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Grandma's On the Computer Screen This Thanksgiving

Posted by kdawson on from the candid-webcam dept.

Pickens writes "Video calling, long anticipated by science fiction, is filtering into everyday use, and two demographic groups not usually thought of as high-tech are among the earliest adopters — the nursery school set and their grandparents. According to the AARP, nearly half of American grandparents live more than 200 miles from at least one of their grandchildren, and about two-thirds of grandchildren see one set of grandparents only a few times a year, if that. Internet companies are also promoting video chat as an enhancement to standard IM and Internet phone services; for example, this month Google introduced bare-bones video capability in Gmail. Some veterans of the technology fear that the video cam has started to substitute, rather than supplement, actual time together. And no one quite knows what it means to a generation of 2-year-olds to have slightly pixelated versions of their grandparents as regular fixtures in their lives."

5 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. E.M. Forster redux by Concerned+Onlooker · · Score: 3, Informative

    E.M. Forster wrote a story call The Machine Stops in which humans have become so isolated as to live in individual cells with all their needs provided by machinery that delivers everything to their isolated habitats. It is considered weird to actually meet someone in person. It's a great read and the parallels to the internet are a little eerie.

    --
    http://www.rootstrikers.org/
    1. Re:E.M. Forster redux by quakehead3 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Another example of a physically and emotionally disconnected population would be the Solarians from Isaac Asimov's Future History novels. They actually carried it to the point where they became extinct.

      The Solarian society is described in his novel The Naked Sun.

    2. Re:E.M. Forster redux by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Informative
      ***Spoiler Alert***

      The Solarians did not become extinct. In Robots and Empire they appeared to, having ceased all broadcasts. This was because they were no longer interested in communicating with anyone who wasn't Solarian. They programmed their robots not to regard non-Solarians as human, allowing them to kill. They continued to become more and more isolated, and developed genetic modification until, in Foundation and Earth, they were hermaphrodites and didn't need to even meet each other in person even to reproduce (something that already found distasteful in The Naked Sun).

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. No mention of the deaf community? by kjcole · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is old news in the deaf community, where audio communication takes a back seat to sign languages. Search the web for "video relay services" or VRS.

  3. Makes a better story if there's fear, eh? by Malc · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Some veterans of the technology fear that the video cam has started to substitute, rather than supplement, actual time together."

    Maybe for some families, time together is impractical. Webcam time is better than no time.

    I've always been sceptical about the benefits of a webcam and thought it a bit of a gimmick. I've just spent four months living overseas and on a whim thought I'd try webcams out with my partner back home. It made a huge difference. I suspect that for people who are using it as a substitute, they're probably people who don't make much of an effort with relationships anyway. They have more to fear than the tech issues.