We’ve all seen the cartoons of people sitting next to each other in silence and texting each other. I just picked up my daughter from a concert where she did exactly that.
At work, we meet for a few hours in-world at least twice a week. Usually at least one of us is in some other part of the world and a few at home, but sometimes we’re all in the same room with headphones on. It isn’t always better than being in the same room with someone, it isn’t always worse. It’s just different, although occasionally it isn’t even that.
For folks growing up with texting and ubiquitous computing, it seems working with others in a virtual world should not be an issue. But circumstances matter (context is king) in ways that I still don’t understand. I’m disappointed that even we are passing up some working relationships that are long distance even as we do others that are global.
Sometimes you text the person next to you and sometimes you have to get on a plane.
Related Posts:
- Get Ready for the 2022 Season of Spectrum Wars! by Harold March 15, 2022 It isn't the sultry Regency drama of Bridgerton, the action psycho-drama of Moon Knight, or even the, um, whatever the heck Human Resources is. But…
- What the Eff, FAA? My Insanely Long Field Guide to the FAA/FCC 5G C-Band Fight. by Harold November 8, 2021 5G has been accused a lot of ridiculous things -- causing Covid, causing cancer, causing autism. This article provides a list of 9 separate conspiracy…
- We Can #ConnectTribes to Broadband, and YOU Can Help! by Harold July 22, 2020 One of the unusual plot twists of this season on Spectrum Wars has been my agreeing more and more with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. For…
- S. Korea "Sender Pays" Is a Warning, Not a Model, or Why (Almost) Everyone Keeps Telling the EU This Is a VERY Bad Idea. by Harold October 14, 2022 Economist/NYT opinion writer Paul Krugman coined the term "Zombie idea" to describe an idea that, despite being repeatedly refuted with evidence, keeps coming back. Not…
- Breaking Down and Taking Down Trump's Executive Order Spanking Social Media. by Harold June 4, 2020 (A substantially similar version of this appeared first on the blog of my employer, Public Knowledge) It's hard to believe Trump issued this stupid Executive…
- Does SCOTUS EPA Case Impact Net Neutrality? Here’s Why I Say No. by Harold July 1, 2022 For most people, the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency was about environmental policy and what the Environmental Protection Agency can…
About Stearns
Howard Stearns works at High Fidelity, Inc., creating the metaverse.
Mr. Stearns has a quarter century experience in systems engineering, applications consulting, and management of advanced software technologies. He was the technical lead of University of Wisconsin's Croquet project, an ambitious project convened by computing pioneer Alan Kay to transform collaboration through 3D graphics and real-time, persistent shared spaces. The CAD integration products Mr. Stearns created for expert system pioneer ICAD set the market standard through IPO and acquisition by Oracle. The embedded systems he wrote helped transform the industrial diamond market. In the early 2000s, Mr. Stearns was named Technology Strategist for Curl, the only startup founded by WWW pioneer Tim Berners-Lee. An expert on programming languages and operating systems, Mr. Stearns created the Eclipse commercial Common Lisp programming implementation.
Mr. Stearns has two degrees from M.I.T., and has directed family businesses in early childhood education and publishing.
Its not just texting, its phone abuse too. I have schlepped through airports and rode planes to meet a coworker face to face only to have them spend most of the ‘meeting’ with them talking on the phone. I got up went into their managers office and explained the situation. After the manager pulled them out of the conference room it was amazing the rapt attention offered when they returned.
Its a discourteous attitude that I don’t tolerate anymore. Besides life is very short, one should take advantage of the face to face opportunities as some come all too rarely.
We have something like that in-world, too. I’ll post soon about 3D application panels in-world vs 2D panels floating above an individual user’s view of the virtual world. When you’re working with other folks on something, the 3D shared stuff seems more social. When folks come to a meeting and use 2D apps in other windows — whether shared 2D apps from the world or something else entirely on their computer — it does seem a bit disconnect and sometimes a bit discourteous.