Media spaces are electronic settings in which groups of people can work together, even when they are not present in the same

place Place may refer to: Geography * Place (United States Census Bureau), defined as any concentration of population ** Census-designated place, a populated area lacking its own municipal government * "Place", a type of street or road name ** Of ...

and

time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

. In a media space, people can create real-time

visual The visual system is the physiological basis of visual perception (the ability to detect and process light). The system detects, transduces and interprets information concerning light within the visible range to construct an image and buil ...

and acoustic environments that span physically separate areas. They can also control the recording, accessing and replaying of images and sounds from those environments. After its initial conceptualization in the late 1980s, media spaces has gone through a rapid and significant evolution that allowed for its current widespread use, which was mainly influenced by the mobilization & individualization of technological media and the variety that this trend has brought to the tech world.

Research and development

Media Spaces were the subject of research during the mid- and late-1980s, led by Robert Stults and Steve Harrison, in the

Smalltalk Smalltalk is a purely object oriented programming language (OOP) that was originally created in the 1970s for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, but later found use in business. It was created at Xerox PARC by Learni ...

group at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The research was carried out in the Design and Media Spaces Area of the Software Concepts Laboratory, as part of a larger inquiry into systems and media to support the social process of

design A design is the concept or proposal for an object, process, or system. The word ''design'' refers to something that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent, and is sometimes used to refer to the inherent nature of something ...

. The Media Space at Xerox PARC was implemented in laboratory sites in

Palo Alto Palo Alto ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a charter city in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. Th ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, and Portland,

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

. These employed live and recorded audio and video, video and audio switching, networked workstations and servers, and inter-site network connection, in order to provide for a form of

telepresence Telepresence is the appearance or sensation of a person being present at a place other than their true location, via telerobotics or video. Telepresence requires that the users' senses interact with specific stimuli in order to provide the feeli ...

within offices and work areas at the two sites. Interactions among staff at the sites were conveyed in real time by video and audio, and by the networked workstations; and the interactions were recorded and played back, and digital indexes of the records were prototyped. The live and recorded interactions permitted communications among the connected spaces, as well as asynchronous participation. Recording and retrieval, integrated with persistent live connection, was a major distinguishing feature between Media Space and

videoconferencing Videotelephony (also known as videoconferencing or video calling) is the use of audio signal, audio and video for simultaneous two-way communication. Today, videotelephony is widespread. There are many terms to refer to videotelephony. ''Vide ...

as it was understood at the time.

Modernization of the technology

Early research surrounding media spaces has played a pioneering role in the development and use of new media spaces— which have started gaining momentum in the early 2000s with the commercialization of internet access and comparably mobile, single-user devices. The concept has consequentially evolved into encompassing a wider spectrum of utilization techniques and styles as the practice was no longer depended on fixed-station installations to function.Akoi, Paul M; Szymanski, Margaret H; Woodruff, Allison (2006)
Media Spaces in the Mobile World
(PDF). ''Paul Akoi''. Soon, the development of

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

that establish the said recording and retrieval through a continuous live (

internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

) connection on demand followed, making the function of creating media spaces within singular yet versatile devices possible. This newfound convenience surrounding the use of media spaces also played a part in the prevalence of such devices and

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a smartphone, phone, tablet computer, tablet, or smartwatch, watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop appli ...

lications to be more on demand in the 2010s, further expanding the area of interest and potential for modern media spaces by gradually centralizing the services and their providers.

The COVID-19 pandemic

After the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

started to spread globally, it was necessary to take precautions to control the diseases' spread, and this meant that face to face interactions that were once the norm would also be altered accordingly. With the implementation of

social distancing In public health, social distancing, also called physical distancing, (NB. Regula Venske is president of the PEN Centre Germany.) is a set of non-pharmaceutical interventions or measures intended to prevent the spread of a contagious dise ...

and

quarantine A quarantine is a restriction on the movement of people, animals, and goods which is intended to prevent the spread of disease or pests. It is often used in connection to disease and illness, preventing the movement of those who may have bee ...

campaigns, almost all social and professional interactions were progressively adapted to alternative communication methods worldwide. For most professional settings this meant almost a complete transition to, "work from home" or simply

remote work Remote work (also called telecommuting, telework, work from or at home, WFH as an initialism, hybrid work, and other terms) is the practice of work (human activity), working at or from one's home or Third place, another space rather than from ...

. Specifically in the U.S., such hybrid or remote work was practiced by only 20% of the before the pandemic, and rose up to 71% afterward. During this time, the rapid integration of modern media space technologies and their utilization as the main vessel to most human interactions has had long-term effects on the overall business practices that are still observable and persistent today. For example, many of the videoconferencing software (i.e. groupware) such as Zoom,

Skype Skype () was a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for IP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also had instant messaging, file transfer, ...

Microsoft Teams Microsoft Teams is a team collaboration platform developed by Microsoft as part of the Microsoft 365 suite. It offers features such as workspace chat, video conferencing, file storage, and integration with both Microsoft and third-party applicat ...

, Google Meet, and many more are still actively used by most businesses and educational institutions in the aftermath of the pandemic, although not as much as they did during it. Although these applications seemingly revolve around videoconferencing from the first glance, they share and employ the vision of recording and retrieval features that earlier media space research had experimented with through features like session recording,

cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles, suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may ...

uploads, and screensharing.

References

External links

VisAge
Original current implementation of a Media Space. {{DEFAULTSORT:Media Space User interface techniques Collaborative software

Research and development

Modernization of the technology

The COVID-19 pandemic

See also

References

Further reading

External links