Grandma's On the Computer Screen This Thanksgiving 73
Pickens writes "Video calling, long anticipated by science fiction, is filtering into everyday use, and two demographic groups not usually thought of as high-tech are among the earliest adopters — the nursery school set and their grandparents. According to the AARP, nearly half of American grandparents live more than 200 miles from at least one of their grandchildren, and about two-thirds of grandchildren see one set of grandparents only a few times a year, if that. Internet companies are also promoting video chat as an enhancement to standard IM and Internet phone services; for example, this month Google introduced bare-bones video capability in Gmail. Some veterans of the technology fear that the video cam has started to substitute, rather than supplement, actual time together. And no one quite knows what it means to a generation of 2-year-olds to have slightly pixelated versions of their grandparents as regular fixtures in their lives."
Rule #34 (Score:5, Funny)
Grandma's On the Computer Screen This Thanksgiving
Oh she's on the computer screen alright ... but it's not a webcam I'd want to watch.
*shudders*
Goddamn rule 34 [xkcd.com]!
Re:Rule #34 (Score:4, Funny)
" *shudders* "
Next up, 4chan /aarp/ , a great way to keep up with relatives not already on /b/.
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Who wants to host a Thanksgiving Day Lemon Party?
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Goddamn rule 34!
Yeah, but did you visit wetriffs.com it mentions ? ;)
Huh... (Score:2)
Is /this/ why I keep getting AARP spam?
Eh?
--
BMO
we already do this (Score:2)
My family is distributed across two continents. We've been using skype for comms, particularly my mum and her grandchildren, for the last four years.
All that's left is a private file sharing site for photos and such, which I'm creating next.
video in gmail would be a nice addition I guess.
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Why make your own when you can use something like dropbox? [getdropbox.com].
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Why make your own when you can use something like dropbox? [getdropbox.com].
I prefer to be assured of my privacy. Besides, I like coding new stuff.
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makes me sad (Score:5, Insightful)
A bit off topic but, it felt I had to comment about the following statement:
"and about two-thirds of grandchildren see one set of grandparents only a few times a year, if that."
I think kids who get to hang out with their grandparents a lot at an early age are incredibly fortunate these days. I think it's a valuable experience for kids to meet and get to know an older generation. And when they get older, it also can make being a teenager a bit easier if you can talk with people who have a strong influence over your parents, but are also not your parents. Only works for the types who have mellowed out with age, not with the types of grand parents who got crazy with age (or were just crazy to begin with).
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There is value in being forced to deal with assholes too.
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I think we're going to see a lot more of this because the high price of transportation and the poor economy are going to drive more people to communicate via webcam, especially if the distances are over a day's driving time (about 350-400 miles).
I can't video chat with my grandparents (Score:1)
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Their next project is to extend this to trans-life communications, but they're having difficultly deciding which afterlife implementation to use for testing.
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Dude, about those 72 virgins, haven't you heard that they really exist? The hell of it is that they will perpetually remain virgins so unless you like the idea of 72 twelve year old sisters, I wouldn't pursue them.
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They're all virgins, however they're all ugly. Why else would they still be virgins.
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On Slashdot? You're asking for the mother of all insensitive clod jokes.
I kid, I kid! ;)
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They're all virgins, however they're all ugly. Why else would they still be virgins.
They're other terrorists. That's the secret. God is playing serious mindfreak games on these guys.
Linux (Score:1, Flamebait)
E.M. Forster redux (Score:4, Informative)
Re:E.M. Forster redux (Score:5, Interesting)
E.M. Forster [wikipedia.org] wrote a story call The Machine Stops [uiuc.edu] in which humans have become so isolated as to live in individual cells with all their needs provided by machinery that delivers everything to their isolated habitats. It is considered weird to actually meet someone in person. It's a great read and the parallels to the internet are a little eerie.
Another example of a physically and emotionally disconnected population would be the Solarians from Isaac Asimov's Future History novels. They actually carried it to the point where they became extinct.
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The Solarian society is described in his novel The Naked Sun.
Re:E.M. Forster redux (Score:4, Informative)
The Solarians did not become extinct. In Robots and Empire they appeared to, having ceased all broadcasts. This was because they were no longer interested in communicating with anyone who wasn't Solarian. They programmed their robots not to regard non-Solarians as human, allowing them to kill. They continued to become more and more isolated, and developed genetic modification until, in Foundation and Earth, they were hermaphrodites and didn't need to even meet each other in person even to reproduce (something that already found distasteful in The Naked Sun).
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A more popular example for the under-25 set would be the Kryptonians in John Byrne's rebooted Superman series. The Kryptonians were so isolated that it was practically a crime to interact face to face; even the act of mating was done through genetic sampling in a lab.
