Submitted in December, 1998, for the course, Communicating Memory at the University of Pennsylvania.  (This paper is approximately 30 pages.) 
 

"Videoconferencing and Memory of Previous Media"

by Eric Miller
 

In Realms of Memory,Pierre Nora writes, "Societies of memory are no more...  Modern societies are driven by change."1  While it may be true that many of the people who make up modern societies do not consciously organize their lives around memories of how things were done in the past, it continues to be a basic fact of the human condition that we perceive the present in terms of what we have known in the past.  Memories of the past continue to "constitute the identity of a people and give them an orientation in time and space."2 

This paper looks at videoconferencing, a relatively new activity, and asks the following questions:  When people come to videoconferencing, what do they think they are doing?  What does videoconferencing remind them of?  What memories of other communication activities imbue their videoconferencing activity?  What forms and patterns do they impose on videoconferencing: how do they shape the experience to align it with their senses of 'how things are done'?  When people videoconference, do they feel they are they engaging in a radically new activity, different from all that came before it, or do they feel that videoconferencing is a reappearance in a new form of an activity they remember?  What traditions do they think they are continuing?  What are the tales by which people make sense out of their relationships with videoconferencing technology?  How have people constructed their visions of the technology?  How, if at all, have their visions of videoconferencing been shaped by representations of it in popular culture, especially on TV news, talk, and fictional programs?  Is there any discrepancy between people's intended and actual uses of the technology?  In short, What are people's master narratives about the evolution of communication technology, about the place of videoconferencing in this evolution, and about their own roles, as videoconferencers, in this evolution? 

In the course of my research, I have come upon many answers to these questions.  Perhaps the only thing all of my informants would agree upon is the idea that videoconferencing is a new technology that will become increasingly prevalent in the future.  Thus, as people approach it, they are remembering all of the times in the past when they came upon a new activity and struggled to master it. 

This paper is primarily an ethnographic one.  My methodology in collecting data was to seek out and question people who I knew had had some involvement with videoconferencing.  One thing I asked informants was, "What are some of your memories of videoconferencing experiences?"  (Please note that this subject--memories of particular videoconferencing experiences--is a very different one than the aforementioned central issue of this paper, namely, the question of how memories of other communicative practices affect people's videoconferencing.)  I often told informants that I was especially interested in stories of what had worked and what had not, and how these stories shape their present videoconferencing activities. 

Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have now had some experience with videoconferencing (most of them with personal computers); perhaps the majority of the people on the planet have now seen it done on TV or have heard it talked about.  The situation is analogous to the time, some thousands of years ago, when writing was first coming into being: the great majority of people could not do it, but word spread that somehow, among certain elite groups in urban centers, it was being done.  The knowledge of the existence of a new technology causes people to see their 'old' ones in a different light, and to fantasize about what it might be like to use the new technologies, perhaps even to model their uses of the old technology after the way they understand the new one is used.3  Thus, I could have attempted to collect data about people's conceptual placement of videoconferencing from virtually anyone with whom I would have been able to come into contact.  However, I chose to select as my informants those who themselves have either been exposed to, or have actually participated in, a good deal of videoconferencing.  These people are for the most part in the field of education, but also in business and the arts.  I have focused on people who have videoconferenced on or near the campus of the University of Pennsylvania.4   My informants include the following individuals (all are affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, except the first individual on the list, and the final three): Della Clark (President, West Philadelphia Enterprise Center); Prof. Alan Mann (Anthropology Dept.); Prof. Joseph Farrell (Classical Studies Dept.); Jay Treat (School of Arts and Sciences Educational Technology); Sister Teresita Hinnegan (Nursing School); Chris Cook (Penn Video Network); Phil Miraglia (SAS System Administration); Erin Fallon (Multimedia Educational Services; Gates Rhodes (Law School Media Center); Ellen Reynolds (Annenberg School for Communication video lab); Prof. Roger Abrahams (Folklore Dept.); Eric Miller (Folklore Dept. graduate student, co-owner Eric & Co. Video); Diane Dunbar (New York City Board of Education teacher, co-owner Eric & Co. Video); Matthew Saunders (Arts in Technology consultant); and Prof. Stephen Schrum (Speech and Drama Dept., University of West Virginia).  Before coming to these informants, I will present a small amount of cultural history and will discuss some points of view of other informants, as reported by myself and in the writings of scholars. 

I am both the author of this paper and an informant.  I have attempted to keep my personal point of view compartmentalized, and I will (with the exception of the current paragraph) only overtly express my own vision of videoconferencing in the section in which I play the role of informant.  However, I want to state my prejudice openly at this point, so that the reader will be able to recognize it and discount it if it appears inappropriately.  I tend to see videoconferencing in the context of a mythic struggle to further democracy and as a reincarnation of interactive face-to-face communication.  To be fair as a scholar, I will do my best to discuss points of view that oppose and ignore this point of view. 

There are two terms that I would like to define before proceeding to the data: one is "videoconferencing," the other is "memory."  Videoconferencing can be defined as two-way video and audio telecommunication.  Video that appears on TV comes at a rate of 30 visual frames per second.  This frame rate gives the illusion of realistic, flowing reality.  Most videoconferencing presently available is 15 frames per second  or less.  When the rate drops below 12 per second, the experience is distractingly strobe-like and choppy.  I will set as an arbitrary level that when the frame rate drops below one frame per second, we are no longer talking about videoconferencing, but rather a series of still images, like a slide show. 

The other term that I must define is memories.  As mentioned above, my subject here is not primarily people's memories of particular videoconferencing experiences, but rather how their approaches to videoconferencing are colored by their memories of other communicative practices. 
 

Videoconferencing is most definitely a phenomena that is yet to come into its own in the general culture.  For this reason, I, and perhaps others, tend to experience narratives about videoconferencing as rhetorical, rather than poetic.5    Rhetorical narratives are open-ended in that the listener is invited to help finish the story.  Poetic narratives are closed in that all elements of the narrative are presented and a resolution is reached: the listener need only observe.  I find that narratives about videoconferencing cry out for the listener to learn from these mistakes, to try such-and-such technique because it really worked, etc.  Also, to listen to a view of how to remember videoconferencing, to hear some remember what videoconferencing is, is to be invited to join that person's community.  Memory is "a system of social attachment and social control."6  When one joins a community, "one needs to be mnemonically socialized" to see the world in the same terms as other community members.7  "There are conventional 'plot structures' we normally use to narrate the past."8  These conventions are also used to perceive, narrate, and shape the present. 

