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4.2 Social mechanisms in communication and collaboration 1 1 1

form of messaging. Media spaces are distributed systems comprising audio, video,
and computer systems that "extend the world of desks, chairs, walls and ceilings"
(Harrison et al., 1997), enabling people distributed over space and time to commu-
nicate and interact with one another as if they were physically present. The various
collaborative technologies have been designed to support different kinds of
communication, from informal to formal and from one-to-one to many-to-many
conversations. Collectively, such technologies are often referred to as computer-
mediated communication (CMC).

Do you think it is better to develop technologies that will allow people to talk at a dis-
tance as if they were face to face, or to develop technologies that will support new ways of
conversing?

Comment On the one hand, it seems a good idea to develop technologies supporting people communi-
cating at a distance that emulate the way they hold conversations in face to face situations.
After all, this means of communicating is so well established and second nature to people.
Phones and videoconferencing have been developed to essentially support face to face con-
versations. It is important to note, however, that conversations held in this way are not the
same as when face to face. People have adapted the way they hold conversations to fit in
with the constraints of the respective technologies. As noted earlier, they tend to shout more
when misunderstood over the phone. They also tend to speak more loudly when talking on
the phone, since they can't monitor how well the person can hear them at the other end of
the phone. Likewise, people tend to project themselves more when videoconferencing.
Turn-taking appears to be much more explicit, and greetings and farewells more ritualized.
On the other hand, it is interesting to look at how the new communication technologies
have been extending the way people talk and socialize. For example, SMS text messaging
has provided people with quite different ways of having a conversation at a distance. People
(especially teenagers) have evolved a new form of fragmentary conversation (called "tex-
ting") that they continue over long periods. The conversation comprises short phrases that
are typed in, using the key pad, commenting on what each is doing or thinking, allowing the
other to keep posted on current developments. These kinds of "streamlined" conversations
are coordinated simply by taking turns sending and receiving messages. Online chatting has
also enabled effectively hundreds and even thousands of people to take part in the same
conversations, which is not possible in face to face settings.

The range of systems that support computer-mediated communication is quite
diverse. A summary table of the different types is shown in Table 4.1, highlighting
how they support, extend and differ from face to face communication. A conven-
tionally accepted classification system of CMC is to categorize them in terms of ei-
ther synchronous or asynchronous communication. We have also included a third
category: systems that support CMC in combination with other collaborative ac-
tivities, such as meetings, decision-making, learning, and collaborative authoring
of documents. Although some communication technologies are not strictly speak-
ing computer-based (e.g., phones, video-conferencing) we have included these in
the classification of CMC, as most now are display-based and interacted with or
controlled via an interface. (For more detailed overviews of CMC, see Dix et al.
(Chapter 13,1998) and Baecker et al. (Part 111 and IV, 1993).