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October 02, 2003

Telepresence culture

Matt Webb has a great series of posts exploring presence and the way people interact in virtual environments.

I think we've found that virtual reality isn't necessary for presence, only that the behaviour of something that appears to be "human" is transmitted through the behaviour of the medium.
We're at an interesting stage, where lots of communications technology is becoming "socially invisible" - mobile phones and WiFi-enabled computers are everywhere, taken for granted. There's a two-way movement of models and ideas between the real and virtual environment.

Two people standing in a park, waiting for a call. The phone rings. Guy ('tis his mobile) answers; Gal, although obviously keen to become a part of that virtual place, has to stand and wait for the call to be done. A three-way online chat can happen fluidly and quickly - but real-world telephone "conference setup" is wickedly complicated... why?