Skype Culture & Cell Future

Skype, by the way, has flaws, but it’s really made having a phone number superfluous except for anyone that will only use a regular phone or isn’t on the net a lot or doesn’t take it with them where they go, or have it waiting there for them already.

Case in point: I thought of spending $60/year to set up a regular phone number in Korea that rings on my Skype, wherever I happen to be located, and on whatever computer I happen to have it turned on for at the moment. A little more for voicemail, in case I’m absent. But what’s the point? My brother over there has Skype, and he’ll just call me free through Skype. So, the only people who would need to use such a phone number are people who must call me on the go (from their cell) or who aren’t necessarily skype-savvy. Clients, in other words. And I don’t want clients reaching me instantly. And neither do you – it’s pretty hard to multi-task (to get much real work done) if someone always wants virtual face-time on demand.  Customer service lines are overrated – they mostly give you feel-good buddies, at a premium cost. I have most business lines set to go straight to voicemail and e-mail me the wav file.

Besides, for family and cell phones, there’s skype for cell phones – same with google talk, etc. So what’s the point of exchanging numbers based on some land-line schema with country and area codes?

In doing a lot of interviews via skype, I’m impressed by the sound quality. For a 2-way video call, you need lots of resources, but conference calling is built in. I even skyped into a regular “landline” 800-number conference call. At one point, I cranked my mic to max, and sounded like Zeus breaking through the conversation. The rest of the time, i left it on mute and listened while I multi-tasked.

This whole phone number system is predicated on the land-line model, which is more or less predicated on a postal address model. It’s like that company that’s trying to virtualize mail by assigning an e-address that exactly matches the physical address of every site in the US. What’s the point of that? They tell you it’s so businesses can sign on w. them and send statements etc. to a virtual address. Sounds like e-mail. You won’t send statements through e-mail, but you’ll send it to some virtualized street address on the internet? I’m still trying to get various banks and utilities to stop sending me their darned paper – so who knows – they’re still in the Jackie Gleason era – they probably dial the operator to ring up a customer.

I don’t want to be tied to a physical location. What’s that about? The whole point of services like Earth Class Mail is that you’re free to be anywhere. Don’t tie me to a street address that you plan to take away if I move, or that serves as a gps locator of my position, or that sentences me to mere locality. I want to cover lots of markets, work from anywhere I choose, and not have to wait on an unnecessary delivery service or method that can’t keep up. If the two Bobs from Office Space were to get ahold of the postal service, they’d ban everything but delivery of products. Even mission critical documents can be signed and delivered faster, easier, with less manpower and cost, and quite legally electronically. And if they got ahold of land line phone systems, they’d just close them down entirely. Why rig up two cans and some waxed string, when you can just walkie-talkie across seven continents or, again, Skype it?

E-mail and web-calls are almost the same technology – they’re just different forms of communication – syncronous and asyncronous. You get different nuance and usage from voice and text, too, but the main thing is whether you want to talk now and drop everything (for the warm feeling or because voice is the point) or talk whenever (keeping you productive). There’s a place for both. I use voice for initial consultations, and try to keep it to text for everything else. It makes sense for everyone involved – I need them high quality, inexpensive, and infrequent, but there consistently. Web calls are really closer to chat with voice, than to e-mail, though, and you’re not really living unless you turn off your darned messenger. It gets old trying to capture that one particular thought and ping ping ping “Hi there buddy! How are you?” But there’s a place for it. When I work in plain sight of several people, I still don’t get up and walk over and waste time and attention for multiple people in a mini-meeting – I send my question through IM and keep working.

I think land-line style numbers that model street addresses, will be doomed one day, along with a lot of paper-based mail. Skype has spam, like e-mail does, but can be dealt with fairly effectively these days. SIP phones are sweet, too, but most consumers won’t rely on them, yet. Gizmo is up and coming, especially w. the Google partnership, and I hope they do well. I’ve got Gizmo and Skype, both. In the end, even cell phone calls may be doomed – I hope so – especially w. the advent of wifi phones. A “cell phone” should be a small wifi computer with lots of communication apps, like Skype, Google Talk, and it would be darned nice if they had a built in scanner so you could search and destroy paper documents on the go.