Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Thoughts about video calling

I have installed Skype on my multimedia computer, which is hooked up to our main TV set. I have made a total of one video call to a niece since installation about 2 months ago. Last night I made one call to my son, who had just installed Skype at my urging. I wonder how many video calls I will be making after this (not many?).

When Skype was newly introduced eons ago, I thought it was a revolutionary idea. I thought it would eventually replace regular voice calls. After all, don't we want to see the other person face-to-face when we talk? When you watch futuristic sci-fi movies like Startrek, you see the characters making video calls on their PDA-like device. Isn't this the future of communication?

Somehow, that's not the future as we envisioned it to be. It is still going to belong to voice calls. People still prefer to talk into the phone without seeing the other person. It is as if we can concentrate better if we just focus on the conversation and not having to digest all the visual information as well. With video calling quality now at its best on the Apple Facetime, I still doubt that even Apple can revolutionize the world in this instance. But I could be wrong...

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