When AT&T demonstrated its video telephone at the 1964 World’s Fair, everyone — including AT&T — pretty much figured that it would be the future. People wouldn’t just hear each other over the phone — they’d see each other, too.
What everyone forgot, of course, was a little factor called human nature. People don’t want to be watched on the phone. You don’t want to have to make yourself presentable, to perform or to give up the freedom of multitasking. In the absence of video, you can walk around cleaning, perform small acts of personal grooming, maybe roll your eyes at a stupid comment.
And so here we are, 45 years later, still making audio-only phone calls. Not because of technological limits, but human ones.
So what about Skype?
If you’re under 30 or so, you probably know all about Skype. It’s a free program for Mac, Windows or Linux that connects you to other people who have Skype. You can type instant messages back and forth, make crystal-clear audio calls, and, yes, even make video calls, provided your computers have webcams or built-in cameras — all without paying a penny.
No wonder more than 300 million people have tried Skype. It’s a natural for the college crowd, in particular; free calls are especially attractive when you’re young and broke and far from friends and family. Of course, plenty of other programs do the same things: iChat, Google Talk, MSN Messenger, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, SightSpeed and Oovoo. But because of its simplicity, its quality and its early start, Skype is the one whose name has become a verb.
On Tuesday, after a year of public testing, the Skype team, now owned by eBay, released Skype 4.0 for Windows, which the company calls “the biggest new release in Skype’s history.”
The first change strikes you immediately — and…