ABSTRACT
Technology-mediated communication is a fact of life. The human communication apparatus is constrained in several ways. There are limits to the distance at which speech is audible, and visible behaviors such as gesture, gaze, or facial expressions are perceivable. Furthermore, these natural communication behaviors are ephemeral anddo not persist over time. Given these limitations, we must rely on some form of mediation if we are to communicate at distance and across time. People have therefore invented technologies that attempt to circumvent these limits to allow remote synchronous communication (e.g., telephone, videoconference) or asynchronous communication (e.g., letters, telegraph, e-mail, fax, voicemail).
