Skype as a Model for Future Communications
The World of the Cloud
In today’s “world of the cloud,” the Internet has become a part of everyday life. We no longer search for information in an encyclopedia or newspaper; we “Google it.” VHS and even DVDs have gone by the wayside, leaving streaming services such as Netflix and Youtube in their place. One of the largest shifts of the so-called Information Age, however, encompasses the emergence of the social networking site: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Google-Plus.
As technology advances, more and more of our societal functions become relegated to bytes on a computer server. Online communities are “in,” as are electronic forms of media such as webcomics, blogs, and web-original series.
Societal change and interconnection are most affected by advances in transportation and communications technologies. Communication especially has changed over the course of human history: from the Aztec quipu or Mesopotamian cuneiform to letter-writing and journal-keeping; from typewritten font and printed text to the online forum and message-board; from the telegraph, to the telephone, and then to the video-phone, transporting information at the speed of life. Previous studies have looked at the state of current communications, but few have used that information to model future social networks and technologies.
In this paper, I will use the application Skype to develop and propose a model for an eventual cyberspace-only community. Skype is a “freemium” chatting client developed by the Microsoft Corporation. Capable of both messaging and video/audio calls, Skype has become a major participant in the international call market, being responsible for a full 34% of such calls in 2012.
It is becoming an extremely popular application outside of the private sector as well: Teachers are increasingly using it in global education projects in order to promote a more globally-aware student body and to open up additional teaching opportunities. Organizations and groups of peers worldwide are also able to use Skype along with other, similar applications to communicate across borders, time zones, and even international conflicts.
To evaluate Skype as a mechanism for electronic communication, it is important to develop a proper framework of argument. Therefore, this paper will use the human cyborg paradigm, developed by N. Katherine Hayles, to weigh the arguments made therein. A full explanation of this framework follows in a later section of this paper.
But why Skype? While communications technology is hardly rare in both the business and social worlds, Skype is unique in its large economic presence; as aforementioned, it holds a large share of global telecommunications, and is only expanding as time goes on. Furthermore, it comprises multiple aspects of communication, and so is an ideal model for what a future social community might look like.
While Facebook, Twitter, and other forms of social media are important in their encapsulation of long-term social interaction, Skype is important in the value of instantaneous communications. As such, the movement of social interaction onto the cloud through Skype is of tantamount to studies of globalization and technological communications.
This paper will begin with a review of previous studies, and so establish Skype and the Internet as fundamental pieces of today’s communications. From there, electronic communication will be analyzed from the perspective of the literature and the humanities, thereby allowing us to firmly establish those principles by which our model will be evaluated. We will discuss the significance of Skype and analyze those affordance which it alone possesses. This will allow us to create and refine a proper conceptualization of a cyberspace-only world using Skype as a model.
Literature Review
In a recent study, Japanese students learning English were given the opportunity to undertake web conferences with a high school in the United States.4 The study was meant to give students more incentive and experience with speaking English, and to encourage those students to take on a more active role in the classroom. Skype was used to establish conferences between students at Hibiki High School and several other English-speaking classrooms.
Students were to propose and develop classroom projects alongside their American peers, and so improve their language skills and cultural awareness. Because web conferences involved real communication between peers, Hibiki students spoke more English during the web conference lessons, and were also better-prepared for English lessons in general. Web conference lessons using Skype also significantly increased student motivation to study English.
Another study, undertaken by student teachers at Siena College, was intended to explore the possibility of creating international study groups able to communicate over the Internet.5 The program worked with a Ghanaian program called Teach on the Beach in order to integrate foreign students into the curriculum by using classroom conferences over Skype, as in the Japanese study. Ultimately, the goal was to create an international classroom, that catered to a generation of students who, having access to all of the information of the Internet, had become being social learners.
The final product comprised an international, peer-based learning facility involving group projects and reading assignments. Teach on the Beach students became become more knowledgeably about worldly events, and were in fact able to teach Siena students, who were not as up to date.The teachers were able to show that Skype and associated communications opened the door to collaborative help from peers a district or country away, who would otherwise be deprived of the opportunity.
An important factor common to these studies is the use of Skype in a web conference format—that is, as a formal medium for an exchange of ideas. Both studies made use of regular communications with a designated purpose. These purposes, we must understand, are not limited to education—usage of Skype in a classroom setting it, however, one of the more obvious ways to illustrate its utility.
