This will also be an efficient way to schedule restaurant or theater reservations, but it raises an interesting issue. Let’s say a restaurant isn’t getting much business, or tickets to a show aren’t selling well, or your lawyer doesn’t want you to know that you’re her only client. Such companies and individuals might instruct their scheduling programs just to respond to meeting requests. Your scheduling program wouldn’t be able to ask your lawyer’s program to list all the times she is free. However, if it asked for a specific two-hour block, the response would be: “Yes, we can schedule you for Tuesday at eleven o’clock.”
Clients will expect their lawyers, dentists, accountants, and other professionals to be able to schedule appointments and exchange documents electronically. You might have a quick follow-up question for your doctor—for instance, whether a generic version of a drug is acceptable. It is hard to interrupt a doctor, but you’ll expect to be able to trade e-mail with all of the professionals you work with. We’re going to see competition based on how effectively one professional group has adopted these communications tools and how much more accessible and efficient this makes them. I’m sure we’ll then begin seeing ads in which a firm will tout how much more advanced it has become in the use of PC communications.
When the information highway is available, people won’t be limited to audio and still images, because the highway will also transmit high-quality video. The meetings they schedule will more and more often be conducted electronically, using shared-screen videoconferencing. Each electronic participant, wherever he or she is, will look at a different physical screen: a video white board, a television set, or a PC, but each screen will show much the same image. Part of the screen might show someone’s face, while another part might display a document. If anyone modifies the document, the change will appear almost immediately on all the screens. Geographically distant collaborators will be able to work together in rich ways. This is synchronous or real-time sharing, which means that the computer screens will keep up with the people using them.
If a group were to meet electronically to collaborate on a press release, each member would be able to use his or her PC or notebook computer to move paragraphs around and drop in a photograph or a video. The rest of the group would be able to look at the result on their individual screens and see each contributor’s work as it is actually happening.
We’re already accustomed to watching video meetings. Anyone who tunes in to television news shows, such as Nightline, which feature long-distance debates, is seeing a videoconference. The host and guests may be separated by continents, yet they engage in give-and-take as if they were in the same room, and to viewers it almost appears that they are.
Today, in order to videoconference, it is necessary to go to a specially equipped facility with special phone lines. Microsoft has at least one dedicated videoconference room in each of its sales offices around the world. They’re used quite a bit, but the setting is fairly formal. These facilities have saved us lots of traveling. Employees in other offices “sit in” on staff meetings, and customers and vendors have “visited” us without traveling to our headquarters outside Seattle. Such meetings will become very popular because they save time and money and are often more productive than audio-only phone conferences or even face-to-face meetings, because people seem to be more attentive if they know they are on-camera.
I’ve noticed that it does take some getting used to, though. If one person is on a videoconference screen, he or she tends to get much more attention than others in the meeting. I first noticed this when a bunch of us in Seattle were videoconferencing with Steve Ballmer, who was in Europe. It was as if we were all glued to The Steve Ballmer Show. If Steve took off his shoes, we’d all look at each other’s reactions. When the meeting was over I could have told you all about Steve’s new haircut but I might not have been able to name the other people who’d been in the
room with me. I think this distortion will go away as videoconferences become commonplace.
It’s currently fairly expensive to set up a videoconference room—it costs at least $40,000. However, desktop systems that attach to PCs are coming, and they will reduce the cost—and the formality—dramatically. Our facilities are generally connected with ISDN lines operating at 384,000 bits per second, which provide reasonable picture and sound quality for about $20 to $35 an hour for connections within the United States and about $250 to $300 an hour for an international connection.
The cost of videoconferencing, like that of almost every other computer-driven service, is going to drop as technology and communications costs do. Small video devices using cameras attached to personal computers or television sets will allow us to meet readily across the information highway with much higher quality pictures and sound for lower prices. As ISDN connected to PCs becomes popular, videoconferences will be as standard a business procedure as using a copier to duplicate a document for distribution is now.
Some people worry that, by eliminating the subtlety of human dynamics in a meeting, videoconferences and shared screens will give corporate gatherings all the spontaneity of a congressional photo opportunity. How will people whisper, roll their eyes at a tedious speaker, or pass notes? Actually, clandestine communication will be simpler at a video meeting because the network will facilitate individual communications on the side. Meetings have always had unwritten rules, but when the network is mediating videoconferences, some rules will have to become explicit. Will people be able to signal, publicly or privately, individually or collectively, that they are bored? To what degree should a participant be allowed to block his or her video or audio from others? Should private side conversations, one PC to another, be permitted? Over time, as we use these facilities, new rules of meeting etiquette will emerge.
Home videoconferences will naturally be somewhat different. If the conference has only two participants, it will amount to a video phone call. That will be great for saying hello to your kids when you’re out of town or showing your veterinarian the way your dog or cat limps. But when you’re at home, chances are you’ll keep cameras off during most calls, especially with strangers. You may choose to transmit a canned photograph of yourself, your family, or something else you believe expresses your individuality yet protects your visual privacy. It will be something like choosing a message for your answering machine. Live video could be switched on for a friend or when business required it.
All of the synchronous and asynchronous images I have discussed up to this point—photographs, videos, or documents—have been pictures of real things. As computers become more powerful, it will be possible for a standard PC to fabricate realistic synthetic images. Your phone or computer will be able to generate a lifelike digital image of your face, showing you listening or even talking. You really will be talking it’s just that you’ve taken the call at home and are dripping wet from the shower. As you talk, your phone will synthesize an image of you in your most businesslike suit. Your facial expressions will match your words (remember, small computers are going to get very powerful). Just as easily, your phone will be able to transmit an image of your words issuing from the mouth of someone else, or from an idealized version of you. If you are talking to someone you’ve never met, and you don’t want to show a mole or a flabby chin, your caller won’t be able to tell if you really look so much like Cary Grant (or Meg Ryan) or whether you’re getting a little help from your computer.