om KOM:
          Ärende:  Vad har minskat när KOM har ökat

          Här kommer andra enkätfrågan.

          Dygnet har ju bara 24 timmar. Så den tid du använder åt att köra
          KOM, måste innebära minskning av något annat. Kanske telefonerar
          du t.ex. mindre, därför att du kan kommunicera via KOM istället.
          Men det kan också vara så att du minskar på något helt annat, t.ex.
          sover mindre eller ser mindre på TV.

          Här är några exempel på aktiviteter, som du kan ha minskat på
          för att få tid till KOM:

          Telefonera, skriva och läsa brev, skriva annat, umgås direkt
          med andra människor (sammanträde, vänner, familj, föreningsliv),
          läsa tidningar och tidskrifter, läsa böcker, läsa annat, höra
          på radio, se på TV, motionera, äta, sova, hobbyverksamhet,
          forska, programmera datorer o.s.v.

          Vilka aktiviteter tror du har minskat med den tid du ägnar åt
          KOM?

     2. SAMPLE AND RESPONSE

     A random sample of 112 persons where chosen among those who had (a)
     used COM for more than 100 sessions (b) used COM during the last
     two months before the enquiry. The sample was intentionally chosen
     to contain only rather regular COM users, since we are interested
     in the effect of COM on the life and work of those who use COM so
     much that it can have any real impact on them.

     Of the people in the sample, 10 never got the enquiry question,
     because they did not use COM during the enquiry period. Thus, the
     question was put to 102 persons. Of these, 85 answered the first
     question fully or partly, and 71 answered the second question.

     The results are reported above in chapter 12.