[HN Gopher] Ambient Co-Presence
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Ambient Co-Presence
Author : Tomte
Score : 53 points
Date : 2023-12-31 15:54 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (maggieappleton.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (maggieappleton.com)
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| It sounds also like a nightmare but it would be interesting as
| heck to me to have a bunch of folks ambiently co-working on code
| at the same time. Render all the open windows into some kind of
| 2d or 3d space, then show avatars viewpoints shifting across
| different files as they go.
|
| Alternatively, it'd be interesting (albeit again difficult and
| confining too) to have 2 or 3 folks working on the same desktop.
| Get a 8k 85 inch TV, with a long desk in front of it, and set it
| up with multi-pointer-x or some such, and let everyone work on
| the same shared surface.
|
| Good write-up. Hypothesis is one of the greatest damned tools on
| the net; I wish we saw this stuff getting traction & iterated on,
| saw it rising. It feels like it afforda so much more to us than
| anything else people have done.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Would that be different from pair-programming?
| trashburger wrote:
| This existed in the 90s! The Self programming language[0] took
| Smalltalk's existing visual approach and extended it to be a
| full visual environment with interactive animations and
| physical metaphors, giving you a literal "desktop" to work on.
| Later versions of Self also supported working on a single
| "world" over the network, where the other users' objects and
| "hands" (cursors) would be visible to you. Here's an official
| movie released by Sun Microsystems:
|
| https://youtu.be/Ox5P7QyL774
|
| [0]: https://selflanguage.org/
| skydhash wrote:
| A multiplayer lisp or smalltalk vm can work beautifully for
| this. With adhoc support for chat and video call. But that
| would work only in a single project context.
| saghm wrote:
| > Alternatively, it'd be interesting (albeit again difficult
| and confining too) to have 2 or 3 folks working on the same
| desktop. Get a 8k 85 inch TV, with a long desk in front of it,
| and set it up with multi-pointer-x or some such, and let
| everyone work on the same shared surface.
|
| Just a bit over a week ago I was pair coding with a coworker
| over a live share VS Code session for an hour or so when I
| suddenly realized that they must have been talking the whole
| time and I couldn't hear them (which turned out to be an audio
| issue on my end). We had apparently gone from "both of us
| talking and hearing fine while pair coding on the same set of
| files" to "I could speak but not hear him and only see his
| cursor and typing, and even then only if I was looking at the
| same place as him at the same time". Part of why we were
| actually able to be somewhat productive for the period of time
| since I had lost audio (maybe half an hour or so?) was that he
| was non-verbally communicating incredibly well just with his
| editing; I might be writing a line of code, and then suddenly
| I'd see that he paused what he was doing and highlighted some
| other line, and I'd look and say "Oh! Good catch, I forgot to
| take into account <something related to the line of code he
| highlighted".
|
| I suspect that having something like a live share session that
| I was using but sitting everyone in the same room would
| honestly give the same or better results; I think you're on to
| something that this sort of social interaction in the same room
| could be incredibly interesting for everyone involved, but I'm
| not convinced that you need any sort of special virtual working
| space with avatars _or_ a giant monitor for everyone to be on
| at the same time. Honestly, thinking about this is already
| giving me some ideas for hackathon-type stuff where
| collaboration can be encouraged by having a team share exactly
| one copy of the repository to all work on at once rather than
| everyone going off in to their silos and working on separate
| components.
| kevmo314 wrote:
| I've done hackathons by having everyone ssh (and by
| extension, vscode remote ssh) into a shared virtual machine.
| It's way faster than any version control.
|
| A lot less safe, but a lot more fun.
| amelius wrote:
| My main experience with co-presence are those "Can I help you?"
| chat popups on websites, which probably in most cases aren't a
| co-presence since they are running chatbots most of the time.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Those are about as copresent as an overeager sales person. The
| examples in the article would be more like shopping with your
| friends. Imagine a shopping site that friends could browse
| together. Unfortunately no shopping site wants to be social
| because they want to control the experience, not surrender it
| to the users.
