Tangible Media Group

We explore a design vision that reimagines human connection not only across distance but also across time, extending even beyond physical lifespans. While Telepresence was developed to connect remote spaces, this panel shifts the focus to remote time—the desire to be remembered, to reconnect with the past, and to speculate on possible futures. We bring together perspectives from generative AI, cultural heritage, and HCI to examine how connection across time can be mediated and reinterpreted. AI researchers develop synthetic agents “ghost bots” that reconstruct identities from fragmented data. Scholars in archaeological heritage investigate how artifacts carry memory across centuries, offering insight into how cultural traces become embodied knowledge. HCI researchers study interactive systems that honor the presence of absence. Together, this inter-disciplinary dialogue across digital reconstruction, archaeological preservation, and practices of cherishing material traces raises broader philosophical questions about how emerging 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