kerkko.fi

Skype requires me to look at you while you are talking, which is totally ridiculous. Sherry Turkle, MIT professor of the social studies of science and technology, said people are not only uninterested in Skype, we are also not interested in talking on the regular phone. We want to TiVo our lives, avoiding real time by texting or e-mailing people when we feel like it.

"Skype, which was the fantasy of our childhood, gets you back to sitting there and being available in that old-fashioned way. Our model of what it was to be present to each other, we thought we liked that," she said. "But it turns out that time shifting is our most valued product. This new technology is about control. Emotional control and time control."

As far as the full-contact listening that Skype requires, I do not think we want that all that often from people who are not already in our house. The fact is, we do not really want to see other people that badly. Far better is to have control over our most valuable commodity: time. Sure, we complain about being busy, but that is great as long as we get to choose when we do things.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1952314,00.html