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| The major value proposition I see is here validation through
| crowdsourcing.
|
| That is, if I was able to "hang out" in the same vicinity as e.g.
| Cory Doctorow, Bill Gates, < insert your favorite blogger /
| influencer here > and weed out low effort content.
|
| I'd much rather read articles vetted by people I consider to have
| good critical thinking skills.
| gumby wrote:
| I don't think seeing where someone is reading is enticing. I
| thing it's best to extend the experience of the physical world
| (and if that works, it can evolve).
|
| Ambient presence is an important goal. I've been running remote
| companies for almost 35 years and have been trying to achieve
| some level of this.
|
| I've tried a few times to connect a couple of offices by just
| putting up a tablet running a chat (first Skype -- that's how
| long ago!) and later FaceTime. The idea is to not be spying on
| anyone, but showing what others would see if they were there:
| basically you could glance over and see if Jo was around, or
| basically see that Jo looks like they are really concentrating so
| no wonder they don't respond to my slack. Or "look, those guys
| have a visit from jim's partner!"
|
| This is harder than it seems -- the software isn't designed to
| run continuously and the cameras aren't really right.
| michaelmior wrote:
| I think for many people, one of the advantages of working
| remotely is that it's possible to have more privacy. I'm not
| sure live video for the entire work day in any form is a great
| solution.
| kaashif wrote:
| I find having the camera on distracting and/or stressful to me
| in a way that I don't find in person interactions. I'm not sure
| why.
|
| Always on camera just seems stressful and I hate the idea.
|
| I don't have any data or even anecdotes, just these vague
| feelings.
| patcon wrote:
| > I don't think seeing where someone is reading is enticing.
|
| I agree that if we _explode_ the word "reading" into
| everything it might be an analog for, then some of this could
| make more sense.
|
| If "reading" a page on the web is supposed to be an analog of
| "reading a book", maybe most don't want to see others.
|
| But if "reading" a page on the web is supposed to be an analog
| of "attending a lecture" or "showing up to vote" or "standing
| in line to buy a ticket", then "reading a book" may not be the
| best frame of reference :)
|
| (I think about this stuff a lot. I lean extroverted. Maggie and
| I seem to be working through the same thoughts I've been
| picking through for the last few years, so I'm definitely a bit
| biased as to the wisdom of the post :)
| rgbrgb wrote:
| as someone who likes working in a coffeeshop full of sf strivers,
| i love the vibe of these co-presence ideas. I have a technical
| question though...
|
| Has anyone figured out a nice way to do the partykit-like cursor
| stuff [0] that doesn't need a database/intermediary? It would be
| so nice to be able to ship a p2p presence-enabled static site
| without a dedicated server. Looks like partykit has a generous
| free tier but we all know those only last so long.
|
| Oh and while I'm here I'll plug my friend's project that this
| reminded me of! StreetPass is a browser extension that helps you
| find your people on Mastodon by checking for social metadata tags
| on the sites you visit [1].
|
| [0]: https://blog.partykit.io/posts/cursor-party
|
| [1]: https://streetpass.social
| esafak wrote:
| Use websockets if it's just two people
| rgbrgb wrote:
| how do you get websockets to work p2p? afaik websockets needs
| a dedicated server to relay messages.
| grose wrote:
| I run a smallish private forum (~4k MAU but pretty active). My
| philosophy for the real-time stuff is to update anything that can
| be updated without being distracting. On the thread list, the
| number of replies will update in real time but the threads won't
| move position (be bumped) until you refresh. Threads with at
| least 2 people reading them will have a subtle highlight that
| users can configure, this lets you know you have a decent chance
| someone will see your reply immediately; this fades in and out in
| real time too. New replies show up instantly inside of a thread
| (and so do edits and deletions). There's a real-time 'N users are
| currently viewing' counter for threads and the whole site at the
| bottom of the page but it doesn't tell you who is viewing it -- I
| think that's kind of a privacy violation and might discourage
| people from clicking around. I think the combination of these
| features lets users know the site is alive without feeling like a
| panopticon.
| marymkearney wrote:
| Yes, this! I just posted about forums before seeing your
| comment. As I recall, on some forums it's possible to decide
| whether to "appear" as your username, or lurk incognito. Yours
| sounds cool.
| marymkearney wrote:
| The old-fashioned bulletin-board forums, circa 2006, are very
| effective at creating this sense of parallel play. At the bottom
| of the screen there's the list of who's browsing, so you can
| engage with folks on threads, or just lurk. You get a pleasant
| sense of community, with as much or as little engagement as you
| like.
| sowbug wrote:
| When I was a kid, well before the internet, one of the three TV
| networks would play a movie on Sunday nights. Even if the movie
| were old, it was intoxicating to know that all my friends were
| watching exactly the same thing at the same time, and that we'd
| get to talk about it at school on Monday. There were zero ambient
| co-presence signals, but the magic still happened. I don't know
| where that magic came from.
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(page generated 2023-12-31 23:00 UTC)