> The article discusses the picture-phone in 2001 as if it's commonplace technology today, but it really isn't. It's available, but people don't actually use it

> The article discusses the picture-phone in 2001 as if it's commonplace technology today, but it really isn't. It's available, but people don't actually use it much outside of Zoom meetings for work. Before Covid this was definitely true. However, since early 2020 there has been a significant trend of people turning their cameras on during conference calls. And not just for work, my local AFOL club has weekly zoom meetings where most participants use video. Family members will sometimes do a group video chat on FB. I likely participate in more video calls per week than sci-fi writers and scientists of the 1960's imagined, mainly because the incremental cost today is zero (we pay for it whether we use it or not). > people now prefer to communicate solely by text message, so we're effectively going back to something like a fancy telegraph. While true, I don't think that makes video calls an irrelevant novelty.