In an article written in the New York Times, it was said that "The world of video conferencing is wild and woolly"(Biederman, 1999). Video-chatting was a rarity in 1999, and its main use at the time was for companies to communicate with employees and other business partners. Hospitals were some of the first establishments to implement video-chatting. People believed video-chatting added an emotional connection that phone calls did not possess. Children in hospitals used video-chatting as a way to be in constant communication with family and friends, drastically improving their moods. The New York Times article, titled "Tomorrowland Returns, With Video Conferencing: All-Hours Hospital Visits, Seeing Folks Back Home, Remote Job Interviews, and a touch of Big Brother"mentions how Kinko's was the first business to open up video-conferencing rooms, where people could pay a fee to use video-chat to communicate with someone at another Kinko's or at their home if they had video-chat on their computer. The only problem: Kinko's charged a fee of $230/hour to use this service, resulting in large companies being the main customer. Because video-chatting was such a new technology, it was hard for people to find others to connect with.
Another article from Rolling Stone Magazine titled "The Future of Chat" discussed which new technologies would dominate the 21st century. The article noted that "Voice chat, video chat, and virtual chat could well become the instant messaging of the next century"(Quain, 1999). The article described the earliest use of video-chatting to be anything from "...let-it-all-hang-out exhibitions to Trekkies"(Quain,1999). The article talks mostly about the development of video-chatting, and how its growing popularity was an indication of what the future was to bring.
The term video-chat has evolved from a far-fetched futuristic technology to what is now one of the most common ways for people to communicate.
Have to agree with your observations here on how quickly the frankly futuristic technology became commonplace. It's even more amazing when you consider that in the span of 15 years we went from no internet access to text chat, to audio, to full video chats. Makes me wonder what the next iteration of online communication will be.
ReplyDeleteThere was actually this incredible presentation given in 1968 where video conferencing was demoed for the first time. It's appropriately titled "The Mother of All Demos", because it introduced so many technologies that are commonplace today: the mouse, word processing, video chats, even collaborative editing. Absoutely insane.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY#t=2745