Back in 1991, I was doing my Master's project in Malaysia. Calling back home was extremely expensive. I would therefore phone for a few minutes only each month. I remember how special those 'calling events' were, and also how difficult it was to find the right thing to say. So many exotic experiences, so little time, resulted in a kind of mental paralysis.
In 2004, calling long-distance is a completely different experience. For example, calling from the Netherlands to the US now is only one euro-cent a minute, less than what it costs to make a local call!
I wonder to what extent the almost free phone is going to be instrumental in making the Global Village 'inhabited' as it were. It is interesting that the more modern e-mail technology has already been around much longer as a very cheap communications technology, but that the older phone is on the rise as a competing ubiquitous and cheap technology.
Of course, like most communication technologies, e-mail and telephone will nicely co-exist, but what will be their specific roles? Is there going to be a shift from e-mail to the phone?
Or is communication volume as a whole going to increase? How to classify Internet-phone technologies, such as Skype?
What effect is this mix of cheap technologies going to have on the creation of truly virtual communities, in which many members never meet face-to-face? What will be the niches of the various technologies?
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