If you’re craving more from your video chats, think outside the box. From Second Life to Online Town, there are plenty of places to gather while staying at home.
Second Life continues to “live”? Maybe worth checking out the current version, although many of the educational institutions previously ‘Living there” had moved on because of some problems with the ownership.
Online communication has generally progressed from one standard of online quality, to a better one., year by year. This might be a corollary to Moore’s Law of chip capability doubling every 18-24 months or so, for an equal or lesser cost. Which has now, AFAIK “held true” for many decades, more or less, (despite Intel’s troubles) which is amazing, and a chief reason that DIY video has become ubiquitous in the last few years, and especially now.
Here’s what an MIT report this year says about the current state of Moore’s Law. One might do well to recall that the death of Moore’s Law has been predicted pretty much every few years since he formulated it.
But we should also know that what we have today, is only a fraction of what we will have in, say, 5 years. or less in the case of 5G. (presuming the world’s economy is healthy enough to support at least reasonably high levels of R&D which is perhaps questionable as of this writing)
One big leap forward in immersive online communication presence that we can see coming is AR and VR. Which will continue the trend of virtual connectivity having a closer and closer association with IRL connectivity. Which is what people crave, most of the time. Should WFH continue with large numbers of workers, LFH continue to develop, and Health From Home do the same, the market for AR and VR which has been limited will greatly expand.
[gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Zoom-Not-Cutting-It-for-You-Try-Exploring-a-Virtual-World-WIRED.pdf”]