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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1996 Humans get lost in the video blur These problems are often compounded by the need for more than one screen, and participants appear to stare over one another's heads, adding up to an unnatural and sterile meeting. It is difficult to establish what level of quality users require, but presumably it is at least a "living-room standard" TV presentation. Throughout the development of video-conferencing, bandwidth and distance have been assumed to be expensive. The world has focused on signal compression and coding for networks that provided poor performance, restricted bandwidth, low utility and high price. In reality, optical fibre transmission and digital switching have negated these constraints. The result of excessive coding is a delay between transmission and reception that is commonly 0.5 seconds. In a recent video call, I spent two hours talking with people who were in the US. At the end of the call I stepped into the corridor and saw someone I knew well. I voiced a greeting and I received an instantaneous response that startled me. I had become conditioned to the delay. There is no better a place to observe people than at a cocktail party The focus on signal compression has seen human requirements and interface developments neglected. This is compounded by the use of standard TV cameras and screens whose acoustic coupling between locations is rarely fit for the purpose. Studying people in real conference facilities reveals a number of requirements to maximise the chances of success. Mimicking these real environments as closely as possible to provide a facsimile or "virtual" conference room and, as far as possible, humanise the interfaces is now feasible. The recent arrival of large-area, high-definition, daylight-bright display systems is the first real breakthrough for decades, and it might encourage us to stay in the office more often rather than driving and flying everywhere. We are remarkably sensitive to eye contact, movement, body language and sound. There is no better a place to observe this than at a cocktail party. Watch people scan for visual contact and early warnings - friend or foe. Our acoustic performance is more subliminal and no less impressive. We can talk to one person or group and maintain a sensible conversation while scanning the room and picking out the voice and words of an individual many feet away. Despite the hubbub of voices, we can often decode the essential nature of what is being said. Machines find this extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do. All of this happens in conference rooms, too. Can electronic environments provide us with such subtle information? It appears they can. Large screens with suitably placed cameras can create the illusion of eye contact. Stearable microphones and speakers can be arranged to create acoustic differentiation. It is not quite the cocktail party, but comes close. This technology might steer us away from excessive travel. In my experience, the only people who like to travel are those who do not do it. So perhaps the most demanding requirement falls to us, to change our attitude to video-conferencing. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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