Re: [NNagain] Virtual mtgs and conferences vs. in-person ones (was) Re: FCC NOI due dec 1 on broadband speed standards

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 16:59:29 -0800

I agree that virtual meetings today are vastly inferior to physical presence, but I wasn't suggesting that all meetings be made virtual.  Rather I was suggesting that orchestrating some kind of high profile "virtual meeting", including not only engineers but also government leaders, policy makers, and other "normal" (non-technical) people, might be a good way to surface the issues and cross-educate the various communities.  Politicians don't understand "bufferbloat" or acronyms.   Techies don't understand why politicians don't understand.
But physical meetings also have limitations.   Many people do not have the time or money available to travel to a meeting.  Encounters such as hallway conversations are often very fruitful, but they only occur if the people involved happen to be in the same corridor at the same time and have time to stop and chat.   Serendipity seems like an imperfect strategy to make progress. 


Internet technology today is, IMHO, a rudimentary first step toward what 
could be done.  Electronic mail was a start, back in the 1970s.  It 
didn't replace physical meetings, but it enabled a lot more progress to 
happen quickly.  Technology has advanced exponentially since then.  
Perhaps there's now ways to use it better.



Perhaps a conferencing scheme (software, protocols, algorithms) could 
facilitate virtual hallway encounters by noticing that several people 
have elsewhere discussed some topic, conclude that they have a common 
interest, and suggest that they get together spontaneously online for a 
hallway discussion?  Or perhaps you heard a hallway discussion and want 
to follow up, but can't remember exactly who you were talking with.   
Computers are good at keeping records and searching them for patterns 
and overlaps even now.   As AI further develops, they'll hopefully get 
better.



In the early days of the Internet, there were research efforts exploring 
how to *use* computers and networks in support of human interactions.  
Some of that was technical - protocols, algorithms et al - but it also 
included social, political, and other non-technical aspects.   Lots of 
productive discussions in the early days of networking occurred in the 
hotel bar after the formal sessions -- but only if you were staying in 
that hotel.   Can technology, all technology not just the pieces that 
move data, somehow facilitate such human interactions?  That was the 
focus of the research.



I probably won't see it, but I suspect that before long it will be 
possible for human "meetings" using holographic displays, instead of 
today's flat screens.  The technology will continue to improve, not only 
in the pieces that move bits around but also in the computers and 
software that lives in our pockets, desks, cars, home appliances, and 
whatever else you can imagine.



Long ago I was indoctrinated into Licklider's vision of a "Galactic 
Network", which used the power of ubiquitous interconnected computers to 
help people do everything people do.  Today's Internet sure feels like 
the first incarnation of that vision.   Are researchers working on the next?



Even today, you can see many "talk show" TV programs where the 
participants sit around a table and hold discussions, but several of 
them are large computer screens, and the actual people are sometimes 
continents away.  Some such presentations are visibly perfect. Others 
suffer from audio and video dropouts, or unexpected and embarassing 
disconnects.   Are they using the Internet?  Maybe, I can't tell if a 
packet got bloated or a stagehand tripped over a wire.   Same result, 
from an end user's perspective.   Is it from an Internet problem?  Not 
enough resources, or flawed design?  Is anybody investigating?  Should 
the government make some rules?



Still, that first Arpa principle remains and IMHO is still very valid.  
Get the *users* involved, especially the non-technical ones.   
Encourage, or somehow force, everyone to use what they're creating, 
envision what might be possible, and make it happen.



Perhaps what we have today is simply the best that can be done.   I hope 
not.


Jack Haverty


On 11/14/23 12:55, David Bray, PhD via Nnagain wrote:

Also a recent Nature study - audio conversations are better at 
creative brainstorms and ideation then audio+video (over whatever 
video platform of choice). Aside from the empirical findings, the 
proposed reason why is video has people's brains trying to make sense 
of a non-life sized images of talking heads presented to us in ways 
that our historical evolutionary experiences is going "WTF?" at the 
subconscious and unconscious levels.



There's even some evidence that 2D flat videos actually have the body 
in a continuous state of alertness for a potential threat - again 
because our brains are trying to figure out whether these non-life 
sized images of talking heads are a threat or not? (Stay tuned if 
there's ever a lawsuit against an employer for forcing employees to 
endure too many streaming video meetings).



