Skype, business cards, and a stubbornly old-fashioned society

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So Microsoft is going to buy Skype for $8.5 billion.  I just barely know what Skype is, which, if you know me, shouldn’t be surprising.  With few exceptions, I view the telephone as a means, not an end.  Let’s make the plan with it, not have it be the plan.  My attitude toward it ranges from resigned apathy to open belligerence, and whatever else Skype is, it’s talking on the telephone.  So several years ago when Skype first popped up, I probably learned about it enough to know that, then promptly cleared memory on it.

I am a bit surprised at the size of the purchase price.  That Brother Bill thinks the company is worth that much perhaps indicates a higher level of adoption than I think.

Still, I think it’s interesting how many things we “knew” were going to be true of voice-to-voice communication by now just aren’t, and indeed, probably won’t be.  Most of us are surrounded by equipment that is easily capable of videotelephony—in our homes, in our offices, usually in our pockets/purses, and increasingly even in our cars.  Yet, despite its ubiquitous depiction in film, books, and so forth of the past few decades that attempted to portray the future, how many of us view it as a default mode, or even an expected option?

Remember early in Aliens, when Ripley plugs Burke’s business card into her videophone to call him?  That touches on another thing we all sort of implicitly expect that never seems to happen.  I remember chuckling at that scene, because I thought the idea that people would still be carrying physical objects like business cards in the 22nd century—even if they doubled as pieces of communication infrastructure—was ridiculous.

Yet as you sit reading this in 2011, do you think business cards are going anywhere anytime soon?  The .vcf file format has been with us for what, a decade and a half?  No matter who made it or what the OS is or what have you, every piece of electronics you have that is at all concerned with contacts knows exactly what to do with a .vcf file.  When was the last time you used one?

More germanely:  when was the last time you gave yours to someone, or someone gave his/hers to you?

I think that for all of the technology in which we are immersed, we remain interestingly quaint about some things.  I think business cards have held on because their tangibility is comforting.  There’s a vague romance about them, too.  I think that on some level, we enjoy their direct connection to a time when a calling card was one of the primary forms of communication.

I think part of why videotelephony never acquires default status is that there’s just too much decorum that it shakes.  There’s an implicit dignity, with well-established manners, in proper telephone conversation.  What are the rules for video calls?  Well, until they’re everywhere, nobody cares; and (maybe) as long as nobody cares, they won’t be everywhere.  (That could be a factor, anyway.)  Plus, how often do you need to see that person?  If it’s a soldier talking to his family on the other side of the world or an executive talking to her family on the other side of the country, then sure.  But setting up lunch?  Confirming a doctor’s appointment?

Perhaps these attitudes really are conventions of a conservative past, and shall fall in time.  I think that day is probably far enough out that it won’t affect my life much.  I think I’m glad for that.

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2 thoughts on “Skype, business cards, and a stubbornly old-fashioned society”

  1. What’s these here… er… tellyfones you keep yappin’ about?

    (People are constantly amazed that I don’t turn mine on… and that it ONLY makes calls, not take pictures, surf the web, or mix drinks.)

    Reply

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