Phone call of the future

What can the Victorians teach us about the future of personal communications? Quite a lot, as it happens…

I have written a guest blog post for Sei Mani, who are expert advisors in enterprise communications and collaboration. To whet your appetite, here’s the intro…

The late Victorians loved virtual reality. They were pretty keen on texting, too. Of course, they didn’t think of them in those terms. But the telephone and telegram are indeed primitive forms of those respective technologies. The phone call is an immersive audio-only virtual world that two (or more) people simultaneously inhabit. The receipt of a telegram activates the exact same reward mechanisms as today’s highly addictive social media applications.

In order to understand the future of personal communications, it is often helpful to go far back into the past. The basic patterns of relationships and motivations for interaction are essentially unchanging over time. The same needs can be projected forward, but will be delivered in ways that are as dissimilar to today’s services as they are in turn to those of our 19th century ancestors.

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