Videoconferencing seems to have first appeared in popular consciousness in the late 1800s: 
 

In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell had invented and patented the telephone; and in 1877 Thomas Edison had recorded sound and had applied for a patent on a phonograph...  For centuries, the portrayal and the putative portrayal of illusions and images had attracted the attention of magicians, charlatans, and pseudo-scientists.  There appeared to be a popular demand for visual displays and exhibitions of the unexpected as part of the social fabric of living.  The demand was partly filled by the tregetours, or wandering entertainers, of the Middle Ages, with their silvered concave mirrors, by peep shows and magic lantern shows, by theaters and pageants, and by  phantasmagoria.  Other means, panoramas and dioramas, offered their audiences two-dimensional images which were the precursors of the modern  newsreels and travelogues as seen on television...  The appeal of 'distant vision' was beguiling and was enhanced by the ideas, crude and simplistic as  they were, which had been propounded in the 1870s.  These notions encouraged writers and cartoonists to evoke fantasies showing, perhaps, the eventual outcome of "seeing by electricity."  9

A related vision of telecommunicated images is held by the Cree Indians of northern Manitoba, Canada (videoconferencing is not mentioned--the article dates from 1977): 
 

The magic of telephone, radio, and TV is not new to the Cree, for they believe  that they have always had the ability to bring 'live' sights and sounds from  distant places into their midst through 'conjuring'...  An analysis of the impact  of television  on the Cree requires basic understanding of how Cree culture  traditionally conceptualizes communication...  Traditionally, it was the  shaman who was able to conjure these spirits.  The spirits are summoned by the shaman for many purposes: to report on occurrences or persons in distant  places, to aid in curing the sick, to foretell the future, to locate lost objects,  and in general to bring news and wisdom to the members of the community  via the medium of the shaman.  The spirits are also enlisted to punish wrongdoing and to help fight off evil in the spirit or the real world.  An   important characteristic of the spirits is that once the spirit is summoned to the tent for questioning by the shaman, the spirits must respond honestly... (Some Cree) refuse to allow their children to watch TV in part because they believe that, since communication across great distances and the bringing of news is the business of the shaman who is able to defend himself against  spirits and evil conjurors, children are not equally safe from the evil consequences of TV.  Cree feel that TV...is like an evil spirit that is capable of producing nightmares and possessing bodies of children to make them act badly.  10

Certain Australian Aboriginal peoples, especially the Warlpiri, have been videoconferencing since 1993.  It seems that these people perceive videoconferencing as a return of sorts to traditional face-to-face communication: "Unlike the telephone or radio, videoconferencing effectively conveys the extensive system of hand gestures that Aborigines use while speaking.  And unlike broadcast television, it is interactive and therefore facilitates the extensive consultations that aborigine leaders traditionally employ in reaching ceremonial and community decisions."11 

A reporter in San Francisco described his experience of videoconferencing with some Warlpiri in a 1995 article: 

 
These people use the gear daily to allow separated family members to talk  with one another; to perform family and tribal rituals that used to require a  great deal of travel; to take classes and participate in health clinics; and,  perhaps most intriguing, to display and sell their artwork to galleries and  collectors around the world...  It doesn't take long for me to realize that while I am fidgeting and constantly checking my image in the local monitor, the  Warlpiri seem strangely unselfconscious in front of the camera...  I can't help but feel that it is I who am out of place in front of all the video gear, not the  Aborigines.  After all, they are in the village where they have spent all their  lives, surrounded by their families...  Personal contact with anyone interested  in their art is very important, especially because the stories are so personal and have been handed down from generation to generation.  In a sense, Warlpiri stories are living creations. The social aspects of videoconferencing  make it a natural medium for the Warlpiri...  In the Warlpiri world, stories "belong" to individual families.  A story consists of a painting, songs, dances and storytelling--all occur simultaneously in a kind of communal social event.  "The story I paint came from my grandfather's dreamtime," (a Warlpiri woman) explains. "Would be big trouble if someone else tried to paint it."  12

Della Clark has boxes of memories.  She is president of the West Philadelphia Enterprise Center (WPEC), a 'business incubator' for small minority businesses, which is housed at 4548 Market St.  This building is commemorated by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission with a plaque on a pole on the sidewalk outside the building.  In the lobby, WPEC itself has elaborate displays on the lobby walls: photographs and text tell the story of the building.13  The material in the lobby is just the beginning of the commemorative efforts, however.  In every hallway, outside every doorway, there is a little plaque with text telling what the area was used for in the American Bandstand days, and what it is used for today.  Della Clark wants to expand these efforts, to make the entire building even more of a living museum.  She would like to have one room set aside for a display of the memorabilia in those boxes; and she would like to have a gift shop with tee-shirts and other merchandise.  She wants to put a lot of these images on a website, and attract businesses and organizations to hold special events in the building, especially in the renovated Studio B.  She is also considering bringing in school groups, and providing teaching materials for the teachers and students to take with them. 

Della Clark is an African-American woman.  She is not related to Dick Clark, who hosted American Bandstand in the building from 1957 until the station that produced it moved in 1964.  Dick Clark has come back to help her and the building celebrate a recent anniversary.  When the building reopened recently and Della Clark threw a gala fund-raiser, Dick Clark returned to help host the event.  The resultant publicity caused dozens of Philadelphians to spontaneously bring to Della Clark their memorabilia from the time when they and their colleagues danced on American Bandstand.  Most of these bearers of memorabilia were Italian-Americans, who had been dancing to African-American music and musicians.  While African-American musicians were allowed on camera, they were always on a raised stage at one end of the space, safely segregated from the young white dancers, the "Regulars."  Ms. Clark told me that African-American youngsters had also often been allowed to dance in the studio--in fact, it was by watching them that the predominantly Italian-American youngsters often picked up dance moves, but that the African-American dancers had never been allowed on camera, that is, they had had to stay in one area where the cameras were never directed.  I found this story to be incredibly ironic.  To me, it summed up the story of how people of color have been exploited for so many years in so many ways.  Della Clark, however, is concentrating on how to make the best of the situation, to utilize the past to make the present better.  She told me that she believes Dick Clark wants to help WPEC partly in order to salve his own conscience, and to make himself look good.  "When people ask him, 'Whatever happened to that building in that black neighborhood where American Bandstand was broadcast from?', he does not want to have to say, 'Oh, it's closed down.'  He'd rather be able to say, 'A black lady is in there and a minority business group is developing it.'"14 

Dick Clark hosts one of the biggest international New Year's Eve telecasts: "Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve."  In a sense, it is a special-event version of American Bandstand.  Over the course of the evening, he calls upon and introduces various sites around the country.  Della Clark tells me that Dick Clark has said to her, "'After this New Year's Eve, I want to sit down with you and talk about including the Philadelphia site in next year's New Year's Eve event.'"15   Next year's event is the 'big' one--the year 2000.  When I told this story to my friend Edwin Pillay, a man who was born in South Africa of east Indian parents and who has never been to India, but has been driving a taxi in NYC for almost twenty years, Edwin Pillay said, in the voice of Dick Clark, "Yes, now let's go to where it all began!"16   I think this would be a great slogan for Della Clark, and I will suggest it to her.  I tell this story to indicate the multicultural and international nature of the history of rock and roll and the 'big' videoconference, the one that will take place on New Year's Eve of the year 2000.  According to this narrative, the Philadelphia site will be revisited, but this time African-Americans will be allowed to dance with whites--in fact the whole situation will be framed in the following way: now the local African-Americans are entrepreneurs, they own the building, they have refurbished the hall, they are growing their own businesses. 

Of course, the reality is a bit more complicated.  WPEC was partially founded by the Wharton Business School--although Della Clark has raised millions of dollars on her own and seems very much in charge.  Walter Annenberg owned the building during the American Bandstand period: he gave it to the local public broadcasting TV/radio station when the commercial station left the building in 1964.  The building remained vacant for 17 years, until 1996, when when WPEC renovated it.  Moreover, the new telecommunications equipment is on site partly through the doings of the 'white man.'  The Microsoft-Compaq Computer Room is full of donated computers from these white-owned companies.  And the videoconferencing facilities on site are provided by the Caliber Learning Network, an evidently white-owned (their website does not mention any ethnic or racial group), national company brought in by the Wharton School.  The Wharton School uses the Caliber facility in the WPEC building for some of its own videoconferencing.  Thus it is unclear exactly who is in charge.  From Della Clark's point of view, she is permitting Caliber to be there on the grounds that they will be helping WPEC and the minority businesses it is growing there.  In sum, a complex partnership is occurring here: the idea that WPEC is a totally independent organization is perhaps a bit romantic.  On the other hand, Della Clark seems to be very aggressively and effectively leading WPEC and exploiting (in a positive sense) whatever help has been offered. 

