Skype

My new computer arrived in the mail yesterday and I could not be more excited.  There are so many new features on this one that I realize there will be a huge learning curve.  So far, my favorite feature is the camera.  I downloaded Skype and tried to talk my mother through setting up the same on her phone.  There is only so much one can do over the phone and it may have to wait for her to visit my sister next month to get everything installed properly.  But I was able to have a Skype conversation with my sister last night.

It really makes a huge difference in how we talk to one another.  Even though she is not physically in the room, I find myself paying more attention to our conversation as if she were.  Most of us are doing five different things while talking on the phone these days and things get missed or we don't completely listen to the other person.  The result is that, even though we can talk to someone more often, we're not really communicating.  I think the video call will help us to connect more genuinely and effectively.

Of course, the entire time, all I could think about was this episode of the Jetson's where Jane receives a call from a friend and has to rush to put on her morning face.  I was keenly aware of my appearance as I spoke with my sister and realized this would make a difference when calling anyone else.  Will we get to a point, with this technology, where we can make a call and not care about our appearance?  Certainly, we don't get dressed up to go on an airplane the way they did in the 50's and 60's.  And we don't have special riding clothes for the car as they did in the early 1900's.  Photographs are not the special event they once were but the invention of the digital camera has made sure almost all of our pictures meet our approval.

Like most things in our society, we are concerned with how we look or how people perceive us.  We live our lives on display with sites like Facebook and Twitter.  The mundane parts of our lives made more interesting for the consumption of others.  We run the risk of pushing ourselves to meet unrealistic standards that everyone struggles to attain yet believes they're the only ones missing the mark.  The video call will definitely help families and loved ones connect on a deeper level from greater distances, but it could also further entrench this narcissistic culture we've developed.