Telepresence for the Teleworkplace: Living-in versus visiting Cyberspace

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Telepresence for the TeleworkplaceLiving-in
versus visiting CyberspaceMaking Telepresence a
Reality

• Gordon Bell
• (gbell_at_microsoft.com)
• Bay Area Research Center
• Microsoft Research
• http//www.research.microsoft.com/barc/gbell

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Outline

• Telepresence and Telework
• Teleworking environment
• Overhead Support Administrivia
• The work
• Telepresence dimensions
• Telepresentations the 2nd killer app!
• Telecollaboration killer app to come?
• The work
• Is it for everyone?

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Therapy from long distance debated- SJ Mercury
5 April 1998http//www.sjmercury.com/breaking/h
eadline1/056580.htm
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What is Telepresence?

• Being there without really being there or then

• Injecting your presence

into tele-space

• Being immersed in the tele-space

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Telepresence Components

• Video
• Audio
• Slides, images, web pages
• Text chat
• Shared applications
• Whiteboards
• Voting, question taking

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Time-shifting beats Space-shifting

• Gets around scheduling problems
• Worlds time zones!

• Lets me pause, rewind, browse, play at faster
  speeds

• Immortality

• Time-shifting requires STORAGE !!!

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Todays killer app Telepresentations

• One-way mostly
• Not meeting or collaboration settings
• forget the network latencies and messy social
  issues

• Presenter and/or audience telepresent

• Slides and audio get you 99 and are bandwidth
  cheap

• Practical and low cost now

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Tomorrows killer app
Telemeetings

• Compete with the phone
• Cheaper long distance rates
• Higher audio quality - e.g. surround sound

• Features
• multi-party with rendezvous setup
• Not just audio
• shared documents, applications, video, etc

• Why not record everything too ?

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Telework (cyber) work telepresence being
there while being here, and at some other time.

• Goal teleoffice/teleworkplace workplace office
• The teleworkplace is ideally just a remote
  office W/O
• Communication, computer, and network support!
• Team interactions for work! CSCW is a rat
  hole!
• Interaction at coffee, meeting rooms, in
  offices
• Administrative support for phones, information
  (especially paper) management, keeping track of
• Always on always connected to intranet/intranet
  ...!
• Telecommunication aka phone email -- the first,
  killer apps
• Telepresentations -- the 2nd killer app
• Tele-collaboration -- the killer app to come

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Videotaped Lectures convert to Video On Demand
for Telepresentations
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Telecommuting versus time
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Teleworking CW 9/1/97

• 15 2 yr increase, 11 Mpeople, avg. 19 Hr/wk
• 42 of US Cos 22 have policies (screening,
  worker expectations, liability, IP protection,
  etc.
• Are telecommuters more productive?
• 30 yes
• 50 same
• 4 no
• 16 dont know
• Are telecommuters more accessible?
• 13 yes
• 40 same
• 40 no
• 7 dont know

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Living in Cyberspace the environment for
telepresence / telework
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SOHO (small office, home office)network
computing environment
IP Dial tone (Internet, phone, videophone) gt1.5
Mbps
POTS (legacy services)
NT Server for comm/network, POTS/IP gateway,
file, print, compute
LAN
NC
PC
PC
NC, NetPC, Xterm, etc.
...
...
Phone
Phone
Phone
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Intrastructure
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Tecra Libretto Replacement at 3
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A Teleworkplace
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A Whiteboard
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SOHO AKA COMOHO Teleworking Environment or is
it?Guardian Angelintercom,records what we
read, see, and hear protects us fromourselves
and others
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Not shown ECG GPS
Libretto, .5mm
PCS Pilot
Compass altimeter
Libretto PS, Ricoh Camera Swiss Army Knife
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Audio, pix, T, P, ECG, location, physiological
parameters1 GB
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Conference Rooms with Teleconferencing
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(No Transcript)
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Telemeeting clone
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Telework clones being in more than one place at
the same time
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Animatron...
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Telework communications dimensions

• Who and how many are interacting?
• What is the nature of the interaction?
• Which professions?
• Mechanisms How are they interacting?

