yeah, okay, but not in the bathroom.

okay, so there's skype and google video chat and logitech vid and a whole merry host of other VOIP [Voice Over Internet Protocol - durr!] apps to get your internet communication on, and that's fine that there are many of them because right now they're all stuck in about the same place and the competition should breed innovation. video chat is currently one-on-one and requires human initiation. generally, to successfully skype, you've got to ring up your skypee first on their mobile so that you both can turn on your systems.

so, the first thing that needs to change is that the systems need to be "on" all the time. it needs to be more like phoning or even better - more like dropping by and knocking on the door. knock-knock, honey can you get that, oh look it's ace dropping by, c'mon in ace. and, so on. only you're going into the house of someone who is hundreds of miles away.

secondly, these systems need to be many-to-many. say sweet baby james wants to drop by and see ol' ace one afternoon, so we're hanging out, me & sbj, and it gets to be around suppertime and here comes ol' elvis. hey, elvis! so now there are three of us and it needs to be where we can all see each other. elvis came to my house, but sbj was already there, so now elvis can see us both.

logistically i don't know if the many-to-many would entail many screens or splitting up one screen. maybe you'd have like a screen wall in each room so that as i move around the house, elvis and sbj can sit on their hind ends and watch me, or they can move around, too. we could all be moving around and living our lives and doing the laundry and whatnot but we'd be virtually side-by-side.

and, while we're at it, the camera needs to follow the action or a person. like, you could choose to follow the action if there were several people in the place you had skyped to, or if it was just li'l ol' me, you could choose to tag me and have the camera follow me.

video mobile phones will be great, but to get the authentic interaction i am talking about here, you've got to have larger screens. 6'x6' would be a good start. needs to be big enough so that when you move around a bit, you're still on screen. this wouldn't work if someone wanted to come to your soccer game or something like that. i mean, maybe you have a portable camera where they can come and watch you, but you can't exactly interact the same way in that format.

but getting back to the original concept, see, here we are - me & sbj & elvis - and it's getting to be around suppertime, and so we all sit down and virtually eat supper together when we're literally hundreds of miles apart. just like that, the miles disappear.