To Whom Am I Speaking?
Around the world, every country and culture has a different way of answering the telephone. If someone calls me, I say "hello" and who I am. If I call somewhere and the person does not say who they are, if I don't know them I ask, "who am I speaking to?". But it got me to thinking about VoIP, which is appears to be rapidly spreading in use, at least individually if not by business. Let's fast-forward to the end of this decade, when VoIP market penetration will undoubtedly be huge. In fact, video calling might even become ubquitous (although that's what they said at the World's Fair in the 1960s). Identifying who you are talking to would of course be easier with video calling.
In the future, identification might not be an issue, but right now, how is that we know who really is calling us? Sure, some soft phones reveal IP addresses, and you might have a list of contacts from email. But if you work online like some people (like myself), you often "meet" people yet never meet them in person. How do you guarantee that the person you met through, say, comments on a website or at an online forum is really the person they say they are? Consider how many false profiles are set up on social networking sites. Then there's the vishers. Not everyone is going to be who they say.
I don't have any answers, just reflecting. IP media will change our lives, including the way we interact with each other online.
Written by ewriter on October 5th, 2006 with
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