Published: 2016-09-16
ISBN: 978-91-7685-679-6
ISSN: 1650-3686 (print), 1650-3740 (online)
We contrast two ways of thinking about communication: communication as message passing, and communication as reciprocal coordination. From the invention of writing to the ubiquity of SMS, speech and language technology has uniformly employed the first model, and thereby done nothing to support, extend, or explore the second model. We suggest that the coordinative approach is better suited to understanding how face to face interactants establish co-presence. The technical challenges of establishing co-presence amounts to achieving synchronisation with a mean lag of 0 ms. We suggest that this goal might be approached through the exploitation of predictive models for behaviours that are inherently constrained, or known to both parties. Although we have not yet succeeded in achieving this goal, we chart a possible route of future exploration, with the distal goal of allowing people to engage in strongly synchronised behaviours such as chanting over networks.
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