Micro Memories
2001 predicts widespread use of the Picturephone.
2001 shows some of the fears the Picturephone raised.
how they will appear on the screen of
the called party. These reactions are
only natural, but they also indicate
how difficult it is to predict the way
people will respond to something new
and different.”
June 1968 Western Electric Ad.
No kidding! The Bell System
estimated that 3,000,000
Picturephone units would be operating
in homes and offices by the mid-
1980s, bringing in a combined
revenue of $5,000,000,000 a year,
but the cost, both to the consumer
and to the Bell network in upgrades,
coupled with the simple, but extremely
understandable fear by consumers of
being seen at inopportune moments,
soon dampened much of the
enthusiasm for the project. (George
Orwell’s 1984 was a perennial best-seller since the late 1940s. I wonder if
its two-way telescreens, used as a
controlling mechanism by his futuristic,
totalitarian government, also caused
subliminal fears?) As a result, the
project was basically DOA by the
early 1970s and Bell itself died a
decade later, when the Federal
Government broke it into eight
regional networks to diffuse its
monopoly on December 31, 1983.
A New Lease on Life
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NUTS & VOLTS
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In the late ‘90s, the concept of
the Picturephone received a new
lease on life via the Internet, allowing
webcams to proliferate at home and
enabling video meetings and teleconferencing to become commonplace
in the office. Most people, though,
still get dressed up at least a little
bit or put on a suit and, no doubt,
plan their appearance ahead of time
if they know that there’s a
videoconference scheduled that day.
Tech TV estimates that 6,000,000
webcams were sold in 2002, but how
many are used regularly? Most
people sit at their home computers
during planned times when they surf
the ‘net and chat with friends, not
when there’s an emergency or when
they need to call their spouse to pick
up some milk on the way home from
work. Otherwise, they’re used
specifically for the purpose that made
Picturephones unpopular — for the “R
U Nekkid” crowd and for viewing live
action “pr0n.”
Had the Picturephone caught on,
the future would have arrived much
sooner than it did for most consumers.
However, that sort of speculation is a
moot point; some technologies, no
matter how initially appealing, just
aren’t meant to be. NV
14
MAY 2004