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The Space of Telepresencefor work
Mechanisms (how) Synchronous Asynchronous
ICQ, Internet phone phone conf. RealAudio
simple graphics Workspace for remote program
control Whiteboard (groups)... Videophone Remote
Rover (Robot Videophone)
email Formal presentations sans video ... Voice
Videomail Video lectures courses
Profession
person-computer 11 personal communication 2
site-site conferencing n site conferencing 1p
broadcasts computer management distributed
groups with gt2, 10, lt100,
view (troll) hallways with informal
interaction 1 1 videophone calls for (problem
solving, authoring) interviews classes formal
meetings (lectures, conferences, stockholder
meetings, town halls, etc..)
Type of Work (What)
Group Interaction (Who)
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Telepresence who and what

• WHO
• 11 person-person communication
• nm 2-site-site video conference
• 1n-site broadcasting or Mbone narrowcasting
• distributed group. gt2 - 5 - 10 - 100
• ----
• person-computer
• computer management (no persons)

• What
• view (troll) hallways, seeking interaction
• 11 interview, status report, etc.
• 1-6 videophone calls for (design, problem
  solving, authoring)
• hold staff meetings with 1 or more members
  distributed
• attend classes
• formal meetings (lectures, conferences,
  stockholder meetings, town halls, etc..)

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Telepresence Mechanisms (for Work)
Synchronous Internet phone phone
conferencing Internet Videophone RealAudio
Overhead graphics Shared applications Whiteboard
s CU SeeMe on POTS IP Videophone Mbone Video
conferencing Room Video conferencing Remote Rover
(Robot Videophone)
Asynchronous voice mailSTT email ... TTS Home
pages replace bulletin boards, file transport,
and document distribution Schedule
Notes Voice and Video email Telepresentations
(meetings, presentations, courses)
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Voice and Visual Alternatives (in order of
increasing B/W)

• Voice
• TTS (synthetic or speaker driven)
• 4 Kb-64 Kb codec of real voice
• Stereo of real voice
• Stereo with sound source identification
• Projection into arbitrary virtual world
  environment
• variable speed

• Visual AKA Video
• Text avatar (simple photo)
• Avatar with voice sync
• Avatar of real person
• Video codec based projection
• Postage stamp POTS
• Mailing label ISDN or 2x POTS
• Compressed VHS (200 Kbps)
• MPEG 2 (1- 4 Mbps)
• Speaker tracking, 1-n cameras
• VR image of a large space
• 3d images holodeck
• Animatron e.g. Barney
• Mobile Animatron
• Meeting in real or virtual world

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Telepresentations The 2nd killer app?
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Telepresentations Being There (e.g. meeting,
lecture, confererene) Without Really Being There
(or Then)

• Presenter or audience need not be physically
  present
• Reach a wider audience
• I have a schedule conflict.
• Anybody with a web connection can participate
• Reduce costs
• No need to travel to attend or participate in a
  presentation
• Education training, corporate communication

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(No Transcript)
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MotivationTelepresentations

• Presenter and/or audience telepresent

NOT meeting or collaboration settings Forget the
nasty social issues!
Mostly one-way
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TelepresentationElements

• Slides
• Audio
• Video
• Script, text comments, hyperlinks,etc.

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TelepresentationsThe Essentials

• Slide and audio a must
• Add some video (low quality) to make us feel
  good
• Storage and transmission costs low

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TelepresentationsThe Killer App

• Increased attendance lower travel costs
• Practical and low-cost NOW
• e.g. ACM97 - 2,000 visitors in real space, 20,000
  visitors on Internethttp//research.microsoft.com
  /acm97

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This talk

• Would you like to pause, rewind, browse?
• Do you wish you could have seen this
• At home?
• At another time?
• How much does a present speaker add? How much
  would you pay for real presence?

