Telepresence and the Posthuman

Tablets and smart phones, together with new communication services such as Skype and Facetime, have changed what it means to "keep in touch". In changing communicative practice, these media are delimiting new experiential horizons, providing phenomenological research with novel variations on the lived experience of space and embodiment, self and other. Online textual communications have been shown to bring with them a dynamic tension between sensed presence and factual absence, between the immediacy of reaction and mediation of response (e.g., Friesen 2011; Milne 2013). Such tensions are already long familiar from analyses of epistolary writing (e.g., Altman 1982), and from arguments about speech and writing, presence and absence, from Plato to Derrida. Videoconferencing, on the other hand, brings with it a different set of issues, reintroducing embodiment, speech, hearing and vision, and resulting in a rather different interplay between immediacy and mediation. Together with virtual reality, video communication has been characterized in this connection as "post-symbolic" (Lanier 1989, S.118), delimiting horizons that include the reciprocity and disjuncture of embodied self and other, of voice, hearing and gaze.

We become posthuman, as Katherine Hales explains, through our awareness being “seamlessly” extended or even embodied through technology, meaning that the body of flesh and blood is only “the original prosthesis” for the mind. However, the practice of extending our awareness through technology and its prostheses goes back hundreds if not thousands of years. Specifically textual communications, posted either online or on paper, have long been shown to bring with them a dynamic tension between sensed presence or embodied absence, between the immediacy of reaction and mediation of response. New televisual technologies of communication, on the other hand, brings with it a different set of issues, involving representations of embodiment, speech, hearing and vision, and resulting in a rather different interplay between immediacy and mediation. Together with virtual reality, audio/visual communication has been characterized as bring mediated experience into a “post-symbolic” era, delimiting horizons that include the (relative) immediacy of reciprocity and disjuncture of embodied self and other, of voice, hearing and gaze.

Interactivity, the connection of a person or a group to another, remains at the heart of economic, social and political life. Education and learning also depend on interaction. Today the tools we use for interacting and as means for allocating our attention are changing. One such tool is telepresence. At its high-performance end telepresence is almost like "being there". High bandwidth, high definition video and audio, corrected for lighting and perspective, it allows people in different cities or different continents to engage in a conversation with fidelity that is tantamount to being in the same room. This paper offers an analytical framework and a few "what-if" examples that help to imagine how telepresence might change things in the future. The paper starts with a discussion of the relationship between technological and economic change, arguing that indirect effects are often the most important. We show that communication has many different dimensions -it is not just about information, but also about interpretation and relationships.

2014

Proliferating media forms, from tablets to Twitter, are changing communicative practice, delimiting new experiential horizons, and thus providing phenomenological research with novel variations on the experience of self and other. Videoconferencing via Skype or FaceTime offers prominent examples of these changing forms. Despite the use of these communication technologies in both educational contexts and everyday life, educational videoconferencing has been described in the research literature as "a hidden mode of delivery, employing invisible pedagogical techniques." In this study I address this situation of simultaneous familiarity, invisibility and uncertainty by focusing particularly on the lived experience of space, the body and eye contact in videoconferencing contexts. This study suggests that the disruption of spatial coherence and power of gaze and mutual gaze are all but unavoidable features of this experience. It concludes by emphasizing the importance forms or expressions of absence, such as the diminution of eye contact, or the importance of not always being perceived as performing or "on" in videoconferencing contexts.

2001

Humans live and interact within the real world but our current online world neglects this. This paper explores research into Personal Roving Presence (PRoP) devices that provide a physical mobile proxy, controllable over the Internet to provide tele-embodiment. Leveraging off of its physical presence in the remote space, PRoPs provide important human verbal and non-verbal communication cues. The ultimate goal is a computer mediated communication (CMC) tool for rich natural human interaction beyond currently available systems.

CyberPsychology & Behavior, 1999

2019

Why examine the concept of telepresence? A number of emerging technologies, including virtual reality, simulation, home theater, state-of-the-art video conferencing and virtual three-dimensional (3-D) environment, are designed to give the user a type of mediated experience that has never been possible before. This new experience seems to be “real,” “direct” and “immediate.” The term telepresence has been used to describe this compelling sense of being present in these mediated virtual environments (Held & Durlach, 1992; Steuer, 1992). On the empirical side, the use of this new revolution in media technologies has expanded to telemedicine, telepsychiatry, distance learning, legal testimony from remote locations, arcade games and more (see Lombard & Ditton, 1997). An enhanced sense of telepresence is central to the usefulness and profitability of the new technologies mentioned above, and others such as the World Wide Web and highdefinition television. As underlined by Zhang, Benbasat,...

2000

ABSTRACT: Computer scientists John Canny and Eric Paulos discuss computermediated communication from Cartesian and phenomenological perspectives. The current Cartesian model for teleconferencing ignores the role of the body and breaks communication into separate channels for video, text, and audio. The results are often stilted and unsatisfying. Canny and Paulos propose an alternative model based on a phenomenological integration of physical cues and natural responses.

LESSICO DI ETICA PUBBLICA – Bodies, Images, Networks. Digital space as public space, Anno XIV, Numero 1-2/2023, 2024

Nel 1956, in piena guerra fredda, una conferenza di scienziati al Dartmouth College negli Stati Uniti annunciò il lancio di un audace progetto scientifico, l'Intelligenza Artificiale (I.A.). Dopo l'iniziale fallimento degli sforzi della "Hard AI" di produrre un'intelligenza simile a quella umana, alla fine del XX secolo è emerso il movimento della "Soft AI". Invece di essere orientato a imitare il comportamento umano in relazione a compiti specifici, ha preferito cercare modi alternativi di eseguire i compiti basati sulle particolari funzioni e strutture della macchina. Il fattore decisivo è stata la combinazione della tecnologia di apprendimento automatico con le comunicazioni digitali online, l'incontro tra l'IA e Internet. Le applicazioni dell'IA "soft" sono quelle che vediamo nel mondo dei dispositivi automatici "intelligenti" che informano la nostra vita sociale digitale. Nel seguente articolo mi concentrerò su una particolare applicazione dell'IA per le discussioni online con utenti umani, ChatGPT, per mostrare le implicazioni della tecnologia digitale online nelle modalità storico-sociali dell'esistenza umana. ChatGPT è un'applicazione che combina l'IA con Internet, le possibilità della corrispondenza tra macchine e le potenzialità della telecomunicazione umana. Il mio approccio si concentra sulle implicazioni fenomenologiche e storico-sociali della proliferazione della tecnologia AI per quanto riguarda la coscienza e la socialità umana.

Journal of Communication, 2012