From Remote Space to Remote Time
Tuesday, April 14, 2026 (14:15 – 15:45 CEST)
CHI 2026 Panel
This panel explores a design vision that reimagines human connection across time, distance, and even beyond physical lifespans. While telepresence technologies were originally developed to overcome spatial distance, this conversation shifts toward remote time—the desire to be remembered, to reconnect with the past, and to speculate about possible futures. The panel brings together perspectives from generative AI, cultural heritage, and HCI to examine how temporal connection can be mediated and reinterpreted. AI researchers develop synthetic agents that reconstruct from fragmented data and manage digital afterlives and posthumous identity. Some explore archaeological insights into interpreting traces, preserving cultural memory, and understanding how artifacts carry meaning across centuries. HCI scholars study interactive systems that honor the presence of absence. Together, the panelists consider diverse approaches to past data—archaeological preservation, digital reconstruction, and practices of cherishing through material or digital traces—and raise broader philosophical questions about how technologies shape relationships across past, present, and future.
Authors:
- Hiroshi Ishii, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
- Hye Jun Youn, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
- Jie Li, MIT Media Lab, Cake Researcher, Delft, Netherlands
- Xiao Xiao, Institute for Future Technologies, De Vinci Higher Education, Courbevoie, France
- Eugene Ch’ng, School of Culture and Creativity, BNBU, Zhuhai, Guangdong, China
- Jed R. Brubaker, Information Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, United States
- Jayne Wallace, School of Design, Arts and Creative Industries, Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom
- Pat Pataranutaporn, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States