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I can't help but notice that all of the historical concept art shows people sitting in one place while being fully-clothed and presentable. But phones have neve
by AdamH12113 4y ago
I can't help but notice that all of the historical concept art shows people sitting in one place while being fully-clothed and presentable. But phones have never been used that way at home. Even before wireless phones, people would buy extra-long cords for their phone handset so they could (for example) walk around in the kitchen preparing food while talking. And because phone calls are synchronous and intrusive, it's easy (and was historically common) to receive phone calls when you're not ready for video. I suspect that those two factors were at least as important as the high price in dooming any attempt at home video phones.
There's more of a case for long-distance video calls, but even long-distance voice calling was so expensive in the pre-cell phone era that it was rarely used for personal calls. Even the video calling we do today looks more like business -- scheduled conference calls -- than the personal phone calls of old.
- jaclaz 4y agoAs a matter of fact this is exactly what came out from an experiment made in Europe (Biarritz/France), in the '80's and '90's (the price was not an issue as the experiment was subsidized). People had troubles in finding a place to put the device (most put it in a "neutral" area, like a corridor), and there was the "etiquette" issue of allowing video or not (because of not being "ready" for the video call). This is how the devices looked: http://rxcontrol.free.fr/Visiophone/ http://rxcontrol.free.fr/Visiophone/ Here is a related paper (French): https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01671120/document https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01671120/document
- CSSer 4y agoFacebook made Portal, the video chat device that follows you around. The only problem was it was made by Facebook. If almost any other company made that I would’ve bought it. The wrist fatigue from FaceTime can get pretty bad. Constantly worrying about being in the frame does too.
- washadjeffmad 4y agoSwivl are more vendor neutral (I think) and work separately of the communications app on whichever device you place in them. I had colleagues who put the tags on their children to act as baby trackers so they could monitor while they worked from other rooms.