front-facing cameras (i.e., webcams) are unnecessary on a laptop, tablet, or phone. manufacturers should remove them in favor of better supporting dedicated equipment, since they'll never be 'good enough' when video quality actually matters.
video calls have been part of the futurism canon for at least 100 years, but they still have little utility beyond a simple phone call (or even text messages in many cases). they just waste bandwidth and add anxiety and frustration (nevermind encouraging narcissism).
i personally use my front facing webcam on my computer 10-20x per day (for video calls, or short quick video walkthroughs). my kids also are using their cheap school laptops front facing webcams 3-4x per day with remote school, and my wife and i frequently use facetime on our iphones to chat throughout the day. i'm not interested in add'l dedicated equipment, i'm interested in the easiest solution to perform the job i need done
for a walkthrough, why would i want to look at you the entire time, rather than whatever it is you're walking me through (for which a rear camera is much better positioned, with voice instructions)?
a rear camera would not be useful at all for an on-screen walkthrough as it would be facing a wall or a surface. my face on the other hand, added for a personal effect, to an on-screen recording or so you can easily match my voice and my mouth to better understand me. perhaps you haven't seen a face + full screen desktop walkthrough? https://www.getcloudapp.com/. very useful.
a facetime call with my wife does require video, because it's a facetime call. i want to see her.
my kids school remote calls do require video because their teachers require video on. they do this because kids from ages 6-18 may not actually be paying attention in class, so the hardware camera is used to help the teacher.
if you were to look on youtube for walkthroughs of products, or twitch streams, you'll frequently see front facing cameras added to videos because people do actually like, enjoy, and find value (you can follow along to voice/face/emotion) in them
"video calls have been part of the futurism canon for at least 100 years, but they still have little utility beyond a simple phone call" While you could argue practical utility, the mere fact that millions are clinging to video conferencing for a sense of connectedness seems to suggest that it has at least an emotional utility. Not everybody is an introvert.
you can get connectedness by talking on the phone or visiting in person (yes, it’s entirely reasonable to do so these days with a little distance). have been doing this my entire life along with billions of other people and can confirm it works (especially for ‘extraverts’, although i don’t buy into that dichotomy).
an unsupported assertion is not conclusive proof. we’ve seen that people have been trying to substitute in-person meetings with video calls, but that doesn’t prove any additional utility beyond a conference call.
even in educational or therapy/coaching situations, a recorded instructional video accompanied by a phone checkin likely has better outcomes than video chats.
> even in educational or therapy/coaching situations, a recorded instructional video accompanied by a phone checkin likely has better outcomes than video chats.
This just screams "citation needed." Video chat is hugely useful whenever there is any kind of discussion, debate, or negotiation. With video chat you can read facial expressions, cut down on overlapping speech and interruptions, etc.
> "Video chat is hugely useful whenever there is any kind of discussion, debate, or negotiation. With video chat you can read facial expressions, cut down on overlapping speech and interruptions, etc."
this just screams "citation needed."
a planar, poorly lit, relatively low resolution video image doesn't provide enough detail to read expressions nearly as well as you can in person. it's actually much easier to misread expressions over video than just listening to voices, because we can focus much more on voice and it requires much less bandwidth to provide roughly equivalent clarity as speaking in person. long distance discussions, debates, and negotiations have happened just fine for decades without video.
as for interruptions, millions of years of social conditioning seems to suffice at allowing us to negotiate overlap adequately. besides, simple technology like a wish-to-speak signal can be employed if need be (though they're unnecessary).
Never seen video chat be a good substitute for poor etiquette. People still decide to interrupt one another. FWIW, this problem also occurs in-person on a daily basis with most people.
>With video chat you can read facial expressions
This is a double-edged sword. Some facial expressions are better off not read. Facial expressions are routinely misinterpreted. Worse, it creates an incentive to turn facial expressions into facial expression etiquette, which is both annoying to the person, and removes any reason to even use facial expressions.