To Della Clark, memories of American Bandstand serve as a background against which to act in the present.  She sees an opportunity to use videoconferencing to rekindle and extend the legacy of fame and fortune that occurred at this site in the past.  It is a case of hoping that 'lightning will strike twice'--but this time with a difference: the folks to benefit will be local people who actually were behind the cultural production in the first place, and there ideally will be a collective benefit to the entire community.  This is in contrast to her memory of Dick Clark and his team, who became famous as individuals and got out.17 

On a recent Saturday, I was fortunate to witness the first ever videoconference of a PennAdvance class from the Caliber facility in the WPEC building.  Anthropology professor Alan Mann was teaching a class in the evolution of homo sapiens to students in 6 different locations around the country.  Prof. Mann himself drew attention to the historic nature of the occasion.  He told the students: "When I was a teenager in the 60s, I used to come here and dance on the show."18   He expressed that he never expected that he would be teaching a class from the same site (actually, an adjacent studio). 

It seems that for the University of Pennsylvania, an institution with a famous brand name, videoconferencing represents in part an opportunity to merchandise itself.  This is indicated by the title it has given its new media initiative: Distributed Learning.  This name implies that it will distribute the Penn experience, dole it out.  The title does not stress interactivity.  Thus, it seems that here the University is building on a sense and memory of being central, and is thinking in terms of top-down, center-outward communication.  This follows the traditional TV and radio broadcast paradigm.19 

One possible reason that videoconferencing has been slow to catch on, in various contexts, is that authority figures tend not want to lose a sense of control.  It seems to me that, in general, academicians--as well as politicians--might be hesitant to videoconference because of the risk of being embarrassed in the course of one-to-one conversation, which can be a great equalizer.  Authority figures tend to feel comfortable in being somewhat inaccessible, and in being able to control the process by which words, whether spoken or written, are presented.  Memories of the recent event at an Ohio campus where President Clinton was embarrassed by students and others who questioned the need to once again bomb Iraq perhaps discourage the powers that be from implementing videoconferencing on a mass scale.  To such authorities, videoconferencing could in part represent the possibility of social chaos and disorder, and as such must be reigned in as much as possible.  This discourse is at times couched in terms of concern about pornography on the Internet, and the concern that terrorists can post recipes for bombs there. 

It has been posited that the devaluing of physical distance caused by telecommunication also leads to the devaluing of sociological distance in hierarchies, especially between such dyads as men and women, parents and children, and politicians and the public.  According to this narrative, videoconferencing is leading society to greater and greater informality as we all see each other's sensual and backstage regions.20  It is only to be expected that authorities would at times resist this leveling process. 

However, many authority figures are trying to find a way to enter the Interactive Age, to strike a balance between the control of the lecture and the possible chaos of unbridled conversation.  On Oct 31, 1998, I witnessed Prof. Joe Farrell deliver a paper by videoconference to scholars in Oxford, England, who were attending a conference about the interactive text.  After he read his brilliant, very dense paper for 20 minutes, there were compliments, but very little discussion.  My guess is that those at Oxford may not have heard him absolutely clearly, but they had not wanted to cause embarrassment and slow down the proceedings by having technicians on both ends fiddle with the equipment.  In fact, before the event, Prof. Farrell told me that a past videoconference had gone well until a technician had interrupted to, from Prof. Farrell's point of view, unnecessarily adjust the audio.  Prof. Farrell also mentioned that at a past videoconference, other professors had brought silly or childish objects along which embarrassed him and made the proceedings less enjoyable.  It seems that Prof. Farrell has mixed feelings about his memories of videoconferencing: he does not relish loss of seriousness and concentration; on the other hand, after the Oxford videoconference, he mused to me, "What sense does it make to read a paper at a conference anymore?"21   He is searching for a more interactive way to videoconference, but he is working from the model of the formal lecture and the reading of a paper.  Thus we see that peoples' memories of videoconferencing are wrapped up in their yearning for an end to isolation and alienation, but without giving up their position of control and power and dignity.  Videoconferencing can be seen to some extent as involving a rebirth of certain qualities of face-to-face communication, namely storytelling in a tribal setting, where all take part together.  This 'singing-dancing throng' experience, as mentioned in the literature of Folklore, is at the same time yearned for by the modern individual, and feared.  Attitudes toward videoconferencing are likewise mixed--people want contact, but fear being abused.  It is up to designers of systems to help make a middle way possible. 

The Annenberg School for Communication is presently setting up a videoconferencing suite that will link its Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. public policy sites.22   The Annenberg School seems to specialize in the study of mass communication, that is, telecommunication from the top down via extremely expensive and high quality technology.  Thus, as it begins to work with videoconferencing it is not surprising that it is developing a system that, at least as it is presently being described to the outside world, will be closed to the outside world beyond the Annenberg School's own policy center in Washington, DC.  The School seems to be perceiving and molding videoconferencing according to its memories of past technology: it is trying to fit the new into the old mold.  It seems that it does not see videoconferencing as anything radically new or democratizing, but rather as a tool to be used in suites between policy centers.  According to this paradigm, the system is private (closed, point-to-point) and only a privileged few can control and use the technology. 

Ellen Reynolds of the Annenberg School video lab kindly sent me an e-mail in response to my inquiry telling me: "Unfortunately, I have no memories of videoconferencing.  I have seen a few examples, have never been a participant.  I feel it is a ridiculous technology at this time, only a far foreshadowing of things to come.  It does not stay in the memory at all, at least for me."23  I found this statement to be very interesting because Ellen Reynolds says she has seen videoconferencing and she remembers seeing it, yet she does not consider these recollections to be memories.  This implies that for something to qualify as a memory, a person has to consider it significant and worthy.  Memories are often of first-time, defining events.  It seems that Ellen Reynolds has yet to experience this 'first event.'  For her, videoconferencing has not yet begun. 

There is certainly awareness of other views of new media at the Annenberg School.  Last night, for example, Prof. David Eisenhower gave a guest talk about the 60s for a Sociology class held in the Lounge of Goldberg College House on the Quad.  A student asked Prof. Eisenhower where, if anywhere he today sees the spirit of the creativity, rebelliousness, and idealism of the 60s.  His answer was that he sees it in small communication technology companies.24   Thus he is identifying the sense of radical democracy with videoconferencing.  This of course does not mean that Prof. Eisenhower himself puts videoconferencing into this cultural position, it is only to say that, in certain cases, he has identified it as being present there. 

