Skype: The revolution is being videophoned
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From the window of my Zurich hotel, I could see two young men rapidly loading new electronic equipment from a van to the trunk of a Mercedes. They wore shiny track suits and Puma sneakers, quite the stylish European look for a pair of simple laborers. The boxes, too, were labeled with fine international brands: Apple, HP, Motorola, Canon.
The men seemed almost frantic in their humdrum work, because the excitement of the global economy is palpable, even to these olive-skinned young men, probably immigrant workers, saving Swiss Francs to send to their families back home. As they wrestled a huge flatscreen television into the Mercedes sedan’s back seat and hopped into the car with such haste that they forgot to close the van doors, I realized what they were saying: It’s time to call your family on the videophone.
As sirens approached, I turned away from the European view and opened the Skype program on my MacBook Pro. Even as I spoke to my wife and children in real time, it turns out “real time” is quite different so many time zones away. While I had yet to have my before-dinner cocktails, my kids had apparently gone to bed hours earlier. Between the sirens and the crying, I can’t say much of importance was communicated.
What was clear, to all of us, was that Skype has revolutionized the way the world speaks to one another.
Today, after several years as an important part of the eBay online want-ads experience, Skype is being readied to go it alone again. Sometime in the next 14 months, eBay will hold an Initial Public Offering for a new Skype stock. An IPO, already? To read the news, you would think we were in a terrible worldwide depression, not the high-flying IPO days of Silicon Valley legend.
And yet, by this time 14 months from now, we may well be saying Widerluege to the financial meltdown.
But more important than the end of our financial woes is the way Skype has changed all of our lives. There was a time, not so long ago, when few if any people had reliable video-phone service. And now? Well, when you say good night to your own family this afternoon, try to remember what it was like when the world didn’t have Skype.
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Why, praytell, are you in Zurich?
A more important question might be, “Why aren’t we all in Zurich?”
In response to another comment. See in context »Literally just got off Skype, checked T/S and read your post. We have no traditional office phone here at True/Slant. Skype has been our phone system of choice. And the sound quality is far better than any of those star-shaped “modern” conference phones. If they can figure out how to stop dropping calls, I’ll be all in.
I eagerly await your new book. Is “On the Flat, Crowded Road from Beirut in my Lexus it was Hot so I Stopped under an Olive Tree” still the working title?