Beyond "beyond being there"

Forty years after AT&T's Picturephone, video is still mainly considered as a way to enhance audio communication in an attempt to reproduce face-to-face conditions. In a 1992 paper, Hollan and Stornetta argued that we should develop communication tools that go beyond being there. In this paper, we discuss two different interpretations of their analysis. We then propose the concept of multiscale communication as an alternative approach for motivating telecommunication research, an approach that aims at creating systems that support a variable degree of engagement, smooth transitions between degrees and integration with other media. Finally, we present three video systems from which the multiscale communication concept emerged and that partly illustrate it.