I can accept video chat in small groups (sub-5) for a short time in professional settings. Anything other than that feels suffocating and limiting. There definitely is an obsession with video chat which has yet to be proven, by a majority who are trying to (poorly) mimic the workfloor.
Everyone who has access to video calls could trivially turn them into conference calls instead. The fact that they continue to prefer video for at least some situation demonstrates that, regardless of what else is going on, they find the video calls to have some additional utility.
If your hypothesis were true, we would not observer this behavior.
no, that's trivially refuted by considering the simpler but still consistent explanation that video calls are employed to more closely mimic the contemporaneously rare in-person meetings without considering (negative) utility at all.
in any case, your argument is circular because you're implicitly asserting utility must exist ('if they use video, it must have utility'), and then pointing to that just-asserted utility as (unsupported) refutation.
It doesn’t matter what the video calls are used for - the claim was they have less utility than phone calls. I suspect you are over thinking this. People choose video over phone only sometimes because it has more utility for them - hence the hypothesis is false. Simple.
Wanting to see one's colleagues is not narcissism. There's a valid accessibility reason as being able to see the other person helps people with hearing challenges and also, it's pretty rude to refuse to let yourself be seen.
I never understood people who "didn't want to be seen" on camera during meetings (especially meetings with hearing accessibility issues) because those same people were willing to work in the physical workplace. The way I see it, if you refuse to be seen in a virtual meeting, you should _also_ refuse to be seen in person as well.
>The way I see it, if you refuse to be seen in a virtual meeting, you should _also_ refuse to be seen in person as well
Unfortunately, I don't have a golden goose. Virtual meetings, by virtue of being new, gave me an opportunity to push back onto the need of seeing one another. Not being in the office would be met with manager talks.
>also, it's pretty rude to refuse to let yourself be seen.
Are we really doing this? There are so many things that are rude. Not everything has to be met with a resounding "yes" because on a whim, people decide to mimic the work floor to the T without thinking further. I enjoy my visual privacy. To me, it is even more rude to force someone out of their visual privacy for a prolonged time multiple times a day, let alone having to stare at one's own face because the app refuses to build in a way to remove your own video feed without closing it entirely.
I responded to Stretchcat with extra detail because I am that guy with a hearing accessibility challenge.
In response to what you said, I will add that I live by myself. If I can't see a coworker such as yourself over video, when am I going to get to see anyone? The only in-person interaction I have had since March outside of a neighbor on the sidewalk/going to the grocery store and seeing the cashier/going to the doctor, has been only my mother and only 3 times. This is pretty isolating!
You are helping me out by feeling a little bit more connected to people if I can have a video chat with you.
I'm very used to isolation, but I can also tell it isn't ideal for my mental health and 2020 hasn't been excellent.
yes, accessibility is a legitimate reason to prefer video calls. but the way you worded your original comment, it implied blanket rudeness for not prefering video all the time for everyone. it would indeed be rude to cut you or anyone else out of a conversation due to accessibility concerns in the absence of alternatives like computer-generated captions (as mentioned in your other comment).
Being seen is consequence of working in a physical space, not the objective. Not unless you're a stripper. Phone meetings worked just fine for decades, video chat is pure narcissism.
If there were somebody deaf on my team then I suppose I would reconsider it, but there isn't, so spare me the moralizing.
I'll be honest. I'm that guy with the hearing accessibility issue. That's why I'm mad about people who refuse to be seen.
If we use MS Teams or Google Meet, then it's mitigable because those support computer generated captions (albeit not perfect). But other technologies like Zoom, Webex, etc. don't have that feature, so literally, if there are no captions and I can't see you in order to lipread & read some body language, then we are unable to have a productive meeting. You might as well be speaking a foreign language.
Even if everyone has normal hearing, it's still a good thing to be able to see each other to check-in on everyone's body language and well-being. If someone looks really unhappy or looks like they're not taking care of themselves at all, then this is information that they need help with something.
video calls have been part of the futurism canon for at least 100 years, but they still have little utility beyond a simple phone call (or even text messages in many cases). they just waste bandwidth and add anxiety and frustration (nevermind encouraging narcissism).