Giuseppe Mantovani

“Real” Presence: How Different Ontologies Generate Different Criteria for Presence, Telepresence, and Virtual Presence

This article claims that the meaning of presence is closely linked to the concept we have of reality, i.e., to the ontology that we more or less explicitly adopt. Different ontological stances support different criteria for presence, telepresence, and virtual presence. We propose a cultural conception of presence that challenges the current idea that experiencing a real or simulated environment deals essentially with perceiving its objective physical features. We reject commonsense ingenuous realism and its dualism opposing external reality and internal ideas. In our perspective, presence in an environment, real or simulated, means that individuals can perceive themselves, objects, and other people not only as situated in an external space but also as immersed in a sociocultural web connecting objects, people, and their interactions. This cultural webstructured by artifacts both physical (e.g., the physical components of the computer networks) and ideal (e.g., the social norms that shape the organizational use of the computer networks)makes possible communication and cooperation among different social actors by granting them a common reference grid. Environments, real and virtual, are not private recesses but public places for meaningful social interaction mediated by artifacts. Experiencing presence in a social environment such as a shared virtual office requires more than the reproduction of the physical features of external reality; it requires awareness of the cultural web that makes meaningfuland therefore visibleboth people and objects populating the environment.

Is Computer-Mediated Communication Intrinsically Apt to Enhance Democracy in Organizations?

Recent studies on social and organizational processes involved in computer-mediated communication (CMC) are discussed. A technological deterministic approach, which views CMC as inherently apt to support democracy in organizations, is challenged. Claims about equal access, overcoming socialbarriers, openness and de-individuation, are critically examined with reference to up-to-date literature. Our point, consistent with sociotechnical theory, is that CMC, especially in E-mail use, can alter rhythms and patterns of social interactions in ways both powerful and pervasive, neither positive nor negative in themselves, but shaped by local contexts of use. Stress on social identity processes involved in CMC is suggested as relevant to further research.

The Vepsy Updated Project: Virtual Reality in Clinical Psychology

Many of us grew up with the naive assumption that couches are the best used therapeutic tools in psychotherapy. But tools for psychotherapy are evolving in a much more complex environment than a designers chaise lounge. In particular, virtual reality (VR) devices have the potential for appearing soon in many consulting rooms. The use of VR in medicine is not a novelty. Applications of virtual environments for health care have been developed in the following areas: surgical procedures (remote surgery or telepresence, augmented or enhanced surgery, and planning and simulation of procedures before surgery); preventive medicine and patient education; medical education and training; visualization of massive medical databases; and architectural design for health care facilities. However, there is a growing recognition that VR can play an important role in clinical psychology, too. To exploit and understand this potential is the main goal of the Telemedicine and Portable Virtual Environment in Clinical Psychology--VEPSY Updated--a European Community-funded research project (IST-2000-25323, http://www.vepsy.com). The project will provide innovative tools-telemedicine and portable-for the treatment of patients, clinical trials to verify their viability, and action plans for dissemination of its results to an extended audience-potential users and influential groups. The project will also develop different personal computer (PC)-based virtual reality modules to be used in clinical assessment and treatment. In particular, the developed modules will address the following pathologies: anxiety disorders; male impotence and premature ejaculation; and obesity, bulimia, and binge-eating disorders.

Building a Bridge between Different Scientific Communities: On Sheridan's Eclectic Ontology of Presence

Sheridans recent paper (1999) on presence is particularly relevant to research on virtual environments (VEs). Sheridans eclectic ontology and his model of evaluation proposed as a bridge to close the gap between different positions are discussed. A modification of the evaluation model is suggested to make it apt to provide common ground for different perspectives. VEs are boundary objects that interest various research communities with different worldviews, and cooperation among these communities is necessary if VEs are to become tools for communication and coworking.

The need for a socio-cultural perspective in the implementation of virtual environments

For many researchers, virtual reality (VR) is first of all a technology. This vision is also well reflected in the growing research work concerned with virtual environments: most of it has been addressed primarily the development of new rendering technologies rather than the highly interactive and dynamic nature of user-system interaction that VR supports. However, this focus on technology is disappointing for developers and researchers. To overcome this limitation, this paper describes VR as an advanced communication tool: a communication interface in single-user VR, and a communication medium in the case of multi-user VR. This leads us to propose acultural concept of presence as a social construction. Lying at the base of this view are two elements that guarantee an elevated sense of presence: acultural framework and the possibility ofnegotiation, both of actions and of their meaning. Within this view, experiencing presence and telepresence does not depend so much on the faithfulness of the reproduction of ‘physical’ aspects of ‘external reality’ as on the capacity of simulation to produce a context in which social actors may communicate and cooperate. The consequences of this approach for the design and the development of VR systems are presented.The first author is responsible for the preparation of Section 3. The second author prepared Section 2. Introduction and Conclusions were prepared by both authors. Moreover, to both authors must be attributed the definition of contents and the final structure of the paper.

