M ediating Awareness and Communication through Digital but Physical Surrogates . Abstract Digital but physical surrogates are tangible representations of remote people positioned within an office and under digital control.
Surrogates selectively collect and present awareness information about the people they represent.
By having them react to physical actions of people, surrogates can control the communication capabilities of a media space. This enables the smooth transition from awareness to casual interaction while mitigating concerns about privacy. Consequently, they are often buried under windows or set aside. Second, people who are peripheral computer users cannot attend to awareness information in-between uses. In this paper and in the companion video we illustrate by example what we mean by digital but physical surrogates.