Standard of Normal Communication

Communicating on the Internet used to be very artificial. First, you can only send text messages. There is hardly no emotional component in text messages, aside from the smiley. In fact, the invention of the Smiley shows us it is hard for humans to talk in text format. The emotional parts are the important parts, and they cannot be revealed by written language, though only to a certain extent which is seemingly not enough.

Standard of Normal Communication

Then the pictures came. Pictures and text go great together, that's why one is often used with the other. Still, there is a long way to go to reach how it is to have a normal conversation with someone. This was a standard that had to be met. The question we should ask ourselves is then: How can we make communication more like two people who are seated and talking to each other?

Video is a great tool. It adds life and image feed to tonality. Specifically, it has two advantages: first, we don't need to be in the same place, and second, we don't need to be present at the same time. Video can be recorded. A good example is people being interviewed via Skype. This comes pretty close to how people normally talk. What usually happens, however, is that Skype works a little bit like a walkie-talkie, with only one person being able to talk at at time. It's a bit hard to coordinate the talk especially when you're with more than three people. And in fact, a normal video conversation is best done with a time line.

Recording Video Messages

If you have a good webcam and an integrated microphone, Skype already comes very close to what I regard as having a good and synced video conversation. We don't really need to use headsets anymore. Furthermore, Facebook video messages is also a great way of communicating. It's actually possible to send video messages in Facebook, or have a video message posted as a wall message. It's a cool thing, but it's not used a lot. I wonder why.

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