Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!maytag!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Looking Backwards
Message-ID: <75137@looking.on.ca>
Date: 11 Jan 90 00:07:56 GMT
References: <72168@looking.on.ca> <943@gtisqr.UUCP>
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 25
Class: discussion

I see video E-mail as being more popular that video conferencing.

For one, people will like it for the same reasons they prefer e-mail to
phone tag.  I can send a nice video message to somebody and not have to
worry about meeting up -- particularly if they live in Australia.

(Just as the Australians & Japanese are thriving off FAX machines these days,
they will love video E-mail)

You get to compose yourself and make sure you look OK for video e-mail.
Not so easy for a video phone call.

And bandwidth cost is important.  For one, you can compress video E-mail
in non-real time, and probaly get pretty good compression.  (Not yet, but
I don't see why not in the near future.)  You will in general be able to
do better than real-time.

But most of all, "spare" bandwidth is going to become almost free in the
future.  We need so much bandwidth for our live conferencing systems and
other live data systems, that a packet that is willing to wait 5 minutes
will pay a pittance -- perhaps a fixed rate, even.

This will always be the case, I think.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473