Presence and Telepresence Scholarship: Challenges Ahead

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Presence and Telepresence Scholarship
Challenges Ahead

• Matthew Lombard, ISPR

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OVERVIEW

• Title double meaning
• Warning
• Examination
• Applications to other areas of scholarship

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OVERVIEW

• My experience
• Challenges
• Definitions and terminology
• Measurement
• Cohesive theory
• Ethics of deception
• Community
• Alliances
• Grand and mid-level challenges
• Conclusion
• Questions/Discussion

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MY EXPERIENCE

• Parasocial interaction with DJs, TV characters
• Structural features
• Jungle TV, CASA
• Natural and direct responses (screen size and
  personal space...)
• Presence and ISPR Big picture views

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DEFINITIONS AND TERMINOLOGY

• Challenge Adopt explicit, precise and fewer
  definitions and terms

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DEFINITIONS AND TERMINOLOGY

• We have too many terms for too many
  presence-related concepts

Machine presence Cognitive presence Behavioral
presence Subjective personal presence Environmenta
l presence Temporal presence Physical
presence Self presence Emotional presence Remote
presence
Personal presence Real presence Symbolic
presence Mere presence Mediated presence Cultural
presence Social presence Witness
presence Augmented presence Immersive multimodal
interactive presence Copresence

• Others threaten ownership of telepresence term

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DEFINITIONS AND TERMINOLOGY

• Is technology involved (yes, no, either way)?
• What is phenomenon a property of (objective
  mode of communication, subjective person)?
• What is source of stimuli (external/internal)?
• How is technology perceived (accurate/inaccurate)?
  
• What is aspect of interest (spatial, social,
  cultural, engagement, realism)?

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DEFINITIONS AND TERMINOLOGY

• Complicated typology

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DEFINITIONS AND TERMINOLOGY

• Recommendation Consenus is impossible but be
  explicit and precise, resist creating new
  definitions and terms.
• Presence and telepresence
• Objective and subjective
• Phenomenon vs. cause or effect
• Spatial and social
• Remote, virtual, and medium telepresence
• Mediated and nonmediated
• Real/imaginary and realistic/unrealistic

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MEASUREMENT

• Challenge Develop and use standardized,
  comprehensive, flexible, diverse, valid and
  reliable measures.

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MEASUREMENT

• Self report questionnaires
• Slater, Usoh and Steed (SUS)
• Presence Questionnaire (PQ) (Witmer Singer)
• Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ) (Schubert)
• ITC-Sense of Presence Inventory (ITC-SOPI)
  (Lessiter et al.)
• MEC Spatial Presence Questionnaire (SPQ)
  (Vorderer et al.)
• Temple Presence Inventory (TPI) (Lombard et al.)

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MEASUREMENT

• Physiological measures (skin conductance, heart
  rate, EEG, EMG)
• Behavioral observation (social behaviors,
  startle, posture)
• Other (Breaks in Presence BIPS, qualitative
  measures)

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MEASUREMENT

• Standardized to compare results
• Comprehensive not just one dimension or a
  couple items
• Flexible for different contexts/media
• Diverse questionnaires, behavior, physiological
• Valid content, construct, criterion
• Reliable intra-item, test-retest

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COHESIVE THEORY

• Challenge Develop a comprehensive theory of
  (tele)presence that explains, predicts, is
  parsimonious, falsifiable and heuristically
  provocative.

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COHESIVE THEORY

• Three pole model (Biocca)

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COHESIVE THEORY

• Focus, Locus and Sensus (Waterworths)

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COHESIVE THEORY

• Levels of Presence (Riva Waterworth)

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COHESIVE THEORY

• Measures, Effects, Conditions (MEC) (Wirth et al.)

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COHESIVE THEORY

• Capacity Limited, Cognitive Constructivist (CLCC)
  (Nunez)

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COHESIVE THEORY

• Comprehensive not just one dimension
• (Tele)presence presence too ambitious?
• Multi-level (neuro to cultural) too ambitious?
• Explains not just A leads to B
• Predicts just A leads to B
• Parsimonious elegant
• Falsifiable not just consistent w research
• Heuristically provocative new questions

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ETHICS OF DECPTION

• Challenge Develop, adopt and propagate a
  comprehensive ethical code of conduct for those
  who create presence experiences.

