An Introduction to Media Space

In the mid-1980s, Bob Stults and I created the first media space at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). From our initial office-to-office always-on real-time audio and video connections grew a switched network of continuous connections for a small laboratory split between Palo Alto, California and Portland, Oregon. Offices and pub¬lic spaces had cameras, microphones, video monitors, and computers. Users were in charge; they could turn their cameras or audio off, or focus cameras out of the window; they could choose to connect to one person or another; however, the underlying connection was always there, with no setup, changeable with a click of a mouse button.

The images on the screens and the sound coming out of the speakers created shared offices, put offices onto hallways that were, in fact, 500 miles away, and “virtually” doubled the size of the common area for both the Portland and Palo Alto groups. Colleagues shared informal interactions, formal lab meetings, quick conversations, in-depth discussions, cross-site projects, and cross-site reporting relationships. There were difficulties in maintaining the technology-mediated com¬munication, but the participants interacted regularly and continued to learn about each other (Stults, 1986; Bly et al., 1993; Harrison et al., 1997).