Id like to throw something in here, and that is connectivity of human interaction that creates things like “trust” “honesty” “expression”

In a way one does not replace the other. Its useful to have a conversation over skype because it satisfies a need and the context.

i think we need to have that conversation on where these technologies are best applied rather than a generic solution.

At the moment there remains a need to travel to conferences. While they are useful, the level of interaction in text based chat rooms is of a very low order, and massively stretched over time, compared with f2f meetings. However, the technology improves all the time, and I find myself quite often having small interactions with a few people online through Skype and iChat. No doubt these tools will improve as the need for, and ethics of, travel declines in the future. This conference is of course an attempt to produce a model of online interaction beyond the ‘flesh’ meetings, and its success in so doing will no doubt be analysed after the event. I applaud the organisers in experimenting in this way, and adding to our knowledge.