Sister Teresita Hinnegan of the Nursing School implemented a distance Mid-Wife Training program four years ago, with the assistance of master videoconferencing technician, Gates Rhodes.  Gates Rhodes is a pioneer of videoconferencing at Penn and in the world beyond.  The Nursing School has developed a seminar style of videoconferencing in which case studies are presented by students at various sites for extended periods of time.  I attended three sessions of a first-year class this fall.  At the end of the third class, I was given a chance to speak with the students, both those on- and off-site.  Many of the students voiced complaints about the imperfect implementation of the system.  Some distant students said there were times in some classes where no technician moved the camera, so they were left to look at a blackboard when no one was drawing on it.  Others told of professors who ignored them, and said that they had learned that it was not a good idea to interrupt professors for technical requests.  The most powerful statement by on-site students was that they were bitter that they were not allowed to bring food or drink into the room.  (The class was three hours, with a break half-way through.)  When I mentioned these complaints to Sr. Teresita (Prof. Hinnegan), her response was that she needed to protect the microphones on the tables.  She asked me if I had children, her point being that these students were irresponsible.  She was also upset that some equipment had been stolen recently from the studio: students had neglected to shut the door on the way out.  Thus, the discourse that I encountered at the Nursing School had a good bit of negativity to it.  It was largely in the vein of a family in which the children feel underprivileged and the parent feels underappreciated.  One student said to me, after I pointed out the need to protect the microphones, "But we are important too!"25   She was implying that she, as a paying student, should have rights, that she should be valued at least as much as the equipment.  Truly nobody here was getting quite what they felt they needed.  The master narrative, on all sides, was that of lack of appreciation and respect.  All three parties with whom I spoke--Sr. Teresita, the on-site students and the off-site students--were feeling a bit abused, if not by the others, then by the general situation.  This is a case where technology was partly coming between people.  I am hopeful, however, that with careful adjustments and an effort to bring everyone more into the process, the problems can be resolved.  What must be remembered about videoconferencing is that because it offers the possibility of so much, when it does not work to its full potential the parties involved can feel excruciating frustration.  This can happen if interactivity is not carefully nurtured.  The saying about relationships in general--'You have to work at it, you can't take it for granted'--especially applies to a videoconferenced relationship--each party has to constantly be asking the others if they are getting what they need, and compromises have to be made by all concerned to make the best of the situation, with awareness that because of technological and financial limitations, things are not going to be perfect. 

Gates Rhodes, who helped start the videoconferencing program at the Nursing School, now works in the rather more plush environment of the Law School.  He kindly answered for me some questions about his memories of videoconferencing.  In response to my question about outstanding failures or success, he wrote, "Most of my failures have been because of a major transmission breakdown...  In 1994 and 95. ISDN and our video network was far less stable than it is today...  Now I always test the connection before the official conference, I always have the tech phone contact numbers handy to quickly handle an emergency, and will have an emergency protocol ironed out ahead of time."26   The discourse here is one quite familiar to me as a technician: one does all one can, but sometimes things come up which one just can't do anything about.  It is a scary, risky business, in which one is constantly risking humiliation.  Often when there is a problem, the situation is ambiguous: it is unclear to others (and sometimes even to the technician him/herself!) whether the system is having trouble due to the technician's negligence or ignorance, or whether it truly an 'act of God,' and out of his/her control.  The memory that Gates Rhode is evoking here is that of the daredevil who must keep a cool head and be as prepared as possible, physically and intellectually, for unforeseeable occurrences.  Gates Rhodes recalled "long distance collaborations with ISDN and network technicians to correct problems that seemed insurmountable just as the class was filing in and the guest speaker was about to begin.  There was such a sense of relief among the principles involved!"27  This discourse is related to the cyberpunk as cowboy discourse: riding bulls and bareback broncos, risking death, always on one's own. 

On the positive side, as an enabler, Gates Rhodes mentioned "A group report was given over the videoconference with three group members sitting in studios in three different locations but with the presentation coordinated so there were smooth transitions from group member to group member flawlessly executed as if they were in the same geographic location."28   This is a utopian ideal, a paradise, a promise that is offered by videoconferencing.  There is a very strong sense of beauty and greatness and love associated with this memory or fantasy.  It involves overcoming geographical distance and the distance that occurs between people due to ego, laziness, and all the other things that occur in life to keep people apart.  This quest for personal and professional togetherness is rarely achieved, but it is one thing that many videoconferencers are striving for.  It is not just a 'return to the Garden of Eden' fantasy--it is rather a sense of being true to two aspects our natures which are commonly seen as oppositional: the intellectual side which makes gadgets and likes to tinker, and the emotional side that wants human togetherness.  When this process works, we see that the intellectual, inventing, tinkering side has not been discarded in an effort of anti-intellectual, romantic self-negation, but that the intellectual side has worked in harmony with and in the service of the desire for togetherness and love. 

In the videoconferencing process, one memory Gates Rhodes mentioned has to do with finding the proper role for oneself: one does not want to be too prominent and demanding, and yet one wants to be present.  Gates Rhodes told me of a memory of having erred in this regard: "When experimenting with Cornell in 1992, I was the first beta tester to show a motion video (using CU-SeeMe software) over and over on a Cornell reflector site (the tape was a Nursing School recruiting video--no audio on CU-SeeMe at that time.)  After a week, the principles asked me to stop playing the video because the motion was draining the available network bandwidth from the site."29   Here the more common state of human affairs is entered: someone does too much, leaving too little for others.  One discourse of videoconferencing is about each individual finding his/her proper place, getting his/her appropriate opportunity to communicate widely and freely, yet not dominating others in the manner of broadcast and cable TV.  It is a goal that seems very distant and difficult to achieve, but it is intuitively absolutely possible for those with the vision and feeling and love for it. 

Gates Rhodes reported that in the early 90s he never tried to use CU-SeeMe (over personal computers on the Internet) because of the low quality and the danger of loss of connection.  Instead he was able to videoconference over ISDN lines.  The CU-SeeMe situation has been improving, and Erin Fallon of Multimedia Technology Services has experimented with it over the years.  One project involving classes at Penn and elsewhere about the Dead Sea Scrolls was completed.  Today Erin Fallon has for the moment stopped working with CU-SeeMe: she says there just is not enough faculty demand for her to maintain a system.  This is the memory and discourse of a dead-end.  Life is full of surprises, however: it looks like SAS computing may be purchasing a few new sets of CU-SeeMe software and putting them on dedicated computers.  One never knows how close one is to a breakthrough.  A movie that portrays this beautifully is African Queen: having piloted their ship down toward a great lake, the characters played by Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn collapse exhausted and fevered, their boat stuck in a swamp.  Little do they realize they are just yards away from the big lake!  A storm comes and delivers the rain that frees their boat from the weeds and allows them to get onto the big lake, where they eventually are able to get married and torpedo the enemy ship.  The moral of this discourse is: do all that is humanly possible, and then maybe nature/the divine may help you. 

Memories of lost opportunities is a prevalent videoconferencing discourse.  Phil Miraglia, a senior SAS technician, tells me that years ago, equipment capable of transmitting to satellite was donated to Penn, but nobody knew how to use it, so it was put in storage, and at least as far as he knows, it has disappeared.  He felt is would be useless today, even if it were found.  Chris Cook, who coordinates satellite reception for the University cable TV network, also tells of a lost opportunity: he told me of how years ago administrators talked about getting a van that would be able to transmit, but nothing came of it.30 

Another popular discourse in the videoconferencing world involves the story of an excellent videoconference in the past that was achieved by an outside company coming in to perform a special event.  Prof. Kwesi Yankah of the University of Ghana (visiting the Folklore Dept. this year) and Phil Miraglia (Penn SAS Systems Administration) shared such stories with me.  In Phil Miraglia's case, the event occurred a number of years ago when the University hired an outside company to come with a truck and transmit a University event from a Center City theater.  In Prof. Yankah's case, it involved a telecast from numerous sites in Ghana, which he witnessed from the University of Birmingham in England.  Both of these memories involve a 'white knight' coming in to do the job better than one could ever hope to by oneself with one's everyday colleagues and facilities.  This can be a disempowering discourse in that it can tend to prevent people from taking creative action with the materials they have at hand. 

