i should probably avoid writing emails before bed, and my negative bias towards video-conferencing comes from a number of bad experiences and unproductive meetings. anyhow you are quite right to push this one, to converse without latency can be very productive (but equally unproductive too) - a good meeting requires a fair bit more preparation and planning than just the medium, regardless of mcluhans philosophy. incidentally i have enjoyed his musings in the past but i already find his arguments ambiguous enough with regard to psychology and technology, to retrofit his ideologies to todays baffling techno-communcications wasteland is a bit of a stretch ;)
ciao, dmotd
On Tuesday 17 March 2009 21:41:46 Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
Yeah, in case I came across too strong, I think that IRC is very useful, and voice chat is too. We can have both running for this meeting, and people can choose where they participate. IRC is great for async communications, like asking specific questions. But I find it takes 10-20x longer to work through difficult issues thru text-only media like IRC, IM, email, etc. as compared to a voice conversation.
.hc
On Mar 16, 2009, at 7:32 PM, João Pais wrote:
Is this a one time thing, or might happen more times? I would say that at least voice connection would be productive. I haven't that much experience with video conferencing, but a medium where people can react at the same time they can think would be important. (although after too much time, even the fingers are faster than some heads)
How about voice connection for general talk + an irc chat for small, fast questions? We can also send a group foto with skype, so that everyone feels the warmth.
Marshall McLuhan would strongly disagree with you, as do I. The medium with which you communicate has a very strong impact on the conversation. That does not mean that it is the only influence. There are many things that lead to a bad meeting, and from my experience of having many meetings in person, on IRC, on IM, on phones, on voice chat, on video chat, and many different mixes above, I am a strong believer in high-bandwidth communication like voice.
Mistrust authority - promote decentralization. - the hacker ethic