  Virtual communication curbs creative idea generation


https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04643-y


*In a laboratory study and a field experiment across five countries 
(in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia), we show that 
videoconferencing inhibits the production of creative ideas. *


[But also]


*By contrast, when it comes to selecting which idea to pursue, we find 
no evidence that videoconferencing groups are less effective (and 
preliminary evidence that they may be more effective) than in-person 
groups. *


[And finally]
*
*

*Specifically, using eye-gaze and recall measures, as well as latent 
semantic analysis, we demonstrate that videoconferencing hampers idea 
generation because it focuses communicators on a screen, which prompts 
a narrower cognitive focus. Our results suggest that virtual 
interaction comes with a cognitive cost for creative idea generation.*





On Tue, Nov 14, 2023 at 3:37 PM Dick Roy via Nnagain 
<[email protected]> wrote:


    Stanford did a study a number of years ago on how information is
    conveyed between humans.  How much of the information conveyed is
    contained in the words that are spoken???    Answer ... less than
    20%.  That alone explains why F2F is sooooooo important ...

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Nnagain [mailto:[email protected]] On
    Behalf Of David Lang via Nnagain
    Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2023 12:01 PM
    To: Sebastian Moeller via Nnagain
    Cc: David Lang
    Subject: Re: [NNagain] FCC NOI due dec 1 on broadband speed standards

    It's really hard to overhear a nearby conversation that catches
    your interest in
    a zoom environment compared to what happens at the 'hallway track'
    when you are
    in-person

    If all you are interested in is the session contents, then video
    recordings
    (possibly supplemented by the ability to ask questions) is all you
    need.

    but good conferences offer much more than just that.

    David Lang


    On Tue, 14 Nov 2023, Sebastian Moeller via Nnagain wrote:

