Monday, June 26, 2006

The magic experience of VOIP in the background

This weekend I finally got all the needed prerequisites for a Skype connection with my fiancee with whom I am currently separated by the distance of 1000km. We talked for hours but what was really magical was when we finally stopped the direct conversation and left to do our daily chores but did not switch the communication link off. This way I heard her as if she was in a room just behind a wall, talking to a friend, using the vacuum cleaner, watching TV, I even heard her shouting to me from the kitchen where she prepared some food. This was as if some magic connected our, thousand kilometers away, rooms.

When I left the flat I forgot to switch the connection off. There was a thunderstorm and I received a SMS reminding me that I left the window opened as well.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

John Perry Barlow wrote about a similar experience he had using Apple's iChat AV voice-messaging application.

I've also heard of people doing the same with camera-equipped computers. The reported experience is of having a porthole into another room, possibly thousands of miles away.