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Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?

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Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?

#31

Post by bittermang »

gaius wrote: post #13
michael_dorfman wrote: post #8

I wonder how much of this is generational-- my teenage daughter probably videochats more in a week than I have in my life. I think that over the longue duree , a lot of technology shifts occur not because individuals gradually get convinced to move to the new technology, but because the folks clinging to the old ways eventually die out. (I'm paraphrasing Kuhn on paradigm change in science, of course.)

I suspect that's not it, because we all grew up with videochat - they did it all the time on Star Trek! More seriously tho', I don't think it's wise to extrapolate from teenagers, because socially, they're not very sophisticated and don't have very long attention spans anyway. Grownups prefer much richer interactions that you need the whole spectrum of body language for (dropped frames in video calls misses this), in…

We grew up with the idea of it. Not the widespread install base and ability to actually use it -- or as this suggests, to choose not use it very much at all.

Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?

#32

Post by ugh »

gaius wrote: post #13
michael_dorfman wrote: post #8

I wonder how much of this is generational-- my teenage daughter probably videochats more in a week than I have in my life. I think that over the longue duree , a lot of technology shifts occur not because individuals gradually get convinced to move to the new technology, but because the folks clinging to the old ways eventually die out. (I'm paraphrasing Kuhn on paradigm change in science, of course.)

I suspect that's not it, because we all grew up with videochat - they did it all the time on Star Trek! More seriously tho', I don't think it's wise to extrapolate from teenagers, because socially, they're not very sophisticated and don't have very long attention spans anyway. Grownups prefer much richer interactions that you need the whole spectrum of body language for (dropped frames in video calls misses this), in…

I don't understand. How do you connect your last sentence to what you wrote before?

You seem to say that there are situations where video calls would be appropriate, there are, however, problems that make video chat not quite as good as face to face communication.

Voilá, we just found the perfect niche for video chat: all those situations where face to face communication would be desirable but is impossible or too expensive.

The technology is cheap and by now built into everything, let me just share this little anecdote: We regularly present the status of our bachelor's thesis to our Prof and one student couldn't attend in person so she just used video chat. The university didn't have to buy expensive equipment, we just used the projector that's standard in every meeting room and the Prof's old laptop with camera. It was not as good presenting face to face but far better than nothing at all or a telephone call.

Nobody thought of video chat when building the infrastructure but now it's there and can be used at a moment's notice.

This additional mode of communication crept up on us but now it's available and I think there are quite a few situations where its use is appropriate. (By far the minority but that's not really so important.)

Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?

#34

Post by ookblah »

morphoyle wrote: post #21

A lot of times when I talk to people, I don't maintain eye contact the whole time. I'm sure that it leads to all kind of different pseudo-psychiatric theories about me, but I don't care. With video chat, you just have to sit there and stare at the other person's face the whole time, which I find to be a little weird. That, and I find video chat to be pretty unnecessary. In most cases it doesn't add much to the conver…

i think this is a big factor that people tend to overlook. when you're in a convo w/ someone in person, you can look around briefly, pause to think, etc.

i feel like in video chat you have to be very comfortable w/ the person you're talking to or understand that you CAN look away, etc.

Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?

#35

Post by mistermann »

I don't video chat more often because when there are bandwidth issues, skype decides it will drop the audio portion of the call and devote the remaining bandwidth to the video portion which seems to keep working fine. YMMV but that's how it works for me.

Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?

#36

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Ok, all the conclusion seem valid, but I choked on this one:

"I hope the person doesn’t even answer so that I can leave a voice message with the pertinent information and get on with my day"

Why do folks think it is ok to embed important information behind multiple prompts and a dozen key jabs separated by seconds of dead time? Then, its like saying "Here you write this down, slave. I'm to busy to send a freaking text or email, I'll just dictate it to you."

I never listen to voice mail. I delete it unheard. I inform everyone that I do this. I'm not alone.

Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?

#37

Post by bradleyland »

bradleyland wrote: post #30

Put simply, video is superfluous to my communication needs in a one-to-one conversation. Our company is spread out over two states and three cities, so one would think that we're a prime candidate for video calling. There are subtleties that can be expressed by seeing each other that are simply not there when communicating through voice only. However, these subtleties are superfluous to most conversations. Interestin…

I went looking for material on the matter of interruption in conversation and found some interesting (if not straight forward) information.

http://www.asel.udel.edu/icslp/cdrom/vol3/685/a685.pdf

http://www.eric.ed.gov:80/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.js...

Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?

#39

Post by michaelbuckbee »

christopherslee wrote: post #3

because it's very awkward that the camera is not in the same place you are looking. You're looking at the monitor, when the webcam is most often above the monitor. So all the viewer (and vice versa) sees is you looking down. It's not "eye-to-eye" conversation. If you want the other person to feel like they are looking at you, you have to look dead into the camera. But then you miss out on seeing the other person.

In my experience you can mitigate this effect quite a bit by placing the "loopback" video window of yourself (with Skype) directly under the camera at the top of the screen while also full screening the incoming video.

Re: Why Don’t We Video Chat More Often?

#40

Post by danielhfrank »

dablya wrote: post #33

According to David Wallace Foster: http://www.martin-brown.net/downloads/DavidFosterWallace-Inf... (PDF) :)

The article asks who could have imagined ten years ago that by now we would all have video phone capability and never use it. Infinite Jest was written 15 years ago. DFW 1, SingularityHub 0
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