Wow. I’m not sure why, but I just had a thought that shocked me. A sudden realization that just came to me in the middle of thinking something else. Kids can now make secret phone calls to anyone in the entire country, and Canada… and nobody knows.
Free.
The scenarious of how bad that can be, and probably is, flood my mind. My friend uses it to call her boyfriend at night, so the folks in then next room don’t see the line in use.
Hell, I’ve wanted to do that a few times. Calls that don’t go through proper channels.
Unknown calls.
Think of the bad stories you’ve heard about kids being bated and mislead online… now they can call each other, free.
Real conversation. Scary stuff.
I mean, real conversation in general is a good goal. Getting people to talk instead of type is a good thing. It’s a step in the right direction, slowing down our eventual evolution to being alone and living 100% virtually.
I still can’t think of a down side of that future. It makes a more pleasent level playing field. You create who you want to be, and live that life, in personal relationships the real world could never hope to compete with.
Red Dwarf had an episode called BETTER THAN LIFE where a virtual world was hard to turn off, and we have that now. We don’t need the virtual reality headsets. We’re happier with less realism.
So calling people seems like a good attempt to keep people talking -m real world style. I find you can learn a lot more from a personal voice conversation than text. Its harder to fake.
But with SKYPE being free, and so easy to use, it could stand to take over everything as the tool for IM and voice IM. But real calls still scare me.
It means teenagers canprank in different states… with no caller ID.
It means young girls and boys can call out to perverts anyware in the USA.
It means people who are not perverts will still experiment.
On the adult side of things, it means employees can make calls not logged. They can even work two jobs at once. My recruiter client constantly complains that employees often try to work for more than one company at a time.
I think long distance works best if it’s a pay system. Just a bit. ENough to make you think about the call. An investment. In fact, if all calls cost again, you can bet each call would be more worthy.
But Skype lessens the who concept. There is no more local calling area.
The Internet. Allows friends to spread apart,
and brings strangers closer together.
Jeff Quote.
SKYPE NOTES
From my point of view, I like Skype. It lets nerds who prefer email over live phone calls, a nice compromise. It’s a phone, but we dnon’t have to take our hands off the mouse.
SYMPATICO UNPLUGGED
Let me tell you about an amazing product I discovered today.
Nope. Sorry…. thye blog loses out. I just spent the last hour or so creating a video of me talking about it. Shared on http://frogstar.tv
Ask me about it, if you can’t find it.
