Comment: When Present can mean Virtually Absent

Modern technology is supposed to facilitate communication, support users, and generally bring people closer together. Mobile devices aim to support meetings and enhance communication, whilst peer-to-peer networks facilitate the exchange of information. However, recent experiences at meetings tend to suggest that the opposite is actually the case. The more technologically connected people are, the more absent from their current situation they become.

Wireless networks allow people to easily check their email, and for many people, if they can, they do. Mobile phones allow external interruptions to break into meetings, and texting allows the user to communicate with others outside. This means that in round-table discussions, many people are focussing on events and conversations that are outside of the room, external to the shared context of the other participants. They spend much of their time running the other parts of their lives rather than focussing on the specifics of the meeting or current conversations.

This was brought home especially strongly in a meeting I attended the other day: a dozen people from around Europe had gathered to discuss the architecture for a major project, and yet the presentations and proposals put forward by participants went almost unheeded, as people dived behind their laptops to read email, take part in online chats, and send odd text messages about home issues or student problems or whatever. Not only is this rude, it is hugely inefficient and expensive - when it got to the stage that participants sitting next to each other were actually sending emails between themselves, there is clearly something going wrong.

Is there anything we can do to improve this situation? Is it a technical issue, or a social one? Will we adapt and learn to use things effectively, or will we head down the inefficient routes? It could be that there is a fundamental usability issue at stake here: we have connectivity to the world outside of a meeting, but not in a way that allows us to respond to only the significant events in that world - we still have to monitor it constantly. Worse, some people feel that they must monitor it constantly: reminiscent of earlier work on addiction to email. It may be that technology and usability can together provide suitable support for protocols that allow interruption and notification in such a way as to not interfere with co-located activities - or it may be that we need to develop new social protocols to cope with this increased accessability.

As for me, I'm going to make sure that we run meetings more carefully, and set social standards that make it very difficult for people to absent themselves in the ether. Technology has promised virtual presence, but so far has delivered virtual absence.

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