Chris Cook told me of his efforts in the past to avoid embarrassing situations, much like Gates Rhodes had.  One time, during a snowstorm, the satellite dish on the roof filled with snow, making reception impossible.  Dressed in a business suit, with shiny black shoes, Chris Cook went up to the roof armed only with a small broom.  He could not even reach the lower lip of the dish--the dish being raised ten feet off the roof.  This dish was big as a small house, perhaps 15 yards in diameter. The event had to be canceled.31 

When I visited him recently, Chris Cook took me up to the roof of Sansom West, where he has to go to press a series of buttons to set the angle of the satellite that brings in the signals for satellite reception for special programming.  Were a good deal of money to be spent for additional wiring, he would be able to direct the satellite from his office downstairs, but Chris Cook does not seem to mind having to go up on the roof.  Perhaps there are a number of others duties he must do up there in the room that sits on top of the roof.  I for one was scared to be walking around up there--the railing is quite low, and at one point the walkway is rather narrow.  Chris Cook, however, seemed to take the hazardous conditions in stride, and even seemed to be enjoying himself up there.  Perhaps there is a certain pleasure in the paradox of videoconferencing: one is dealing with immense distances and the highest of technology, but often to make it work one has to perform small, physical actions. 

It was Chris Cook who mentioned to me that the 'common wisdom' is that videoconferencing failed in the 60s because "no one wanted to be seen with their hair net on."32   It was perceived as an invasion of one's privacy in the home.  Thus, the resistance to it was part of the 'resist Big Brother' discourse.  It seems that the fear of Big Brother is not as strong as it used to be.  Perhaps there is a sense that Big Brother is no longer to be so feared because each one of us can become Big Brother, we all can spy on Big Brother, and/or that moreover, if everyone is videoconferencing, Big Brother will be swamped and overwhelmed.  There seems to be some evidence that people are increasingly eager for the interactive experience.  Chris Cook spoke of people's disappointment when they found that University 'videoconferences' were only one-way (Penn Video Network does not have a transmitter, or uplink): if people are to send data back to the presenters, they must do so by telephone or e-mail. 

Diane Dunbar and I have been partners in a video company for 17 years.  We began by documenting peoples' performances, but have moved on to large screen projection and now, videoconferencing.  We have worked on a number of educational videoconferences together.  We share a central interest in face-to-face storytelling and our ambition with videoconferencing is that we are trying to achieve in videoconferencing the warmth, spontaneity, and sacredness ideally found in the face-to-face storytelling event 

Last summer, when I was teaching (as an adjunct professor) a course in the Modern Short Story at St. John's U. (Staten Island campus), I invited Diane Dunbar, who is a New York City schoolteacher, to attend from Manhattan and co-lead an entire class by videoconference (videophone technology).  The discussion was about Alice Walker's story, "Everyday Use."  (Ms. Dunbar, like the author, is from the South.)  After an initial 20 minute discussion of the story, I said I needed a drink of water and left the room.  In fact, I did not want water, I only wanted to give up control of the situation and see what would happen when Ms. Dunbar and the students interacted directly.  What happened was that Ms. Dunbar asked a question about the story and no one answered.  She then asked to see a show of hands as to who in fact had read the story.  The truth came out that only a few students had read it.  So Ms. Dunbar proposed that they read the story together.  By the time I re-entered the room, the reading had begun.  Together, taking turns in a circle, we read the entire story, which took almost 30 minutes.  For me, leaving the room in this way was part of my larger narrative about how videoconferencing involves, at selected times and in selected ways, giving up some sense of control, or, to put it in a positive sense, sharing control. 

Another project Ms. Dunbar participated in with me was an in-class presentation for my Folklore class last spring.  I told three stories that had been collected in Suriname (Anansi stories, derived from Africa).  Ms. Dunbar played the role of responder, answering affirmatively after each line, to signify that she understood and was ready for the next unit of information.  I thought it went pretty well.  However, in an e-mail after the event, Prof. Roger Abrahams wrote: "The task you set for yourself was impossible to achieve--to demonstrate that a storying context can be established through videoconferencing, and that somehow, the experiencing together so induced will have moral vigor outside the presentational context.  People telling stories to each other across distances in order to make a better world?  What you ended up doing was to illustrate the limitations of the technology in establishing any kind of togetherness."33   The master narrative I believe Prof. Abrahams is working from seems to me to be one of 'technology vs. live event.'  I believe Prof. Abrahams feels (or felt) that electronic communication technology is antithetical to folkloric behavior, that folkloric behavior is being stamped out by the presence of electronics.  I, however, am working from the narrative that folkloric behavior can occur through electronics (under certain conditions, namely: the system is interactive, and members of the community have 24-hour access to the technology and know how to use it).  However, Prof Abrahams experienced a degree of cognitive dissonance in dealing with the face-to-face and electronic presences: "I, for one, was extremely uncomfortable in dealing simultaneously with the magisterial tone of the talk you were giving us the class, and the images that were always lurking on the other side of the room, mostly that of your colleague in NY who was pasted onto the frontal plane of the screen."34   If viewed as a competitor with and replacement for face-to-face communication, videoconferencing is indeed a villain; however, if viewed as an alternative to no contact, it is not so bad.  Moreover, there are limits to communication in all media, even face-to-face: my discourse involves trying to make the best of the possibilities of each. 

A third project Diane Dunbar and I worked on together was a videoconference at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, both in April '97 and May '98.  This was with an organization named YouthCaN (Youth in Communication and Networking); 800 NYC high school students attended at the Museum, and, in '98, a few dozen attended in Troy, Alabama, Ms. Dunbar's hometown.  During the '98 event, a skit was enacted about a wolf who gets sick from eating garbage in a state park.  Vacationing students find the wolf and nurse it back to health.  The wolf and the vacationing students were enacted by students on the stage in the Museum.  At one point students in Alabama read poems to the wolf to try to inspire it; throughout the skit, a  student in Alabama drew the background scenes that were projected on a large screen behind the actors on the stage at the Museum. 

To Ms. Dunbar, videoconferencing represents using technology to bring people together.  "When I was growing up, everybody in my family watched TV in their own rooms."35   She experienced TV as a medium promoting isolation and non-communication.  In working with videoconferencing, she is attempting to develop and promote a medium that ideally overcomes that sense of passivity and social isolation.  Also, by connecting students in her hometown of Troy, Alabama with students in NYC and elsewhere, she is bringing them into the larger world, giving them opportunities, and alleviating her own sense of geographical and cultural distance from her roots. 

I see in videoconferencing an opportunity for individuals to take their rightful place in society, an opportunity that began to be out of the reach of the ordinary individual when face-to-face oral and physical communication was superseded by writing.  As Leonard Shlain puts it in The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image,television and videoconferencing represent the "image-tribe (in) its battle with the print-nation."36  Electronic visual communication is part of the "Iconic Revolution."37 

To me, the implementation of videoconferencing is the work that must be done to free people from the oppression of isolation and subservience.  I feel people settle for so little--so little contact with the community, so little self-expression--because they do not realize it could be any other way.  For example, there is something called 'the political system.'  It seems to me that the political system is very far away from the real lives of the great majority of people, in this country at least.  And yet, I feel the reality of non-engagement is largely ignored in the culture's mass-media led public discourse.  Real involvement with the political and cultural aggregate life of the community could be re-achieved in part through video-conferencing, for there could be both point-to-point and group videoconferencing--and at times every single citizen could take part at once.  For example, each participant could be represented by a single pixel (there can be millions of pixels on a screen), or people could be organized into groups, and these groups could be represented in a national videoconference screen/mosaic.  The methods by which to organize the groups, how to enable individuals to speak to the larger group--by random, by passion, by popularity--these are the great structural design issues to be explored.  What videoconferencing means to me is forging the structure of the new community--the international community as well as smaller, more local ones.  It seems to me that developing this system is very much like building roads, bridges, and public spaces; like constructing theaters, arenas, and stadiums.  Thus, when I approach videoconferencing, I do so with the memories of all the past builders of social and community structures.  In "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Walter Benjamin wrote "that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art."38  I seek to return the aura via videoconferencing, because this technology offers the opportunity for each receiver of a work of art or unit of communication to put his/her personal stamp on it, and then keep it or send it back to be incorporated in the whole.  "The technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition.  By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence."39  I associate videoconferencing with, like face-to-face communication, returning that sense of aura, uniqueness, and authenticity to human communication.  It is very much a rebirth of aspects of oral, face-to-face communication, but with the inclusion of the literary (written words can be included in a videoconference, and one should never forget that all of this technology has come into existence and is being maintained through very strenuous application of the written word).  So videoconferencing represents to me a balance and synthesis of the various parts of the brain. 

