digital lyceum

We pulled off a successful symposium a few weeks back on the topic of mixed realities. At this symposium, we incorporated several digital backchannels to augment the physical audience’s experience, while opening up access to those not physically present. We adapted the backchan.nl tool developed by Drew Harry at the MIT Media Lab as the centerpiece of our backchannel suite. This tool provided audience members with the capability of asking questions and voting on others’ questions. We surrounded the backchan.nl with a flickr and del.icio.us feed as well as a video feed for those not present. In addition, the event was broadcast into Second Life. There were about fifty people present at the physical site at Emerson College, with the same amount present in Second Life. Both the physical and virtual participants were using elements of the backchannel suite provided.

So, the big question is: was this augmentation valuable? Did audience members, physical and virtual, enhance their experience in any way? Did they engage meaningfully with the content, while parsing their attention between “realities?” We conducted some preliminary surveys with audience members, but didn’t do anything approaching exhaustive. What we learned from user feedback was that people appreciated the opportunity to engage in this setting, but they also felt that it was distracting. This ambivalence seemed to be universal. And yet, coupled with that ambivalence was an enthusiasm for a new level of engagement. This enthusiasm has led us to conclude that further work in this area is important, primarily to parse out whether or not that enthusiasm stems only from novelty.

Continuous Partial Attention: this is a phrase often used to describe the experience of backchannel conversations in real space. For the entire time, participants are engaged partially in their laptop and in the live conversation. Does this partial attention take away from knowledge creation in any one area? Are they being spread too thin? Or does the partial attention allow them to stay engaged for longer periods of time? It is unlikely that someone can stay totally focused on a conversation for two straight hours anyway - does the ability to drift in and out actually serve to focus participants’ attention on related matters? The comments posted were surprisingly on topic. Of course, people were likely doing other things - email, Facebook, IM, etc. - but based on the number and frequency of the comments posted, there was considerable focus on the backchannel tools provided.

By providing the appropriate tools, is it possible to stave off the inevitable scattering of attention that will happen as digital technologies increasingly seep into physical interactions (mobile phones, wifi, etc.)? One way of understanding these efforts is an attempt at harm reduction. Distraction is happening: can we devise tools and practices to mitigate the effects of that distraction and even harness it for academic purposes? Let’s face it, there is a lot going on in our heads as we “focus” on a talk - formulating a question in our heads, trying to remember a reference long forgotten, thinking about what we did over the weekend. These tools provide opportunities to externalize that internal distraction - in most cases, towards productive ends.

Wisdom of Crowds: The audience has knowledge about what the speakers are saying. Backchannels provide an opportunity not simply to express oneself individually, but for the audience to express its collective wisdom. A collection of individual questions does not reflect the wisdom of the crowd, that happens in the kind of deliberation and resource sharing possible in backchannels. Distraction goes to produce a different kind of knowledge - one not possible with absolute focus.

We are in the process of writing a paper about these ideas - essentially rescuing distraction from the reject bin of academic life.