Comment by StrictDabbler
3 years ago
Yeah, I said this about videophones in 2002 or so. I was sure I was right. Videophones had been reinvented five times over. You could only use it at home, sitting on the couch, giving it your full attention. Who would want to have regular conversations that way enough to pay for a videophone with limited compatibility?
Now I go to the supermarket and people are holding their phones out at arm's length having FaceTime conversations at full volume with their adult kids.
Once 3-D works and integrates with physical objects it's going to be a big deal. We just keep failing at that.
Social stuff changes.
The reason I think videophones is a bad comparison is that video conferencing systems were economically successful in the corporate space well before you started saying that about videophones. There was a demonstrated value proposition; it's just that costs had to come way down for consumers to find it worth it. (Which I suspect demonstrates that that don't care very much about it, in that they pay $0 for video calls in both up-front and per-minute terms.)
But even if you were right, some social stuff changing isn't proof that other social things will change soon. It's just as plausible to me that the cost, in terms of money and inconvenience, will have to drop just as far for VR as it did for video calls. Meaning that it would have to be included in every phone or every pair of glasses for free and with approximately no additional effort to use. Which is something that we are surely decades away from.