A few weeks ago, I was hired to attempt to send the live sound and picture of a wedding from a synagogue outside Philadelphia to the mother of the groom, who was very ill with cancer, in her house in Boston.  (This lady died four days ago.)  When I got to the synagogue and set up the equipment, I found to my chagrin that the building's telephone system was incompatible with my videophone devices, which operate over a regular telephone line (I had sent one such device to the house in Boston, and had successfully tested it from my dorm room).  I found there was nothing I could do to make the device work.  Shortly before the ceremony was scheduled to begin, I abandoned this effort and moved, telephone in hand, from the front side of the chapel to the hallway outside the chapel, where I described the entire ceremony.  The groom's mother could hear, in addition to my voice, some of the rabbi's talking and chanting.  I am not exactly sure why, but I choked up and almost broke into tears when I described the white rose petals that had been scattered on the white cloth laid down on the center aisle (the white cloth was made of plastic, I must admit.)  Perhaps I cried because of the attempt these humans were making to achieve a sense of beauty and happiness, which is so elusive and fragile, and the white petals symbolized this to me.  In any case, while I was doing this announcing, I was persistently thinking of the story Ronald Reagan used to tell of how when he had been a sports announcer, one time he had been receiving reports about the game by wire, but had been announcing as if he were actually at the game.  He told of how the wire machine at some point went out of order, and he received no reports for a long period of time.  He kept saying that the batter was fouling off pitch after pitch,  Finally the wire reports resumed, and the batter could be declared out or on base, and the normal announcing process could resume.  I guess the point is that when people do their best, it does not matter so much the degree to which the technology works: people forgive imperfections and let their imaginations fill in the blanks. 

Matthew Saunders was recently awarded a Master of Fine Arts in Arts Administration by the Theater Arts Dept. of Virginia Polytechnic and State University.  Matthew Saunders has been exploring the "potential of distance collaboration between artists, the possibility of new and diverse audiences, and the opportunity for people to interact in a real, useful, and creative ways from places as close as your home or local theater to places across the globe."40   One video-conference event he organized in the course of his M.F.A. career was entitled, "The On-Line Front Porch."  As stated on Matthew Saunder's website, this event 
 

gave the Konnarock Critters (a bluegrass group) an unusual opportunity to  preserve important cultural heritage and educate people in other places who  might not have exposure to old-time music...  Through the magic of high-speed  bidirectional video links, the Konnarock Critters will enjoy a three-day world tour without ever leaving Blacksburg, Virginia...  This event represents old meeting new, creating an interesting dichotomy of cutting edge computer  technology and the traditions of past generations.  41

This shock of recognition is also something that Matthew Saunders mentioned in his own experience with videoconferencing.  He mentioned attending a meeting: "Two summers ago, I was asked to give a presentation at Association for Theater in Higher Education.  It was wonderful to meet people I previously had communicated with only via e-mail and videoconferencing.  There was a shock of recognition--I recognized people from mediated contact.  I remember the shock and pleasure of meeting them in the flesh."44 

Matthew Saunders told me another story about videoconferencing.  He described the work of a San Francisco-based director, George Coates: "George Coates started by going to companies in Silicon Valley, begging developers to let him use their technology.  They thought, 'Crazy artist, he can't hurt us.'  Started allowing him to borrow technologies.  Now, companies are coming to him, asking, 'What do you want, what do you need?'"45  This narrative is from the discourse of artists and explorers throughout the ages who have had to deal with fickle patrons.  One situation that I have run up with in academia is that administrators, quite understandably, want to know what rigorous application one has for videoconferencing.  One can't just say, "I want to play, experiment, talk with people, see what happens."  So there is this struggle between explorers/artists who just want to practice the process and see where it leads, and those with the money who want to know how the process is going to be useful to them and their institutions. 

Matthew Saunders also told me about a production he had directed in which the connection had been lost half-way through the show:  "This was in Renaissance Man.  There was a virtual actress.  She played a spirit.  Performers and audience were in a small theater space on campus; she was in another room.  Well, you know, technology has a way of biting you on the butt at the wrong time.  The sound and video cut out on us in the middle of a scene. The actors had to find a way around it.  Fortunately, the actor had learned both lines, and he spoke for her."  This, like my marriage story, is of the discourse, 'the show must go on.' 

Prof. Stephen Schrum (Dept. of Speech and Drama, University of West Virginia), like Prof. Abrahams, found his experience of videoconferencing to be lacking, in comparison with face-to-face communication: 
 

I taught a course with videoconferencing once. Unfortunately, I was not aware  of this ahead of time, and couldn't really accommodate the distant people.  I had students in my classroom and then on a TV screen (they were 50 miles  away).  This immediately created a bit of a problem because, in my presentations for the course (which was Intro to Theater) I relied very heavily  on live performance to get my points across.  As soon as the camera entered  the picture, I was no longer live, but rather on TV.  In this case, the sense of  dislocation could not be overcome, partly due to lack of time and lack of well-designed technology.  46

Proclaims the headline of an article in the newspaper of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia: "Star Trek System Shoots Federation Into Year 2000."47  In the article, one participant says, "I probably never thought we'd have something like this Jetson-Age stuff, but here it is.  Like anything else, it's a little scary in the beginning.  We have to get used to it."48 Many people I interviewed mentioned Star Trek and the Jetsons.  These fictional shows, along with Nightline and all the other talk and news shows that use videoconferencing have definitely whetted the public's appetite for this type of communication. 

"If you're old enough to remember the 60s, the Picturephone may ring a bell.  When AT&T introduced this telephone with video screen at the New York World's Fair in 1964, people predicted that we'd all be using one soon.  Now, more than 30 years later, desktop videoconferencing is finally making the picturephone a reality."49  This text refers to the hype in the 60s about videoconferencing.  To many people, videoconferencing symbolizes a promised technology that never arrived, thus the falseness of loud-mouthed self-promoters. 

A recent article in Newsweek about videoconferencing in college dorms attempted to place videoconferencing in the model of writing letters: "Writing home isn't what it used to be.  First e-mail pushed out paper and postage; now parents are having to gear up for a new way of communicating with their college kids: videoconferencing.  This fall well-wired students will be plugging cameras and mikes into their desktop computers, essentially turning their PCs into videophones." 50   This article presents videoconferencing as a development in a number of traditions.  First of all, in the title, "Live From the Dorm Room," videoconferencing is compared to a TV show.  Then, in the first line of the article, it is compared to using paper and pencil to write a letter home, and then to e-mail.  Videoconferencing is presented here as a new activity that parents will have to learn to do in order to keep up with, and in contact with, their children.  This is a discourse that has been around since at least the 60s, when "new math" was discussed, and many parents began to fear that they would not be able to help their children with their homework.  The article goes on to present videoconferencing as a fashion accessory ("well-wired" sounds like 'well-dressed,' 'well-heeled,' etc.)--one more thing that an upwardly mobile family must supply their child.  Thus, it fits into memories of having to buy a car, and in general, 'keep up with the Joneses.' 

