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January 3, 2004
2004: The Year the Webcam Got Practical
Posted by Clay Shirky
I've never been a long-term futurist -- the error rate on projections 50 years out is usually so high as to make the excercise worse than useless. (The important technologies from "The Space Age" or "The Atomic Age" turned out to be transistors and birth control pills, not rockets and reactors.)
Two moments interest me -- when something becomes possible -- the Web in 93, VoIP in 96 -- and the moment it becomes practical, which is to say when the threshold of cost and hassle drops to the point where a teenager can do it (the Web in 95, VoIP in 2003.)
ExtremeTech has a short article up making the argument that
2004 is the year the webcam is going to go practical, not as the one-way source of camgirl broadcast, but as a routine part of two-way communications:
Webcams are now cheap and reliable enough and produce high enough quality to make them more than just worth the effort – they're practically a necessity for any home computer. Heck, they're affordable enough that you could buy one for a friend or family member, so they can't say, "Nobody I talk to has one yet." If you've been ignoring the webcam boom or just too shy to show your face, you have no idea what you've been missing.
Comments (4)
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1. Liz Lawley on January 3, 2004 5:03 PM writes...
I was thinking exactly that when I read Tim Bray's post from a couple of weeks ago...http://tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/12/23/Videophone
Permalink to Comment2. Anon on January 4, 2004 2:21 PM writes...
um, the link you gave seems to be self-referential
Permalink to Comment3. Clay Shirky on January 4, 2004 2:57 PM writes...
fixed, thanks
Permalink to Comment4. Dave on January 5, 2004 4:10 AM writes...
The link is working fine for me, the cam I use is a 200$ piece (one of a few cams able to serve the video to more than 1 application through windows drivers) and getting close to my friends around the world is getting easier each day - I personally really like webcams & I'm not as sceptical as with Voice-Over-IP (not popular here in Germany, 'cause quality is very low through the hardly loaded cables...) Wishing you all a great start into the new week, Dave from Germany.
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