Principle 7.3
Technology should strive to get out of the way of human interaction.

I think that this is a very important principle for technology, and one that still has a long way to go before it is fully realized. While apps like Zoom and Facetime have let us get by in communication (as evidenced by a certain event the past three years), it is by no means "invisible." In fact, it is very much an obstacle: the class dynamics during the pandemic were so different from in-person classes, and not in a good way. This, while a crucial part of Weiser's vision, is also a more nuanced issue in and of itself. Two of the most important papers in HCI and CSCW, Beyond Being There and Distance Matters, talk about the disconnect arising from communication technology nowadays.

Beyond Being There is more in line with the visionary papers, and talks about how replicating the feeling of in-person is the wrong goal for CSCW and computer-mediated interactions, because it's impossible to be as good as in-person interaction if that were the case. This pairs well with principles 7.7, 7.8, 7.11A, and 7.11B. Principles 7.7 and 7.8 are similar to I'll address them in one go. Principles 7.7 and 7.8 highlight an important benefit of computer-mediated interactions that's impossible IRL, and thus an important niche that these communication tools can fulfill. In real life, it's impossible to have anonymity in communication, but there is a comfort in being anonymous, as the book and Kunwoo talked about, which is something that social media and communication tools can provide. 7.11A and 7.11B, on the other hand, encapsulate core ideas of Beyond Being There. Arguing convincingly that social media and communication tools are not able to fully recreate the in-person experience, it then follows that it is not meaningfully automatable, which then 7.11B says shouldn't. Conversely, benefits that CSCW provides, like anonymity, should be capitalized upon and developed further, exactly like 7.11A.

Distance Matters, on the other hand, talks about how in-person groups work way better than those remote. One of the main failure points that Olson and Olson identified was the lack of common ground, or what I know that you know and vice versa. A derivative of this idea explored in further research created the media richness theory, which says that richness comes through the ability of a medium to convey expression, cues, feedback, and other signals (also speech). This links back to principle 7.4, which talks about the value of a social tool based on 4 criteria, one of which being the fullness of expression. In the current time where computer-mediated communication is not very media rich, this criterion becomes even more important in understanding and evaluating the value of a social tool. The more it is able to facilitate expression, the better it will be at creating, and sharing artful designs and interactions between people.