When I was a kid (in the 90s) I recall video calls being mentioned alongside flying cars as a failed idea: something which had been technically feasible for a long time, with many product-launch attempts, but no success. Then Skype was launched in 2003, and became (by my own reckoning) a commonly-known company by 2008. My personal perception was that video calls were a known viable option since that time, which were used by people around me when appropriate, and the pandemic did nothing but increase their appropriateness. But of course, other experiences may differ.
So I just wanted to highlight that one technology might have several different “”“takeoff””” points, and that we could set different threshholds for statements like “video calls have been with us for a while, except they were rarely used”—EG, the interpretation of that statement which refers to pre-1990s, vs the interpretation that refers to pre-2020s.
When I was a kid (in the 90s) I recall video calls being mentioned alongside flying cars as a failed idea: something which had been technically feasible for a long time, with many product-launch attempts, but no success. Then Skype was launched in 2003, and became (by my own reckoning) a commonly-known company by 2008. My personal perception was that video calls were a known viable option since that time, which were used by people around me when appropriate, and the pandemic did nothing but increase their appropriateness. But of course, other experiences may differ.
So I just wanted to highlight that one technology might have several different “”“takeoff””” points, and that we could set different threshholds for statements like “video calls have been with us for a while, except they were rarely used”—EG, the interpretation of that statement which refers to pre-1990s, vs the interpretation that refers to pre-2020s.