Video conferencing as a technology to support group work: a review of its failures

Interactive television in psychiatry

“…The review of the industrial experience of tele conferencing by Egido (1988) offers important lessons. She explored the failure of the widespread uptake of teleconferencing despite proven feasibility and optimistic market forecasts in the early '70s.…”

“…Cost is not the only factor and the attitudes of potential users still have to be addressed.The literature suggests that it may be more difficult for clinicians than patients to accept the use of interactive television. Egido (1988) concluded, based on the experience in industry, that specific tasks for innovative tech nology should be clearly identified and attention paid to the culture of the organisation under study. Even at our current level of understanding, a wide range of communication tasks will have to be supported in a dispersed service.…”

Issues and experiences designing and implementing two group drawing tools

“…Most research efforts in geographically distributed conferencing have been in the field of tele-presence-a way of giving distributed participants a feeling that they are in the same meeting room (Egido 1988;Johansen & Bullen 1984;MIT 1983). The goal of tele-presence is to transmit both the explicit and subtle dynamics that occur between participants.…”

Multimedia Conferencing

“…Proponents of teleconferencing have made statements like this since as early as the 1920's when the idea of video conferencing debuted [20], and echoed this pronouncement again during the 1960's when AT&T introduced its PicturePhone [3] at the 1964 World's Fair. Marketing forecasts of the 1970's promised the teleconferencing revolution [35] and touted "videoconferencing as a revolutionary concept on the brink of success" [9]. One must wonder, are these assertions any more true now than they were then?…”

“…Grudin [17] attributes this to the technologically-driven nature of the pursuit and paraphrases a colleague who sees this shortcoming as "technology searching for a need". Egido's articulate discussion of its failures points to factors lying beyond the scope of technology, such as psychological and sociological ones, and argues that the casting of electronic communication in the image of face-to-face meetings has stood in the way of developing multimedia conferencing technology to its fullest potential [9]. Bikson lobbies for systems more attuned to group processes, taking the stance that system builders must consider the tools and technology already in place, as well as individual preferences [4].…”