    > Hi Jack,
    >
    > My argument is this is not a hard or software problem, but a
    wetware problem, hard to shake off million years of evolution. And
    IIRC during covid, didn't the IETF do online only meetings?
    >
    > I am not saying video conferencing is doomed, it came a long way
    in the covid years and is 'here to stay', but it will only replace
    face to face meetings for some conditions, is all I am saying....
    >
    > On 14 November 2023 14:27:28 GMT-05:00, Jack Haverty
    <[email protected]> wrote:
    >> In the beginning days of the Arpanet, circa early 1970s, ARPA
    made a policy decision about use of the Arpanet.  First, Arpa
    Program Managers, located on the East Coast of the US, were
    assigned computer accounts on USC-ISIA, located on the West Coast
    in LA. Thus to do their work, exchanging email, editting
    documents, and such, they had to *use* the Arpanet to connect
    their terminals in Washington to the PDP-10 in California - 3000
    miles away.
    >>
    >> Second, ARPA began requiring all of their contractors
    (researchers at Universities etc.) to interact with Arpa using
    email and FTP. If your site was "on the Arpanet", you had to use
    the Arpanet. If you wanted your proposal for next year's research
    to be funded, you had to submit your proposal using the net.
    >>
    >> This policy caused a profound attention, by everyone involved,
    to making the Arpanet work and be useful as a collaboration tool.
    >>
    >> JCR Licklider (aka Lick) was my advisor at MIT, and then my
    boss when I joined the Research Staff.   Lick had been at ARPA for
    a while, promoting his vision of a "Galactic Network" that
    resulted in the Arpanet as a first step.  At MIT, Lick still had
    need for lots of interactions with others.   My assignment was to
    build and operate the email system for Lick's group at MIT on our
    own PDP-10. Lick had a terminal in his office and was online a
    lot.   If email didn't work, I heard about it.   If the Arpanet
    didn't work, BBN heard about it.
    >>
    >> This pressure was part of Arpa policy.  Sometimes it's referred
    to as "eating your own dog food" -- i.e., making sure your "dog"
    will get the same kind of nutrition you enjoy.   IMHO, that
    pressure policy was important, perhaps crucial, to the success of
    the Arpanet.
    >>
    >> In the 70s, meetings still occurred, but a lot of progress was
    made through the use of the Arpanet.   You can only do so much
    with email and file interactions.  Today, the possibilities for
    far richer interactions are much more prevalent.   But IMHO they
    are held back, possibly because no one is feeling the pressure to
    "make it work". Gigabit throughputs are common, but why does my
    video and audio still break up...?
    >>
    >> It's important to have face-to-face meetings, but perhaps if
    the IETF scheduled a future meeting to be online only, whatever
    needs to happen to make it work would happen?  Perhaps...
    >>
    >> Even a "game" might drive progress.  At Interop '92, we
    resurrected the old "MazeWars" game using computers scattered
    across the show exhibit halls.  The engineers in the control room
    above the floor felt the pressure to make sure the Game continued
    to run.  At the time, the Internet itself was too slow for
    enjoyable gameplay at any distance.   Will the Internet 30 years
    later work?
    >>
    >> Or perhaps the IETF, or ISOC, or someone could take on a highly
    visible demo involving non-techie end users.   An online meeting
    of the UN General Assembly?   Or some government bodies - US
    Congress, British Parliament, etc.
    >>
    >> Such an event would surface the issues, both technical and
    policy, to the engineers, corporations, policy-makers, and others
    who might have the ability and interest to "make it work".
    >>
    >> Jack
    >>
    >>
    >> On 11/14/23 10:10, Sebastian Moeller wrote:
    >>> Hi Jack,
    >>>
    >>>
    >>>> On Nov 14, 2023, at 13:02, Jack Haverty via
    Nnagain<[email protected]> wrote:
    >>>>
    >>>> If video conferencing worked well enough, they would not have
    to all get together in one place and would instead hold IETF
    meetings online ...?
    >>>     [SM] Turns out that humans are social creatures, and some
    things work better face-to-face and in the hallway (and if that is
    only building trust and sympathy) than over any remote technology.
    >>>
    >>>
    >>>> Did anyone measure latency?   Does anyone measure throughput
    of "useful" traffic - e.g., excluding video/audio data that didn't
    arrive in time to be actually used on the screen or speaker?
    >>>     [SM] Utility is in the eye of the beholder, no?
    >>>
    >>>
    >>>> Jack Haverty
    >>>>
    >>>>
    >>>> On 11/14/23 09:25, Vint Cerf via Nnagain wrote:
    >>>>> if they had not been all together they would have been
    consuming tons of video capacity doing video conference calls....
    >>>>>
    >>>>> :-))
    >>>>> v
    >>>>>
    >>>>>
    >>>>> On Tue, Nov 14, 2023 at 10:46 AM Livingood, Jason via
    Nnagain<[email protected]> wrote:
    >>>>> On the subject of how much bandwidth does one household
    need, here's a fun stat for you.
    >>>>>
    >>>>>   At the IETF’s 118th meeting last week (Nov 4 – 10, 2023),
    there were over 1,000 engineers in attendance. At peak there were
    870 devices connected to the WiFi network. Peak bandwidth usage:
    >>>>>
    >>>>>   • Downstream peak ~750 Mbps
    >>>>>   • Upstream ~250 Mbps
    >>>>>    From my pre-meeting Twitter poll
    (https://twitter.com/jlivingood/status/1720060429311901873):
    >>>>>
    >>>>> <image001.png>
    >>>>>
    >>>>> _______________________________________________
    >>>>> Nnagain mailing list
    >>>>> [email protected]
    >>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/nnagain
    >>>>>
    >>>>>
    >>>>> --
    >>>>> Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
    >>>>> Vint Cerf
    >>>>> Google, LLC
    >>>>> 1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor
    >>>>> Reston, VA 20190
    >>>>> +1 (571) 213 1346
    >>>>>
    >>>>>
    >>>>> until further notice
    >>>>>
    >>>>>
    >>>>>
    >>>>>
    >>>>>
    >>>>> _______________________________________________
    >>>>> Nnagain mailing list
    >>>>>
    >>>>> [email protected]
    >>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/nnagain
    >>>> _______________________________________________
    >>>> Nnagain mailing list
    >>>> [email protected]
    >>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/nnagain
    >
    >

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