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(No Transcript)
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About storage one CD holds four, near VHS
quality hours of video
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Telepresentation Structure
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Telepresentation Features

• Essential
• High quality audio and Graphics aka slides
• Important
• Some essence of the presenter - even a few still
  images
• Non-Essential
• Video of the presenter
• Two-way communication

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Telepresentations will be a well-defined app by
2001.

• ACM97 was the first telepresented conference with
  Mbone multicast servers that host the
  conference cf. http//www.research.microsoft.com/a
  cm97
• Bet More people will view the conference from
  Cyberspace than that attended it.
• Big question will telepresentation technology
  AKA tele-learning affect learning and education?

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Telecollaboration The next killer app

• interacting to achieve a common objective
  basically, its communications enabling or
  disabling people

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Tools for telecollaboration

• Powerpoint conference record, Precept mbone
  multicasting
• NetShow On demand viewing of video 28.8 - 100 Kb
• CuSeeMe audio, video, whiteboard
• NetMeeting audio, 2 way video, chat, whiteboard,
  program sharing
• Placeware for large scale meetings,
  presentations, and collaborations
• Latitude MeetingPlace phone data conference
• Active Touch web-based phone data conference

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Active Touch Live Collaboration Architecture
Collaboration Clustering Server
Data Collaboration Server
Data Collaboration Server
Data Collaboration Server
CTI Server
CTI Server
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Active Touch Data Collaboration Services
Data Collaboration Server
Chat
Doc Review
Interactive Forms
Application Sharing
Desktop Sharing
To CTI Servers
Presentation
Web Tour
Application Viewing
Launch NetMeeting
Conf. Control
Multipoint Comm. Service
HTTP
TCP/IP
Web Server
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Active Touch Administration and Enterprise
Integration
Admin and EI
Archive Module
Directory Service Module
Billing Accounting
Object Storage
Security Module
Public Key Infrastructure
Enterprise Data Repository
Active Directory Service (LDAP)
Database
Database
Third Party Repository
Database
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Collaboration Application Server Criteria

• Robust, scalable
• Data Telephony Tight Integration
• Web Integration
• Easy-To-Use
• Security
• Open Standards (HTTP, TSAPI, LDAP, T.120,
  Encryption)
• Enterprise Application Integration
• Performance
• High Availability
• Customizable

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Telecollaboration

• Low latency, high bandwidth for interactivity,
  feeling, nuances
• Channels
• speech (including spatialization)
• the work I.e. document, diagram, program,
  presentation, etc.
• video output forces attendance and holds
  attention
• video input state of the receiver cues
• whiteboard
• chat channels

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Telework It takes screens, sound, and
bandwidth, stupid
http//research.microsoft.com/barc/GBell/
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By April 1, 2001 videophones will ship in 50 of
the PCs and be in use.

• Gordon Bell vs Jim Gray1996 (one paper, loser
  gets fed)

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How to fail at video-telephony

• Have just a few video-telephones defy Metcalfes
  Law
• Have audio latency
• Make calling more difficult and time-consuming
  than placing a phone call
• Eliminate gaze awareness and eye contact

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How to fail at video-conferencing

• Break the video-telephony rules
• Stick with poor mono audio and dont provide
  stereo
• Make the images very small so that users cant
  see the other participants
• Destroy any sense of spatial positioning

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Four steps to video-telephony enabling
telemeetings

• Very low cost IP telephony becomes ubiquitous
• Evolve audio to provide spatial awareness aka
  stereo, quad, etc.
• Make recording easy to do
• Add multi-party

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Limits of Computer Supported Collaborative Work
-- CSCW

• We dont understand collaboration
• We do it for design of chips, software, 777s
• One person has the mouse problem
• Camera is important NOT for comm. channel,but
  for signals from attendees (did they get
  it),and to keep force attendee attention
• Parallel processing and single threading of tasks
• Limited parallelism for the job
• Brooks Law matters!