As Byrne said, he wanted to show a Krypton that deserved to blow up.
Main problem with internet video calls (Score:4, Insightful)
My biggest issue with video conferencing is that no matter where you place the camera, if you are looking at the person on the screen, to them it looks like you are looking away from them. Put the camera on top of the screen, and your eyes are pointing down from the camera which makes it look like you are lying. Put the camera to the side, and it looks like your thoughts are wandering.
If someone can come up with a camera embedded in the middle of the screen, that would be awesome.
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I believe that concept is called a "telescreen", popularized in fiction by George Orwell. Interestingly enough a Slashdot story from earlier this year mentions that Apple has a patent on a similar concept.
I'm not sure it's something I'd want *my* computer to have...
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If someone can come up with a camera embedded in the middle of the screen, that would be awesome.
Apple has a patent on this, sorry.
Does not replace face to face, but useful extra (Score:4, Interesting)
Video calling is more of gimmick for mobile devices IMHO. When 3G first came out here in France, my wife & I got two GSMs that had video calling. We used it twice as a gimmick, then just never bothered again.
It's different in a business context, but there again, the video part seems always to be sued to slow slides rather than faces. Good advice that I've always followed is 'meet the people in real life first' before you try doing anything significant via videoconf - or even a normal call.
Finally, what may propel uptake by the kids and elders is simplicity. My elderly mther did not use Skype until I bought her a cordless skypephone that 'just works' (no PC required).
Webcams and software used to be a bitch to setup and use, and you had to stay stuck to the desktop PC. Plus all the conferencing s/w was incompatible.
Now my kids all have little Asus Eee PCs with Skype/MSM and integrated Wifi & Webcam, so they can wonder about the place untethered and chat with their grandparents and friends 'normally'. Interesting, though, they'll always be doing another thing at he same time - you just don't seem to get the same focused concentration on the other person with video conf.
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Ideally there'd be a common defacto standard or two (e.g. Skype - something that works robustly through NAT, anyway) and clients for Wii, Apple TV, and other simple or embedded devices. Build it into set top TV boxes and stick a USB socket on for a webcam. Make it as trivial for people to VC as it is to watch TV. Certainly for the older generation the thought of setting this up - buy laptop, get to grips with a computer, work out how to setup accounts, webcams etc - is quite
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Yeah - I'll probably get hammered by the FOSS crowd, but I must admit that - whilst "better" VOIP solutions exist - in the family we all use Skype because of the simplicity & wide variety of dedicated periperals available.
Could mean a lot ... (Score:2)
And no one quite knows what it means to a generation of 2-year-olds to have slightly pixelated versions of their grandparents as regular fixtures in their lives.
Three of my grandparents died long before I was born, and the last one (my grandmother on my mother's side) died when I was a teenager. Pixelated or not, I wish she was still around.
Opposed to several years between visits? (Score:3, Insightful)
I only saw one set of grandparents about once every 5 years. It seems like having the ability to visit with them on the screen is a bonus, but doesn't make up for grandma making home made cinnamon buns fresh and hot when you get up in the morning.
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Likewise with everybody else in my family.
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That's true, but there are cases where geographic distance is unavoidable and being able to see a grandparent while you are talking to them helps in that bonding process. Only one of my grandparents lived in the same town as me, and that's the only grandparent I have clear memories of. It would have been nice to see the others, I might remember them more.
No mention of the deaf community? (Score:2, Informative)
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Makes a better story if there's fear, eh? (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe for some families, time together is impractical. Webcam time is better than no time.
I've always been sceptical about the benefits of a webcam and thought it a bit of a gimmick. I've just spent four months living overseas and on a whim thought I'd try webcams out with my partner back home. It made a huge difference. I suspect that for people who are using it as a substitute, they're probably people who don't make much of an effort with relationships anyway. They have more to fear than the tech issues.
Video chatting with abusive parents... (Score:5, Interesting)
My parents were abusive. Physically, emotionally, they were out there.
Highlights from my childhood include being abandon 3 miles from home, with the family dog, without a leash. I wound up taking off my shoelaces and using them for a leash.
Another time, they wanted me to eat the tomatoes in my salad. I didn't. I just hate the taste of tomatoes. Things escalated. My parents eventually decided they'd take my leather belt off and whip me with it until I caved.
The list goes on and on.
The classic "holy shit" moment would be when they decided my brother, who was in medical school at the time, wasn't spending enough time with them. So the told folks at the school they thought he was using drugs. He wasn't. But that lie nearly cost him his future career.
I was in my mid-20's before I realized that most kids aren't actively trying to commit suicide to escape their parents. I was one of the lucky ones. I got away, and I got help.
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That was all decades ago. Now, I'm a parent, and I face an awful situation: Do I cut ties with my parents, who are now grandparents? Or do I keep them in my kids lives, but at a distance?
