Hearing voices

摘要

Sara baumholtz lives in Hawaii and wants to stay in close touch with her young granddaughter in Pennsylvania. So Ms Baumholtz, by inclination an "analogue", became a "digital immigrant". With the help of software from Sight-Speed, a Californian firm that is at last making video-calling foolproof for ordinary humans, Ms Baumholtz now talks to, and makes faces at, the distant toddler through her PC monitor and webcam. And, because she is not using a telephone line and her broadband internet access is always on, she no longer bothers to "hang up", staying connected to Pennsylvania throughout the day. That got her thinking. "I wouldn't be surprised if I got rid of the phone," she says. Ms Baumholtz represents the leading edge of a trend with implications that are as far-reaching as they are often underestimated. Telephony, as a stand-alone technology and as an industry, will gradually disappear. "In ten years the whole notion of a phone call or a number may be dead," says Paul Saffo at Silicon Valley's Institute for the Future. "Instant messaging (IM), audio IM, video IM-what is a call? You will click on an icon and talk, just as when you see somebody in the hallway." Or just as Ms Baumholtz does already.