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Attending Several Simultaneous Meetings
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Alternative Computing Futures

• Metropolis (1926)

• Forbidden Planet (1956)

• 2001 (1968)

Photos courtesy of Microsoft Cinemania
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But does anyone want telework?
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A People Model Who wants to telework?
Spock formal(in writing) Self-control informal
(verbal) Sally Field
Analyticals.. being right, detailed analretentiv
es
Driversresults oriented megalomaniacs
Managing Interpersonal Relationships(MIR) 2D
Model
broadcast- push
email
Amiablesconsensusbuilders spinelesswimps
Expressives...want recognition, need
contact psychotics
--------------chat----------------
Intensity
Souter Evangelism Swaggert
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Problems socio vs technical

• Isolation loneliness
• need for communication/stimulation
• chance meetings -- serendipity of ideas
• loss of group/teamwork skills
• danger of becoming terminal
• interruptions focus
• lack of support staff to help, answer ?s
• supervision and ability to have 11
• unclear that many people want it they simply
  need the contact with people

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Good News

• Bandwidth will come
• Audio and video compression is improving to live
  within POTS limit
• Videophones will be built-into all PCs within 5
  years at 0 cost
• Telepresentations are here for live and on
  demand useThis will change education!
• Telecollaboration tools work for simple apps and
  will improve

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Telepresence 5, 10, 50 year goals

• hold a meeting of type, m
• university or technical course
• interview, staff meeting, co-ordination, board
  meeting, annual meeting, town hall,
• with p, distributed persons
• with as much interactivity, I, and feeling, f
• such that people prefer being telepresent and
• meetings are provably more productive
• meetings will evolve to be asynchronous versus
  traditional synchronous enabling full
  time-shifting so that people can be in two places
  at the same time

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The End
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Time and Motion Study

• Where does all the time go?
• Can anything be parallelized?
• Is there an app to help?
• Will the gain be worth the pain?
• What is likely to be a fruitless and/or over-
  worked area e.g. tele-collaboration?

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Time and motion of teleworker (me)context
doing

• Context
• Microsoft
• Families
• Wife
• Friend
• Children grandchildren
• TCM
• GB Corp
• Startup
• Consultant-at-large

• Doing
• sleeping, feeding, traveling
• goofing-off, social interacting, vacationing
• supporting infrastructure
• administriving
• grazing, learning
• communicating
• WORKING?

building, deciding, interacting, presenting,
problem-solving, testing, thinking, writing
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Group Structure of Interaction

• solo
• pair
• small productive group of 3-6
• group gropes, edutainment, formal meetings 10-100
• whole organization or organization-at-large
• world

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Administrivia paper and phones
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Administrivia, paper and phone coexistence

• With no administrative support, we are our own
  administrative assistants, secretaries, and
  gofers.
• Forms and travel arrangements
• Calendar management
• Paper handling and its database
• Identification, input, indexing, and interface
• Interface to message management database
• Message management database
• email, voicemail, fax, contacts, calendar
• phone and videophone must be on line
• Personal databaseS management are a major time
  sink

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Coexisting with Paper

• Paper disappears as transmission storage media,
  but not for portability screen dump
• Goals of automating paper
• No more time-consuming than discarding it
• Input, Identify, OCR, Index, save, and retrieve
  in every possible context
• Biz cards, fax, reports, brochures, ...photos
• Give things back in context
• Totally eliminate the need for copiers
• Interface unobtrusive and humane
• Success is measured by elimination of FILING
  Cabinets!!

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What paper must we handle?

• letters (diminishing, given email)
• forms that require signatures, often via fax
• clipped articles e.g. graphs, journals, misc.
  book pages
• technical reports that need to be OCR'd with figs
• copies of documents e.g. stocks, signature pages,
  and licenses. Originals are stored elsewhere.
• small, non-critical document e.g. insurance
  policies, receipts, warrantees
• large documents that are OCRd e.g. contracts.
  Original storage may be kept somewhere else.
• scraps of paper e.g. receipts, checks, bills
  must be legal images
• business cards that go into an electronic address
  book
• photographs and slides. legacy acetate
  presentations?
• 700 page text image requires 50 Mbytes, at a cost
  of 5. A 5 GB disk holds 100 books., or 1000
  bbif encoded!