One commonly reported memory about videoconferencing is the uncomfortableness of the experience: 
 

Vague feelings of unease, mistrust, and lack of confidence in others' abilities  are hard-wired into (videoconferencing) technology," according to one researcher.  "Human interaction is largely based on a turn-taking system, Jordan explains. Everybody thinks that video helps, but video makes it worse.   (The researchers) found that a one-second transmission delay sabotaged the feedback and threw a monkey wrench into the turn-taking system...  "You talk and then you pause, but the expected response does not come.  So you say something else and you find yourself 'stepping on'--talking simultaneously  with another person.  You stop...  Participants interpret all this hesitancy as lack of support for the speaker, making the group dynamic increasingly negative and the feeling that the other participants are incompetent, untrustworthy, or just not quite right."51

Each style of videoconferencing has its own particular memories and culture.  Internet videoconferencing, despite its poor quality and undependability in the past, offers the hope and fantasy of everybody, every single citizen of the planet, to be able to connect together in a group videoconference.  This is building on a number of utopian memories, including Dante's vision as expressed at the very end of the Divine Comedy: in the ultimate Heaven, Dante comes upon a tremendous golden rose: the soul of every (Christian) person who was, is, and will be, is seated in petals of this rose, with God at the center.  Writing in the first half of the twentieth century, the theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin continued in this vein: he wrote of the 'noosphere,' which he envisioned as a sort of atmosphere around the globe, in which the souls and intelligences of all people would intermingle.52   Teilhard de Chardin did not mention how this might take place, but radio and television were present in his lifetime.  Moreover, he saw in everything the process of evolution toward consciousness and oneness: he felt all matter is striving for unification with its disparate elements and with God.  (As a priest, he was punished by the church for his belief in evolution). 

ISDN line videoconferencing is in a different realm.  The equipment at each end is specialized and expensive (at least $5,000), and the lines themselves need to be specially-installed and are expensive to maintain.  Moreover, one is limited with ISDN line videoconferencing to the rooms in which these special connections are installed.  This realm of specialization and privilege lacks flexibility of movement and is a closed system, although many varieties of it enable multi-point conferences with operators of similar systems. 

There is the possibility of Direct Broadcast Satellite videoconferencing, which allows one to videoconference from anywhere with battery-powered units (like Dick Tracy's TV-watch).  This option is presently very expensive, both regard to equipment and satellite time. 

Another option that is available today is videophones--gadgets that attach to normal telephone lines.  Many videophones can use any video camera, and can show the picture on any TV set.  A problem with videophones is that the units need to be on both ends of the line.  Although many units are inexpensive (under $400), it is often inconvenient for people to get them and keep them installed.  The videophones I have seen are meant for point-to-point videoconferencing, very much like a traditional telephone call (like a telephone call, these units send the video/audio signal though a regular line--the Internet is not involved and neither is the need for special ISDN lines).  Videophones offer flexibility of movement, and are democratic in this sense. 

There is the hope and fantasy of all of these different protocols eventually being able to communicate with each other.  Perhaps it is more likely that one will win out and the others will disappear--just as one format for the railroad had to win out and become universal for there to be a transcontinental railroad.  But I believe compatibility issues can be resolved, and that these different types of videoconferencing will continue, each one improving in time--for each one is useful under different conditions. 

In conclusion, I will review some of the memories of communicative and social activities with which I have found people approach videoconferencing.  Working on this paper has truly brought to my attention the myriad narratives concerning videoconferencing, some of them competing with each other, but many of them complementing each other. 

When Della Clark of the West Philadelphia Enterprise Center thinks of videoconferencing, she remembers the discrimination and exploitation suffered by African-Americans in the age of television, and hopes that videoconferencing can be used for minority self-empowerment, entrepreneurship, and community development.  Diane Dunbar also sees in videoconferencing a possible means of revisiting and transforming her experience of TV, especially in regard to memories of social isolation.  I have noted that to authority figures, videoconferencing can bring to mind memories and apprehensions of chaos, frivolity, pornography, and terrorism.  Some of these figures, it seems, would like to model videoconferencing as much as possible after broadcast, cable, and closed-circuit TV.  I have noted that certain Cree people see TV (and possibly by extension, videconferencing) in the context of shamanistic spirit journeys; and that in Hinduism, videoconferencing is reminiscent of the activities of divine figures.  I have speculated that in those cultures that traditionally use a crystal ball, videoconferencing would perhaps be seen in a similar light.  We have seen a journalist compare videoconferencing to letter-writing, e-mail, and telephone conversation; and view videoconferencing equipment as a fashion accessory and the activity as an act of social climbing.  To many, videoconferencing represents the ultimate intrusion of Big Brother surveillance.  The mention of videoconferencing reminds some of typical hype, especially of the simple-minded promises of "better living through technology" so often made by governments and businesses in the 50s and 60s.  To author Leonard Shlain, videoconferencing represents a renaissance of Goddess-oriented and image-centric culture.   The small business activity around videoconferencing reminds some of the creativity, rebelliousness, and idealism of the 60s.  Videoconferencing reminds me of face-to-face storytelling and (my fantasy of) democracy.  On TV we have seen videoconferencing portrayed benignly on Star Trek and the Jetsons; and we have come to see it as natural and indispensable on news and talk shows.  However, to some of those who are actually using the low-quality videoconferencing systems most widely available today, videoconferencing is reminiscent of communicating with the socially or neurologically-impaired. 

Major questions around videoconferencing include:  Does it remind one of a means of presentation or a means of conversation?  Does it remind one of a means of communicating with another individual, or with a group?  When you next come upon a thought, mention, or demonstration of videoconferencing, of what will it remind you? 
 
 
 
 
 

Footnotes

1  Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past,translated by Arthur Goldhammer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 20. 

2  Barbie Zelizer,  "Reading the Past Against the Grain: The Shape of Memory Studies."  in Review and Criticism,June, 1995, p. 228. 

3  Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word,London: Methuen & Co., 1982, p. 94. 

4  Included with this paper, supplied as supplementary data item #1, is a report I have recently composed about "Videoconferencing at the University of Pennsylvania."  This report gives specific details about facilities available on and around campus, and expresses in further detail my personal vision of videoconferencing.  ( http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~emiller/V_at_Penn.html ) 

5  John Louis Lucaites & Celeste Michelle Condit, "Re-constructing Narrative Theory: A Functional Perspective," in Special Section: Homo Narrans: Storytelling in Mass Culture and Everyday Life, Journal of Communication,Autumn '85, v. 35, n. 4, p. 92. 

6  Barry Schwartz, "Introduction: The Expanding Past," in Qualitative Sociology, v. 19,  n. 3, 1996,  p. 281. 

7  Eviator Zerubavel, "Social Memories: Steps to a Sociology of the Past," in Qualitative Sociology,v. 19,  n. 3, 1996,  p. 288. 

8  Zerubavel, p. 288. 

9  R. W. Burns,  "Prophecy into Practice: The Early Rise of Videotelephony," in Engineering Science and Education Journal,Dec. 1995, p. 34. 