Exploring the Suitability of Virtual Environments for Safety Training: Signals, Norms and Ambiguity in a Simulated Emergency Escape

Abstract: This study aims at exploring the suitability of virtual environments for safety training in large public spaces. A virtual library was constructed which simulated many of the physical and normative characteristics of the ‘real’ university library which was the target of the virtual safety training project. In the virtual library, two different types of signals (fixed red signs vs. moving green arrows) for guiding people to the emergency exits were presented, and their efficacy on escape times was tested in three different conditions, differing with respect to the distance of participants from the escape exits (measured according to the number of corners separating participants from direct visual discovery of the emergency exit). No significant differences between the different kinds of signals were found, whereas surprising discrepancies among the three conditions appeared. The differences in performance in the three conditions were contingent upon the presence in the virtual library of peculiar environmental features embodying social norms – like a red ribbon indicating no transit. Uncertainty about the sense of such normative features in the context of the simulated emergency made some participants prone to peculiar knowledge-based errors consisting of inadequate sense-making of the normative aspects of the ongoing situation. This kind of error shows that the simulation succeeded in capturing one of the crucial characteristics of ‘real’ social context: ambiguity, which mostly depends on the fact that the social norms structuring public spaces and defining their legitimate uses are often ill defined and context dependent. Every valid experience in safety training requires coping with ambiguity in situations.

Internet Haze: Why New Artifacts Can Enhance Situation Ambiguity:

Social and psychological research on the Internet has been biased for a decade by the deterministic assumption that technology per secan have an ‘impact’ on individuals, groups and organizations. This presumption is challenged by a different perspective, which conceives of technology as a social production and relies on ‘ethnographic’ methodologies to investigate the specific ways in which social actors interact with technological tools. Adoption of new artifacts tends to disrupt existing task–artifact cycles and at the same time create new skills in social actors and new features in environments. For this reason new artifacts can enhance, rather than reduce, the ambiguity of everyday situations. The changes in the environment stimulated by the introduction of new artifacts may remain undetected for a while because social actors cannot rely on previous experiences to make sense of the new situation. The wide diffusion of the Internet can render more problematic the selection of information, its control by ordinary actors, interpersonal communication and self-presentation (which in cyberspace is exposed to special forms of deception), and the sense of presence in an environment. The ambiguity of the situations emerging on the Web can be reduced by awareness of the characteristics of cyberspace as an artifact under construction and by the development of shared cultural norms to regulate the exchanges taking place on the Web.

Legitimating technologies: Ambiguity as a premise for negotiation in a networked institution

Discusses some issues related to the networking of an institution and presents the results of a field study. Institutions are bound not only to profit‐making but also to values and norms which shape their everyday lives; the introduction of computer technologies into institutional environments requires legitimization, not only in terms of time and money spared but also in terms of the perceived appropriateness of the new technological tools with respect to institutional goals. However, computer networks are not fixed objects, impermeable to the characteristics of the organizations in which they are introduced and used. On the contrary, they are configured by their users, to be adapted to their social environments. The field study, observed how members of an institution struggled to make sense of the introduction of a new computer network, and found that the final move in the process of legitimization was made by the institution itself, through a “committee for information technology”, which produced a normative artifact defining the official policy of the institution negotiating the new computer infrastructure.

Analysing and evaluating multi-actor multi-goal systems in use: social contexts and participation in three Vocational Guidance Systems (VGS)

Abstract The contexts of real use of information technology (IT) tools may be highly specific. Their distinctive features, especially normative and informational influences related to the social roles involved, can affect deeply both design and actual use of the artefact. Analysis and evaluation of the ongoing human-artefact interaction, particularly in systems addressed to multi-actor multi-goal environments like Vocational Guidance Systems (VGS), should thus be viewed as basically context-dependent. Studying three types of VGS (currently developed and running in public and private vocational agencies in Northern Italy), we constructed a taxonomy connecting types of systems and types of social environments, in order to explain differences between systems in design, communication and outcome. To assess the characteristics of the different types of VGS as dialogue tools, we considered their Social Design Structure (SDS) and Operating Social Structure (OSS), connecting steps and distance in each user-artefa...