The magic lounge: Connecting island communities through varied communication services

Abstract

The increasing convergence of networks with a range of today's digital media together with assured public access to a global information and communication infrastructure have transformed the character of both personal and social interactions in today's cyberspace. Given this situation, and in the context of a European research project, we created the socalled Magic Lounge concept in order to investigate the possibilities of having virtual encounters on a future, reliable high-bandwidth, low-cost network infrastructure that would allow combined spoken and text chat exchanges between multiple speakers. Thus, Magic Lounge refers to a virtual meeting space where members of geographically dispersed communities can come together to carry out joint meetings and other less formal encounters. © 2006 Springer.