I have to think that using VW for communication/collaboration, I would still want to meet face-to-face early on in the process, so all the myriad exchanges across the human spectra can at least be booted. (Even if it involves staring contests). I find teleconferences easier when I know the office or conference room they are using and what they look like in it. If I know what the other people and their setting look like, that is what is formed in my mind. If I don’t, something still gets created, but it is not so tangible.

In some senses, I think using avatars is a little like playing with dolls. Not to say they are childish in a condescending way, because I think whatever we program out of ourselves as we mature that disables our ability to create and inhabit the magic circle with our toys is exactly what we need to be able to find those places that Provoky describes as “higher up in my head”… when I ended my previous comment with the smartass question about why we use machines instead of developing our innate talents for telepathy, or shamanism, or other more natural means to focus our minds from the here-and-now to some other focal point of place/time is really my reaching for the same kind thing to me.

It reminds me of the time I got to meet Boris Yeltsin, whose books I translated — but this was before I did the translations and before he became president, when he was speaker of parliament in what was then the Russian White House. It turns out that Yeltsin is one of those charismatic types with animal magnetism, if you will. But his means of achieving this is simple: he simply stares down each and every person in a meeting until they look away. You know those kind of contests you might have had with your little brother when you were little, staring and staring and daring the other person to look away first.

When Boris Nikolayevich’s eyes fell on mine, I held my ground. I had noticed others darting away. I figured there was no reason why I couldn’t win this one, even as a lowly translator. I stared and stared, and didn’t swerve from the future president of Russia. Finally, *he* looked away, and locked eyes with former political prisoner Yuri Orlov. He lost that one, too. It was actually an interesting and cordial meeting.

I know what Philip is talking about, I have to have these awful phone conference calls all the time, and I always picture my colleagues all huddled together in another city around the speaker phone in a drab conference room. Some of them I’ve never met, so I sort of sketch in how they might look from the sound of their voice. But really, that’s only part of the time. Because most of the time, I’m higher up in my head thinking about their ideas, and noting the colour of their voice, and storing any necessary facts away about who they are, what they’re saying. I’m looking up there at this kind of stream, or colouds, if you will, with a kind of burning colour, the colour of synesthesia which is hard to describe because it is back-lit in ways that outworld colours aren’t.

Now, here’s the problem with Second Life and voice. Those avatars are just these things sort of dangling in the way of seeing the stream which renders then notes and colours of those people’s voices and their ideas, which are clouds, also colour coded. So to have those damn avatars there, it’s just damn confusing.

Yes, you can zoom around and see/hear where the voice is coming from, but it’s such a disconnect that I find it an annoyance.

For example, going to the Lindens’ voiced press conference (won’t be doing any more of that now!), I would hear, say Jack Linden, who has a distinctive British voice which people in England might even be able to place as a product of a certain school or regional dialect. So there’s Jack yacking away, and his visuals around his voice are what they always are (they even had him on the answering machine at the Lab for a time). But then, there’s that *other* Jack which is his avatar, and his typing, which is a *whole other set of data*. That Jack is even different — different than that voiced Jack. In fact, if you get a Linden like, say, Blue, who has a dragon or something well, you’re just really dealing with a huge disconnect.

I don’t like voice.

Philip is right about the eye contact thing. It enables you to get up into your right brain more easily, it’s a short climb that wouldn’t be as easy in a RL setting with like, the Xerox machine humming and coffee mugs clattering and such, too. But, the voice add-on — well, I keep waiting to “break it in” and “get used to it” and I never do.

Thoria brought up what I, too was thinking – the fact that a cell phone conversation distracts from the here-and-now of driving means it is taking us somewhere else – where is that?

Philip’s asking ‘why do we look at the phone’ really begs the question, what do we need to see to better enhance our ability to communicate and collaborate?

I was looking at a list of elements of nonverbal communication and was categorizing what I think only work face-to-face, what work in VW, on webcast, on phone, and by email. Then I also was trying to factor in the statement I heard recently by a VW vendor that said there are somethings that VW can do much better than a RL meeting. I then was remembering the observation I had at a VW conference that it seemed while people I met seemed intelligent, there was a disproportionate number of them that had poor skills at face-to-face or other RL social interaction – leading to a theory that these people are drawn to SL because they can communicate *better* there.

Thus, while pondering Philipism #7, I found myself imagining a VW that was so good at communication, that when interacting with my teams at work, for example, it could be preferable and more productive to meet with them in a next-generation virtual world than face-to-face. This would come by accentuating all the elements of communication, intelligent computer assistants, information access, visualization; while eliminating all the negative/non-productive aspects of having to communicate in person.

Of course, I still can’t answer why our species insists on doing this communication with machines and not with telepathy

Phone is fine – but usually for very small groups, or one-on-one. Web conferences are fine, but usually for broadcasting, not collaboration or multi-person discussion.

Where SL shines is when you have a need for a platform where the participants need to truly listen and engage, where you are not merely ‘broadcasting’, or where you want the participants to connect with each other in deeper ways (teams, etc.)

However – Philip has a way of, well…saying things that I just find kinda visiony goofy.