RE: Near-Term Scenarios (Was: A Future Timeline from Interactive Week)
Billy Brown (bbrown@conemsco.com)
Wed, 28 Apr 1999 08:28:56 -0500
Lee March wrote:
> I just paid $ 2000.00 for a pair of state of the art video phones for
> one very good use. I am moving and my daughter is staying behind with
> her mom. To talk to her is good, to talk to her and see each other is
> much better.
That I can understand. But how often would you use it for normal phone
calls?
I'm not saying such things won't exist. I just don't they they will be
widely adopted in the consumer market until very sophisticated image
filtering methods are available.
BTW, this isn't just my personal opinion. The telephone companies ran into
this issue back in the 80s when they were experimenting with analog
videophones, and it is one of the things that convinced them to drop the
idea. They kept getting complaints from users who didn't want to be seen by
everyone they talked to, and turning off the display just made everyone
wonder what you were hiding. At the time they couldn't come up with a good
solution to the problem.
Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com