“Beyond Being There” in the age of endless Zoom meetings
An essay from the early 1990s predicted much of what we feel today: technology can’t replace face-to-face conversations, but it can enhance communication in other ways
In 1991, a project at Bell Communications Research lab turned the “telecommunications problem” on its head.
Specifically, the paper, entitled “Beyond Being There,” questioned the underlying objective of technologists and researchers of the time: develop more and more advanced technologies that eventually can rival face-to-face communication.
With Moore’s Law driving the unstoppable progress in computing, it was easy idea to get behind.
It is tempting to think that with perhaps a little more screen resolution, a little more fidelity in the audio channel…telecommunications systems will achieve a level of information richness so close to face-to-face that for most needs it will be indistinguishable.
However, the authors argued, any technology — no matter how advanced — that attempts to mirror the richness and variety of in real-life interaction will inevitably fall short by comparison. So, they suggested, why even try?
Instead of trying to mimic physical presence, technologies should instead attempt to go beyond being there.
Are we “beyond there” yet?
If we define “beyond being there” technologies as those that enable interactions that aren’t possible in a real-time conversation, there are several that we use everyday:
- Email, Slack, and other messaging products enable asynchronous exchanges, so you can have communicate with lots of people. They also allow you to search for and retrieve previous conversations.
- Video conference tools let you screen-share. This is the digital version of sitting next to the presenter’s shoulder, but when done to a large group, it becomes a superpower.
- Similarly, digital whiteboard products like Miro, Mural, Figjam and others enable real-time collaboration with large groups, which isn’t easily doable over a certain group size.
However, if we limit our definition of “beyond there” to digital communication tools that expand and deepen communication relative to face-to-face interaction, most of them fall short.
It’s worth examining why that’s the case.
What makes face-to-face conversations so powerful?
Let’s face it (pun intended), nothing beats being in the same room.
Simply put, face-to-face conversations are so effective because clarity (I can make myself understandable) and intersubjectivity (I know that you understand me) are possible in real-time.
You can also smell the other person, and see their shoes :).
When we communicate irl, we make simultaneous observation of multiple cues — body language, facial expression, and tone of voice — which convey information beyond just the words exchanged. You can call these things non-verbal cues.
Almost 30 years after the Bell Labs paper, despite giant leaps forward in technology, we’re still not able to replicate these non-verbal cues in real-time.
Today’s video conferencing tools do come close. In 2020, Zoom has become a verb. And ironically, because of its shortcomings in user experience, it has become a noun as well: Zoom fatigue.
Ironically, the reason that excessive video meetings are mentally taxing is due to these non-verbal cues. The brain is over-stimulated and can’t parse the facial expressions and tone in real-time amid the grid of faces, minor latency, and one-voice-at-a-time UX.
So, where do we go from here?
At Commons, we spend a lot of time thinking about how we can get to “beyond being there”. We’re trying to recreate the feeling of being in the same room with your team, even while we’re all WFH. We can’t wait to show you what we’ve come up with!