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Coexisting with the telephone

• Overall integration with the computer
• Answering machine, recorder, and transcriber
• And database with transcription, keywords, and
  voice
• Wildfire it finds me
• ICQ capability for both computer and phone

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Capturing, storing and retreiving everything
weve ever heard (said), seen (presented), and
read (written)
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Memex
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Storing all weve read, heard, seen
Human data-types /hr /day
(/4yr) /lifetime read text, few pictures 200 K
2 -10 M/G 60-300 G speech text _at_120wpm 43 K
0.5 M/G 15 G speech _at_1KBps 3.6 M 40 M/G 1.2
T stills w/voice _at_100KB 200 K 2 M/G 60 G
video-like 50Kb/s POTS 22 M .25 G/T 25
T video 200Kb/s VHS-lite 90 M 1 G/T 100 T
video 4.3Mb/s HDTV/DVD 1.8 G 20 G/T 1 P
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Storage and data-rate requirements for common
office data-types
Documents image compressed /GB page or
fax 100 K 4K 10K250K business card 5
K 500 200K2M snapshot 3 M 100
K 10,000 350 page book 25 M 1-2 M
40750 Human data-types /hr /day
/lifetime read text, few pictures 200 K 2 -10
M 60-300 G speech text _at_120wpm 43 K 0.5 M
15 G speech _at_1KBps 3.6 M 40 M 1.2 T Video
comp. 50KbPOTS 22 M .25 G 25 T video comp.
200Kb VHS 90 M 1 G 100 T video comp. 4.3Mb
DVD 1.8 G 20 G 1 P
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Telepresence for work requirements

• Telepresence space and time shifting
• Goal teleoffice/teleworkplace workplace office
• Limited space, bandwidth, administrative and
  computer support infrastructure, AND interaction
• Need run all office and professional apps,
  support computing environment, and be always
  connected
• New app opportunities telepresentations (e.g.
  NetShow, Powerpoint conferencing)
• Web is the greatest library ever created
• Create presence for collaboration by apps
  sharing (e.g. NetMeeting, Placeware)
• Administrative support including paper handling!
• Short term bets large disks (e.g 20GB), more
  displays, videophones, cameras, scanners,
  bandwidth limits

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Telework telepresence a forcing function into
several areas...

• Home Network
• Network connection is always on and at high
  speed
• Support (at reasonable cost) for all apps --
  the teleworker system admin
• Office work e.g. paperlessness, message mgmt
  recording all we read, write, hear, and see--
  the teleworker admin. assistant aka secretary
• Telepresence attending meetings and lectures,
  taking courses, etc. without travel
• Collaboration on a work project without travel

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Why telepresence now?
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Its the near-term platforms, stupid!(multimedia
is finally happening)

• Text 2D graphics gtgt images, voice, video
• The WEB being anywhere and doing anything
• Disk sizes and cost c1998
• 50-100 / GB
• 4 GB standard CD-R and 20-40 GB MO R/W
• The videophone will emerge for distributed
  conferences
• Document, picture, and video capture and
  compression
• 10,000 to 250,000 pages / GB 10,000 pictures /
  GB
• 40-400 books / GB or 0.25-2.50 / book
• Plethora of CAMERAS EVERYWHERE!
• More Screens. We need at least two!
• Voice and video compression
• 250 hours / GB voice
• Stamp size-VHS 12-50 hours / GB
• Audio Surround sound that is part of V-places

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Telework Summary

• The web is the enabler. We still lack B/W.
• Technology is coming, research lags in handling
• Storage of all text, audio, and useful video
• Videophones, cameras, netPCs, WebTV, etc.
• More pixels we require to increase presence
• Adequate audio the killer component
• A big part of telework is just office
  productivity
• Coexistence with computer, paper, telephone,
• Data-types require a multimedia database
• Computer and network management is a real time
  killer
• CSCW is a rathole. We dont understand CW
• The killer apps are simple telepresentations and
  shared apps
• Being connected all the time is essential