2011-04-18

The Wonders of Communicating over Computers

A few days ago, I was talking to my family back home on Skype. They were actually helping me fill out college financial aid forms for the next academic year, but we were also chatting about random things at the same time. This was far from the first time we had talked on Skype since I came to college, so why was I particularly amazed with it now? Well, the phone at my family's house rang at one point during our conversation, and I had the video call set to full-screen on my computer. The phone nearest my family's computer is just to the right of the computer, which means in the video call it appeared to the left side of my computer screen. As the phone rang, I instinctively started to reach to the left for the phone until I remembered that I'm not actually there.
That's the beauty of things like video calling; if you allow yourself to be immersed in the conversation, you forget that you aren't actually in the same place as the other person in the conversation. And sometimes, it's nice to stop focusing on super-technical things, take a step back, and let yourself be wowed by modern technology and progress. What do you think?