Blurring Face-to-Face and Virtual Encounters
- John Weeks and Anne-Laure Fayard for Harvard Business Review July 18th, 2011
- Source: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/07/blurring_face-to-face_and_virt.html
Here's a puzzle: Technology connects us more completely than ever before (we can call, text, email, and Skype practically anyone anywhere, and we do) and yet the face-to-face conference business is robust, we're flying more miles than ever to interact with others, the brightest minds still converge on innovation hubs like Silicon Valley, and collaborative spaces in firms are increasingly popular.
How can this be?
Dire predictions that pervasive (and often invasive) communications technologies would bring the end of the "human moment" and the death of communities were wrong. The faulty assumption underlying the hype is that there is a limit to how much people want to connect. If anything, these technologies have revealed that our desire to connect is far from exhausted. Demand is not fixed. Our appetite isn't sated. And so, as new opportunities to connect emerge, the amount of interaction grows.