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ETHICS OF DECPTION
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ETHICS OF DECPTION
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ETHICS OF DECPTION
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ETHICS OF DECPTION
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ETHICS OF DECPTION
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ETHICS OF DECPTION
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ETHICS OF DECPTION
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ETHICS OF DECPTION

• Potential key principles
• Participants must be informed in advance about
  existence and nature of illusion.
• Independent intelligent entities must be
  programmed to do no harm.
• Scholars and creators of technology must consider
  likelihood of positive and negative consequences
  of technology.

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COMMUNITY

• Challenge Develop a cohesive and connected
  international transdisciplinary academic
  telepresence community.

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COMMUNITY

• Weregrowing

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COMMUNITY

• But weredispersed

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COMMUNITY

• Weredispersed

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COMMUNITY

• Weredispersed

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COMMUNITY

• Were very international, but Europe centered
• Were connected, but through independent hubs
  ISPR and presence-l, FETs PEACH,
  Presence-research.org (OMNIPRES)
• Were multidisciplinary (parallel,
  noninteractive) rather than cross-, inter- or
  trans-disciplinary

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COMMUNITY

• Reasons to build community
• Find complete literature, identify and fill gaps
• Share data and adopt theories, methods, etc. from
  others, work together, synergize
• Build standardized definitions, measures,
  theories
• Personal, administrative, granting benefits of
  identity
• To meet grand and other challenges

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ALLIANCES

• Challenge Strengthen ties with real world
  entities related to telepresence.

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ALLIANCES

• Reasons to pursue alliances
• Academics have expertise and interest but
  research benefits from access to real world
  applications, users and questions
• Industry has products and resources but benefits
  from academics research and advice/opinion for
  product design and marketing
• Increase profile of concept, phenomena

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ALLIANCES

• Conferencing Cisco, HP, DVE, Polycom, HPL and
  others (e.g., Telepresence World)
• Military (e.g., ICT)
• Electronics (e.g., Philips)
• Cinema (e.g., IMAX)
• Robotics (e.g., Hanson)
• Games (e.g., Nintendo)
• Museums, medical companies, adult

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ALLIANCES

• ISPR, PEACH as contact points, clearinghouses

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GRAND AND MID-LEVEL CHALLENGES

• Challenge Identify, pursue and reach appropriate
  field-wide goals.

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GRAND AND MID-LEVEL CHALLENGES

• PEACH Science and Technology - Ambitious
• Realizing the Matrix Creating technologies and
  the science for jacking in
• Creating a Teleportation Gateway (as in the
  Holodeck in Star Trek)
• Living parallel lives using virtual clones
  altering the feeling of history through memory
  alteration

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GRAND AND MID-LEVEL CHALLENGES

• PEACH Applications
• Creating better systems for rehabilitation using
  immersion
• Creating architecture through immersion
• Delivering interactive storytelling in virtual
  reality
• Achieving Presence in other cultures and times
  Using VR to go and visit and experience them there

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GRAND AND MID-LEVEL CHALLENGES

• PEACH Collaboration
• Making possible real-feeling meetings using full
  Immersion
• Implementing haptic interaction with feedback in
  VR or in tele-operation for Joint Action
• PEACH Virtual social presence
• Creating real feeling persons in virtual reality
  (virtual people)

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GRAND AND MID-LEVEL CHALLENGES

• PEACH Manipulate experience of self
• Develop a device to modify and simulate our most
  "internal" experience Bodily self consciousness.
• Systematically implement and experiment with
  singular and multiple first, second and third
  person virtual representations of self
• Manipulation of subjective time in immersive
  environments

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GRAND AND MID-LEVEL CHALLENGES

• PEACH Steps along the way
• Build useful tools for manipulations and
  measurements

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GRAND AND MID-LEVEL CHALLENGES

• Science and Technology arts, humanities,
  ethics,
• Need specificity, measurable criteria for success
• The so what question (Cisco)
• Grand vs. mid-level challenges Handbook of
  minimum cue levels
• Process challenges, as here

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CONCLUSION

• The future?
• Meet challenges and thrive?
• Fail or ignore challengesand die?

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QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION

• Matthew Lombard
• President, ISPR
• lombard_at_temple.edu
• http//ispr.info