Barack Obama speaks to the camera, not the people in the room

I watched Obama’s short press conference speech outlining his plans for US economic recovery and one thing struck me: he never looked anywhere else except at the camera.

Its clear that this President is talking to a screen audience, an online world.

Since I was also watching this online (here on the BBC website), the fact that he was looking directly at me (at the dark eye of the camera) seemed ‘normal’.

Having thought about this, what then seemed really odd was to see the long shot of the hall that Obama was speaking from.

What I saw was a man speaking over his audiences’ heads to a camera at the back of the hall.

How unnatural, how strange.  How…disconnected.