The experiment is interesting, but the interpretive claims made in this article extrapolate well beyond what the evidence actually shows. It reads like a mediocre university press release about the research, except it's the actual research article itself that is making uncritical, overgeneralized claims about what it showed.
My comments on the abstract:
> we show that videoconferencing inhibits the production of creative ideas.
No. At most you showed that people doing videoconferencing in 2022 have less creative ideas on average than people in a shared physical space in 2022. You didn't show that videoconferencing is the unconditional, eternal, inherent, invariant cause of this.
> we demonstrate that videoconferencing hampers idea generation because it focuses communicators on a screen, which prompts a narrower cognitive focus.
No. At most you showed that communicators using videoconferencing in 2022 focus more on a screen, which prompts a narrower cognitive focus. Why do the communicators do that? Did the videoconferencing force them to focus on the screen? You didn't demonstrate that, and it's probably not true.
Maybe we have bad social norms around how videoconferencing is used because we have not had sufficient time to develop and spread best practices. Maybe we feel obligated to sit very still and stare at each other's faces, when we could instead have a shared norm that it's OK to stop doing that and focus on our tasks while on the call. Maybe we should feel free to turn the camera off from time to time (Slack huddles default to video off, a gutsy and visionary choice). Maybe we should feel free to pace around the room, like some of us might do in a physical space. Maybe we need to set each other free to be humans when speaking to each other virtually, rather than reducing each other to motionless bodies that exist to present stationary faces on a screen.
We need to look at the interaction between the technology and our social norms before we jump to the conclusion that some aluminum and silicon forces us to behave in certain ways and that we are helpless to do otherwise.
If you had to guess, what kills human creativity? An inanimate object made of metal and glass that makes pictures and sounds if you ask it to... or social pressure -- which could be explicit and external or implicit and internalized -- to conform to behaviors that kill creativity?
Good points. I find myself wondering whether everyone was equally affected. I don't always stare at the screen during video calls. I do when I'm trying to communicate, but when I'm thinking I do what I do in person - I stare off into space. I think this is fairly common. Looking at a person's face, you are getting all kinds of information, even when they aren't speaking. When people are concentrating, I think they often look at their notes, at the ceiling, out the window. The problem may simply be that some people don't understand that's ok in a videoconference format.
My comments on the abstract:
> we show that videoconferencing inhibits the production of creative ideas.
No. At most you showed that people doing videoconferencing in 2022 have less creative ideas on average than people in a shared physical space in 2022. You didn't show that videoconferencing is the unconditional, eternal, inherent, invariant cause of this.
> we demonstrate that videoconferencing hampers idea generation because it focuses communicators on a screen, which prompts a narrower cognitive focus.
No. At most you showed that communicators using videoconferencing in 2022 focus more on a screen, which prompts a narrower cognitive focus. Why do the communicators do that? Did the videoconferencing force them to focus on the screen? You didn't demonstrate that, and it's probably not true.
Maybe we have bad social norms around how videoconferencing is used because we have not had sufficient time to develop and spread best practices. Maybe we feel obligated to sit very still and stare at each other's faces, when we could instead have a shared norm that it's OK to stop doing that and focus on our tasks while on the call. Maybe we should feel free to turn the camera off from time to time (Slack huddles default to video off, a gutsy and visionary choice). Maybe we should feel free to pace around the room, like some of us might do in a physical space. Maybe we need to set each other free to be humans when speaking to each other virtually, rather than reducing each other to motionless bodies that exist to present stationary faces on a screen.
We need to look at the interaction between the technology and our social norms before we jump to the conclusion that some aluminum and silicon forces us to behave in certain ways and that we are helpless to do otherwise.
If you had to guess, what kills human creativity? An inanimate object made of metal and glass that makes pictures and sounds if you ask it to... or social pressure -- which could be explicit and external or implicit and internalized -- to conform to behaviors that kill creativity?