
David Foster Wallace predicted the rise – and demise – of video calling in 1996 - bookofjoe
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/5/18518355/infinite-jest-video-calling-david-foster-wallace
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enkiv2
It's probably a mistake to call this a prediction. Aside from the stuff about
the masks, this actually _did_ happen when Bell introduced videophones (a few
years after their demonstration at a world's fair, where the tech got a lot of
press). Internally, Bell blamed the commercial failure of videophone tech on
the way that the presence of video changed the environment of social
expectations around telephone conversations (as DFW does), & it's likely that
DFW was aware of the history of commercial videophone tech, and decided to
suggest history repeat itself with an attempted relaunch. (It seems like the
real reason Bell's wired videophone tech didn't take off is the cost: because
it required digital switching to implement, videophone lines were priced in
such a way that the projected sales based on survey data from the world's fair
would cover moving the entire network to digital switching; however, between
the price of such lines & the cost of the new equipment, it was more than even
the business market wanted to pay, & the project was shelved after a year or
two. On the upside, supporting this was the excuse for the move to digital
switching, which was completed by the late 1980s.)

The author of this piece seems to be overestimating how often people use video
chat (or maybe I'm an outlier). I've had video calls with a total of about
four people, and haven't had one in the past five years. They've only been for
business meetings & cybersex.

