{"id":20252,"date":"2020-04-06T23:07:21","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T23:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=20252"},"modified":"2020-04-11T15:33:04","modified_gmt":"2020-04-11T15:33:04","slug":"4-weird-things-that-happen-when-you-videoconference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/4-weird-things-that-happen-when-you-videoconference\/","title":{"rendered":"4 weird things that happen when you videoconference"},"content":{"rendered":"

Norm Friesen<\/a>, Boise State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

As the COVID-19 pandemic forces many U.S. colleges and universities to move their courses online<\/a>, connecting online via video is now having its moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Family, friends, neighbors and even TV talk-show hosts<\/a> are now meeting and broadcasting from home. Meanwhile, Microsoft, Google and Zoom are struggling to meet the demand for their videoconferencing services<\/a>.<\/p>\n

People have long noticed, however, that some peculiar things happen in videoconferencing. A magazine mentioned its \u201cbizarre intimacy<\/a>.\u201d Jaron Lanier, who is considered the \u201cfather of virtual reality<\/a>,\u201d once remarked that it \u201cseems precisely configured to confound<\/a>\u201d nonverbal communication.<\/p>\n

As an educational technology<\/a> researcher, I have explored<\/a> these and other subtle but strange elements of videoconferencing. I do this through phenomenology<\/a>, the study of lived and embodied experience.<\/p>\n

I seek to understand why certain issues arise when technology is introduced to educational settings and to suggest ways to deal with them.<\/p>\n

Here are four odd things that happen when you\u2019re engaged in a videoconference.<\/p>\n

1. Eye contact is lacking<\/h2>\n

First, and probably most obviously, meeting by video interferes with eye contact. This is due to a simple technical limitation: There\u2019s no way to put the camera and the display screen in the same spot<\/a>. When you look at the camera on your device, you give the impression you\u2019re looking someone in the eye. However, when you look at their eyes on screen, you appear to be looking away.<\/p>\n

Phenomenology and psychology<\/a> both emphasize the importance and complexity of eye contact.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn eye contact you not only observe the eyes of the other person,\u201d observes author and philosophy professor Beata Stawarska, but this other person is also \u201cattending to your attention while you are attending to hers<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

This extends to multiple levels of awareness, as philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty<\/a> observes: \u201cI look at him. He sees that I look at him. I see that he sees it. He sees that I see that he sees it.<\/a>\u201d Merleau-Ponty adds that as a result, \u201cthere are no longer two consciousnesses\u201d in a moment of locked eye contact, \u201cbut two mutually enfolding glances<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Merleau-Ponty, these kinds of experiences are a part of what he calls our embodied reversibility<\/a>: I see, hear and experience others as they see, hear and experience me.<\/p>\n

2. Looking awry<\/h2>\n

Here\u2019s a warning a pair of researchers<\/a> gave about making a video guest presentation in a classroom: \u201cEven if\u2026 you are not \u2018on,\u2019 you are on-screen, and probably larger than life-size. If you surreptitiously pick your nose, chances are that everyone can see you doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sitting in front of a webcam and computer, the guest-presenter sees a room full of students. But the students see a talking head on a projection screen, showing every blemish or imperfection. Instead of sitting or facing one another reciprocally, \u201cface to face,\u201d we find ourselves looking up, down or sideways at the sometimes much-larger-than-life image of those we see and speak with online.<\/p>\n

3. Feeling watched<\/h2>\n

Without overt eye contact and embodied reciprocity, people who videoconference can sometimes feel silently scrutinized or surveilled. A person may worry: Exactly how does the unblinking camera eye show me to others?<\/p>\n

\u201cThough we may pretend to be looking at another person when we FaceTime or Zoom,\u201d journalist Madeleine Aggeler observes<\/a>, \u201creally we\u2019re just looking at ourselves \u2013 fussing with our hair, subtly adjusting our facial expressions, trying to find the most flattering angle at which to hold our phones.\u201d Videoconferencing can be a bit like the distracting or enervating experience of talking while constantly glancing ourselves in a mirror.<\/p>\n

4. Squelching voices<\/h2>\n

The long-lived tagline of the Verizon network, \u201cCan you hear me now?<\/a>\u201d is a question associated with technology. Face to face, we are able to monitor our speaking as a result of our own vocal projection and the acoustic environment. And we do this based on the assumption of acoustic reversibility: that others hear the world as we do.<\/p>\n

Online, this is not necessarily the case<\/a>. Our voices might break up as they are compressed and transmitted, a noise in the background might overtake us or our mic might simply be set to \u201cmute.\u201d By its very nature, sound, unlike vision, is relatively undirected<\/a>. Face to face, it is enveloping and shared. Its disruption and interruption online can be as jarring as speaking with someone who refuses to make eye contact.<\/p>\n

A new normal<\/h2>\n

Despite the odd ways that communication takes place in a videoconference, as a society, we\u2019re about to get more accustomed to this mode of communication. There are many<\/a> websites<\/a> full of tips on how to make the most of our videoconferencing experience.<\/p>\n

Among other things, these tips advise us to place the camera at eye level to appear naturally positioned, to use a clean, well-lit space to be clearly visible and to wear a headset to maximize audio quality. But no matter what we do to have a smooth videoconference experience, video will lack the \u201cmutual enfolding\u201d of the senses that, as Merleau-Ponty knew, comes with meeting in the flesh<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research.<\/em> Sign up for our newsletter.<\/a>]\"The<\/p>\n

Norm Friesen<\/a>, Professor of Educational Technology, Boise State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Norm Friesen, Boise State University As the COVID-19 pandemic forces many U.S. colleges and universities to move their courses online, connecting online via video is now having its moment. Family, friends, neighbors and even TV talk-show hosts are now meeting and broadcasting from home. Meanwhile, Microsoft, Google and Zoom are struggling to meet the demand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":20253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[292],"tags":[245,7559,7902,7689,7900,1812,7901],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20252"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20252"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20300,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20252\/revisions\/20300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}