It's not as cut & dried as you think.
If I cut my parents out of our lives, I would face a lawsuit. My parents are wealthy. I'm not.
More critically: If I cut them out, what do I do a decade from now when my kids turn 18, and my parents show up out of nowhere to give them a new car. They'll pull the o'l line: "We wanted to be there for you, giving you birthday presents, but your parents wouldn't let us."
If you have never dealt with someone who has a borderline personality disorder, or who is obsessive-compulsive about winning and quite machiavellian about it, well you are just fucking screwed.
You can't imagine the depths and degrees of the lying and manipulation that go on. It is beyond the comprehension of a sane mind.
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Video chat offers a unique opportunity. I don't have to worry about them hitting my kids. I can supervise, even record & play back, and discuss afterwards what is happening. Where they are lying. How to tell they are lying. What they hope to gain from their lies.
Besides, when they misbehave, it's a lot easier to close the laptop lid than to throw them out of the house. (Not that I wouldn't enjoy throwing them out. But doing so does set a bad example for my kids.)
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As my wife so aptly put it: "It's like going to the zoo. You don't want the tigers to come visit you..."
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Get a lawyer (Score:2)
Grandparents might not have visitation rights.
This is also the reason why rape and child abuse should always be reported no matter how hard it may be at the time. To have the crimes on record so at a later time the system KNOWS what they are dealing with.
Really, talk to a lawyer, they law might be on your side a lot more then you think.
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Someone [slashdot.org] further up in this discussion pointed out there's value in having to deal with assholes, and I tend to agree. The quicker a child learns the world's not as peachy as it should be, the less problems it will have when it goes out into the world on its own.
Grandma's Apostrophe (Score:2, Funny)
Until I realised what is meant is a singular: Grandma is
Just to help all those out that had an equal amount of trouble to parse that sentence...
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Just to help all those out that had an equal amount of trouble to parse that sentence...
Uh.. yeah.. I wish I was so smart that use of an apostrophe like that would render the sentence unreadable.
It may be just crap video... (Score:1)
...but it would beat the heck out of the alternative that used to be, 30 seconds per kid-talk fast- on a scratchy phone call because the rates "ma bell" charged made long distance an expensive treat.
Good thing to have..... (Score:2)
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"Good thing to have...."
Great thing to have.
Communicating from a combat zone via snail mail sucks (been there, done that).
Pixelated? (Score:2)
And no one quite knows what it means to a generation of 2-year-olds to have slightly pixelated versions of their grandparents as regular fixtures in their lives.
Sure they do. It means their grandparents are getting Alzheimer's.
Pixelated [reference.com]: bewildered, confused; slightly insane; also called pixilated
Virtual grandparents (Score:1)
As long as they aren't scared of it... (Score:1)
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For many people, computers really do complicate things, partly because, frankly, they're far from being user friendly. You might not really notice, because you, and most people around you, grew up with those things. For many though, they're answers for problems they wouldn't even have without them.
So what I'm saying is, they're right. Leave them alone, don
I've had bad experiences (Score:2)
What about dreams? (Score:1)
And no one quite knows what it means to a generation of 2-year-olds to have slightly pixelated versions of their grandparents as regular fixtures in their lives.
First of all, I'd like to think that contact with (normal, decent) grandparents in addition to what they may get with one-on-one face time would be good for all parties involved - and grandparents do love pictures!
This story made me think about dreams, though. IIRC, it is common for people who grew up in the age of black and white TV to dream in black and white, while those of us who grew up with color TV tend to dream in color...does this mean that some kids may end up dreaming of pixelated grandparents?
wow i like this (Score:2, Interesting)
This is an absolute blessing on future generations. I don't usually get so excited but I sort of had a dream like this.
It's a match made in heaven. In the future, bored shitless elders - with aeons of wisdom and humility, virtually incarnated as the little angel/demon sitting on the shoulder of their penultimate biological successor as their own vessel prepares to depart. Helping with math, watching out for cars, that sort of thing.
The young in turn are turned on to the awesomeness of wisdom, experience, an
Grandparents a few times a year? (Score:2)
I've got a six month old, and I wish he only saw his grandparents a couple of times a year. The Mother-in-law has moved from ~200 miles and a ~3-hour drive away (not much in America, but enough to make it more likely to be a "go one day back the next" trip in the UK because of potential traffic delays) to the same town as us. We're now struggling to keep it down to seeing her twice a week.
Having my son see the mother-in-law only a few times a year would be a blessing!
TAGS (Score:2)
Then you've got stories like these with crazy tags... I mean, how many people could've possibly thought to enter !gramma and !wronguseofapostrophe.
How do these damn things work? D