10  Gary Gransberg, Jack Steinbring, and John Hamer, "New Magic for Old: TV in Cree Culture" in Journal of Communication,Autumn 1977, p. 154. 

11  Mark Hodges, "Online in the Outback: The Use of Videoconferencing by Australian Aborigines," in Technology Review, April 1996, vol. 99, no. 3, p. 17. 

12  Jeffrey Young, "Downlinks in the Outback," in Forbes, Dec. 4, 1995, v. 156, n. 13, p. 68. 

13  From the commemorative text on the walls of the lobby: 
"Today at the West Philadelphia Enterprise Center, we are carrying on an important tradition.  In the 1950s and 60s this building represented innovation and opportunity.  The very latest broadcast technology was used here, in some cases for the first time.  Performers, dancers, cameramen, and even executives, who were part of American Bandstand made it big in their fields.  At the West Philadelphia Enterprise Center we are returning that sense of innovation and opportunity to entrepreneurs in the community.  With the resources provided here, the enthusiasm and energy, they too will make it big.  We are producing major league businesses here.  Using state of the art television equipment, producers and technicians directed the cameras shooting American Bandstand from the control room looking into Studio B.  Now renovated as the Microsoft/Compaq Computing Center, this space carries forth the tradition of using cutting edge technology for enterprise." 

14  Della Clark, Spoken communication, 9 November 1998. 

15  Clark, 9 November 1998. 

 16  Clark, 9 November 1998. 

17  Included with this paper, supplied as supplementary data item #2,is a promotional flier of the WPEC which advertises their videoconferencing services, superimposed over an image of Dick Clark. 

18  Alan Mann, Spoken communication, 7 November 1998. 

19  Perhaps in contrast to this individualistic approach, I have heard of possible videoconferencing activity between the Ivy League Schools. 

20  Joshua Meyrowitz, No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Behavior,NY: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 8. 

21  Joe Farrell, Spoken communication, 31 October 1998. 

22  Kathleen Hall Jamieson, E-mail, 7 December 1998. 

23  Ellen Reynolds, E-mail, 10 October 1998. 

24  David Eisenhower, Lecture at the U. of Penn, 8 December 1998. 

25  Nursing student (unidentified), Spoken communication, 17 November 1998. 

26  Gates Rhodes, E-mail, 26 October 1998. 

27  Rhodes, 26 October 1998. 

28  Rhodes, 26 October 1998. 

29  Rhodes, 26 October 1998. 

30  Chris Cook, Spoken communication, 15 October 98. 

31  Cook, 15 October 98. 

32  Cook, 15 October 98. 

33  Roger Abrahams, E-mail, 5 May 98. 

34  Abrahams, 5 May 98. 

35  Diane Dunbar, Spoken communication, 30 October 98. 

36  Leonard Shlain, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image,NY: Penguin, 1988, p. 413. 

37  Shlain, p. 413. 

38  Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"  in Illuminations,NY: Schocken, 1969, p. 221. 

39  Benjamin, p. 221. 

40  Matthew Saunders, E-mail, 10 November 98. 

41  Website:  http://www.dogstar.org, 12 November 98. 

42  Saunders, 10 November 98. 

43  Saunders, 10 November 98. 

44  Matthew Saunders, Spoken communication  via telephone, 14 November 98. 

45  Saunders, 14 November 98. 

46  Stephen Schrum, E-mail, 25 October 98. 

47  Faygie Levy, "Star Trek System Shoots Federation Into Year 2000,"  in Jewish Exponent,29 October 98, p. 15. 

48  Levy, p. 15. 

49  Jennifer DeJong, "Seeing is Believing," in Working Woman, Sept. 1996, v. 21, n. 9, p. 54. 

50  "Live From the Dorm Room," in  Newsweek, Sept. 14, 1988, n. 37, p. 82. 

51  Kathleen Melymuka, "What You Head is Not What I Said," in Computerworld,July 3, 1998, v. 32,  n. 28, p. NA. 

52  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man,translated by Bernard Wall, NY: Harper & Row, 1975 (1959), p. 28. 
 
 
 

Bibliography

Benjamin, Walter.  "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."  In Illuminations(NY: Schocken).  1969.  pp. 217-51. 

Burns, R. W.  "Prophecy into Practice: The Early Rise of Videotelephony."  In Engineering Science and Education Journal,Dec. 1995, pp. 33-40. 

de Chardin, Pierre Teilhard.  The Phenomenon of Man.  Translated by Bernard Wall.  New York : Harper & Row.  1959 (1975). 

DeJong, Jennifer.  "Seeing is Believing."  In Working Woman,Sept.,1996, v. 21, n. 9, p. 54. 

Gransberg, Gary  &  Jack Steinbring, John Hamer.  "New Magic for Old: TV in Cree Culture."  In Journal of Communication,Autumn 1977, p. 154-57. 

Hodges, Mark.  "Online in the Outback: The Use of Videoconferencing by Australian Aborigines."  In Technology Review, April 1996, vol. 99, no. 3, p. 17-9. 

Levy, Faygie.  "Star Trek System Shoots Federation Into Year 2000." Jewish Exponent, 29 October 98, p. 15. 

Lucaites, John Louis  &  Celeste Michelle Condit. "Re-constructing Narrative Theory: A Functional Perspective."  In Special Section: Homo Narrans: Storytelling in Mass Culture and Everyday Life, Journal of Communication, Autumn '85, v 35, n. 4, p 92. 

Melymuka, Kathleen.  "What You Head is Not What I Said."  In Computerworld,July 3, 1998, v. 32,  n. 28, p. NA. 

Newsweek,"Live From the Dorm Room."  Sept. 14, 1988, n. 37, p. 82. 

Nora, Pierre.  Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past.  Translated by Arthur Goldhammer.  NY: Columbia University Press.  1996. 

Ong, Walter.  Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word.  London: Methuen & Co.  1982. 

Schwartz, Barry.  "Introduction: The Expanding Past."  In Qualitative Sociology,v. 19, n. 3.  1996.  pp. 275-82. 

Shlain, Leonard.  The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image.  NY: Penguin.  1988. 

Young, Jeffrey.  "Downlinks in the Outback."  In Forbes,Dec. 4, 1995, v. 156, n. 13, pp. 68-70. 

Zelizer, Barbie.  "Reading the Past Against the Grain: The Shape of Memory Studies."  In Review and Criticism, June, 1995. 

Zerubavel, Eviator.  "Social Memories: Steps to a Sociology of the Past."  In Qualitative Sociology,1996, v. 19,  n. 3, pp. 283-99. 
 
 

Fieldwork Bibliography

Abrahams, Roger.  E-mail.  5 May 98. 

Clark, Della.  Spoken communication.  9 November 1998. 

Cook, Chris.  Spoken communication.  15 October 98. 

Dunbar, Diane.  Spoken communication.  30 October 98. 

Eisenhower, David.  Lecture at the U. of Penn.  8 December 1998. 

Farrell, Joe.  Spoken communication.  31 October 1998. 

Jamieson, Kathleen Hall.  E-mail.   7 December 1998. 

Mann, Alan.  Spoken communication.  7 November 1998. 

Nursing student (unidentified).  Spoken communication.  17 November 1998. 

Rhodes, Gates.  E-mail.  26 October 1998. 

Reynolds, Ellen.  E-mail.  10 October 1998. 

Saunders, Matthew.  E-mail.  10 November 98. 

_____________.  Spoken communication via telephone.  14 November 98. 

Schrum, Stephen.  46  E-mail.  25 October 98.