“Virtual work” is increasingly just “work” for most of us – whether we’re dialing into a conference call with our branch offices in London and New York, or VPN-ing in from home to catch up with work after-hours, remote work is the new normal. But as Peter Hirst, director of the executive education program at the MIT Sloan School of management, told me, there’s still something special about face-to-face interaction. “The richest experience [is still] being able to get together in person, face to face. There’s millions of years of evolution behind that.” But Hirst is no Luddite. (I don’t think they allow those at MIT.) He’s helping to lead MIT into a new era of online learning, and experimenting with remote work with his own team at the same time. I talked with him about the state of virtual collaboration today. What follows are edited excerpts from our conversation.