Does anyone know the origin of the the term "FairWitness?"  I'm just
wondering.

12 responses total.

There was a discussion of this on either this system or Mnet about a year
ago. I'm not sure where/when the term fairwitness, *as it is used on this
system and Mnet* was first coined, but Robert Heinlein, in his book _Stranger
in a Strange Land_, also used the term fairwitness to describe a profession.
In that book, a "fairwitness" was someone who had been trained as the
perfect objective observer. They didn't make any assumptions and only
relayed facts that they directly obsevered. In the book, they use this
demonstration:
First character: "What color is that house?"
Fairwitness: "The 2 walls that I can see are white."
First character: "What about the rest of the house."
Fairwitness: "I cannot see that."
The idea here is that most people, when asked what color the house is,
would see 2 white walls and assume that the house is entirely white, based
on their knowledge of our culture and that within this culture, most people
tend to paint their house the same color on all walls. However, that is
based on a cultural assumption and has *no* basis in actual fact.

However, the term fairwitness, as used on Grex and Mnet, does not seem to
follow this model. Whoever first used the term here, may have had the
Heinlein book in mind, or it may have been a completely separate invention.

Heh.  There was a discussion both here and on M-Net because I entered
items about it both here and on M-Net.

I have always assumed -- and I could be wrong -- that it was Marcus
Watts' idea to use the term "fairwitness" for conference organizer,
and that he did have in mind the model described in Heinlein's book.
i.e. a conference organizer should be essentially a highly impartial
and objective observer.  Of course, it hasn't always worked out that
way.

I had an idea it was something like that.  The reason that I asked is 
that I'm now reading the new "restored" version of _Stranger in a 
Strange Land_.

Would a "true" fairwitness have to be a member of the Flat Earth Society ify
hadn't been in space? !p

(I suppose this could be a very metaphysical discussion if FWs supposedly
report what they see, or what they *think* they see...)

Whoa... This is truly interesting.  And yet, than again, it is not...
Deep, veddy deep.

Gregc's explanation is very helpful. Impartial is the ideal? But willing to
stimulate thinking when reality is encountered?
Just learning.

Stealing "fairwitness" from Heinlein is indeed my idea, and the intent
is indeed to encourage an impartial hands-off objective style.  The
usual terms for this, such as "chairman", "organizer", "discussion
leader", "president", and so forth, have strong "control" attributes,
which I very much wanted to get away from.  In the early versions of
PicoSpan, fairwitnesses did not, in fact, have *any* special powers --
so far as the software was concerned, the title was purely honorary.

[It is pure coincidence that the author of PicoSpan is also a life long
member of the Stilyagi Air Corps.  Pure coincidence!]

("lifelong"???)

What's a stilyagi?

Stilyagi comes from the russian word stilyaga.  Borrowing partially
from the entry in the FanSpeak dictionary at stilyagi.org
(http://stilyagi.org/fanspeak.html):

  "The word stilyaga is Russian, and refers to a subculture similar to
   beatniks or zoot suiters in Moscow of the 1950's. Stilyaga would
   listen to jazz, wear suits with very exaggerated padded shoulders,
   tight flute pants, very bright ties with palm trees or a woman's face
   on them, sunglasses, and platform shoes. All of this was considered
   very western and them, sunglasses, and platform shoes. All of this
   was considered very western and rebellious, and stilyaga were often
   arrested for their trouble."

and is, not too coincidentally i'd bet, also the name of a group of
freedom fighters in another heinlein story.

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