People are also moving online in increasing numbers that may not involve Skype, specifically: A UK-based study by The Telegraph, a newspaper, discovered that one in four people socializes more online than in person. From Twitter to Facebook, the study found, people are moving their social lives online. The study ascribes the motivation for this trend to either laziness, a too-high cost of going out, or a simple desire to avoid spending time with family and friends more than strictly necessary. “The average Brit,” the study writes, “spends 4.6 hours a week talking to friends online and only six hours a week talking to people in person.”
A Cyborg’s Perspective
To properly evaluate the impact of a technology, it becomes necessary to do so from a human-centric point of view. We must therefore define several terms in order to provide our model a proper context.
A relevant idea is that of the “cyborg,” in which humanity and technology are merged to create a more advanced being. Hayles, however, takes the concept a step further than the flesh-and-steel man so often found in popular culture. A true cyborg, she writes, is born from the interface between man and computer—even as you communicate with another person over the Internet, “you have already become posthuman.”
The study of sociology takes this philosophical stance a step further; in their paper “The Extended Mind,” Andy Clark and David Chalmers propose the idea of “active externalism,” in which certain objects or technologies can be considered a part of human cognition if they fulfill certain evaluative criteria, which include:
In their paper, Clark and Chalmers develop the case of Otto, a man diagnosed with Alzheimers. Because he is unable to remember pieces of information on his own, Otto uses a notebook to record his thoughts and knowledge for later recall. Because the notebook is easily accessible, its contents are as easy to use as Otto’s own memory. Because he carries it everywhere, the notebook is reliable—he is never without it. Finally, because he can trust that the original recorder of the information contained within the notebook—himself—was both sincere and correct, the notebook is credible. With these three conditions fulfilled, the notebook becomes a part of Otto’s “extended mind,” acting in both his cognitive and belief systems.
When looked at through the perspective of the “extended mind” and analyzed as a piece of a modern-day “cyborg,” any proposed model of future communications can therefore be developed for both accuracy and impact. As will be shown, Skype fulfills both of these criteria, and so forms a critical piece of any model attempting to predict future technologies and social developments.
Model Specifics
Why Skype, specifically? Although there are other applications or services—Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr—which may also be available as models of future communications, Skype holds certain affordances which make it both preferable and unique.
The affordances of an object are those qualities which allow an individual to perform an action with or relating to it. A table, for example, has several affordances: you can use it as a surface to do work, place books or other objects upon it, or perhaps sit on it if it is stable enough.
For an electronic application like Skype, its affordances become clear when considering the ways in which it can transmit data across the Internet, and the impact that such data transfers can have on its users. Skype directly allows visual, auditory, and text-based communications; while other sites may be limited to only one or two, Skype promotes the use of all three.
Furthermore, other sites follow the example of the forum, or message board: Users “post” links or ideas at one point in time, and a conversation develops from the eventual proliferation of comments, “shares,” and other trades of information. By contrast, Skype provides a framework for an immediate “face-to-face” conversation. Instant messaging between peers is simple, as is chatting in a larger group—either through video, audio, or text. Its structure presents the dual convenience of instant feedback and longer-term logging.
The former point of instant feedback, however, is what makes Skype so relevant to our everyday lives. It is rare to see a message board or “news feed’ in our daily lives, yet we hold conversations and conferences all the time. Immediate, not delayed, conversation is our natural mode.
Yet technology is increasingly becoming a major part of our daily lives. In a world in which technology has not changed our lifestyles, but rather supplanted or complemented them with electronic, online alternatives, we must look toward natural modes of social behavior to conceptualize how future humans will interact. Because Skype provides the most streamlined and similar form of communication compared to the state of affairs throughout history, it is therefore the most appropriate to use when constructing a model of future communications.
The Cyberspace Paradigm
We now come to the proper construction of our model. In a future of advancing technology and a need for more immediate social interaction, it is clear that we will require instant access to friends and family that are connected to the cloud. Thus, as technology marches forward, we will be forced to evaluate our principles and priorities through a new paradigm—”the norm of cyberspace.”
In bringing different communication modes to the forefront instead of fighting over the best one available, Skype becomes a universal, widely-acceptable product instead of a more limited one. In a future of advanced communications technology, we can reasonably expect the emergence of the “cyberspace norm”—convenience, efficiency, and falling prices all contribute to the justification of this idea.
Skype is significant in the creation of a Haylesian “cyborg” from its users; as opposed to Facebook or Tumblr, in which longer-term, reliable feedback is the mode, Skype links two or more persons directly. Each person’s thought process contributes to the processing power of the overarching conversation; the importance of the immediate reply and the flexibility of technique cannot be overlooked here.
Cyborgs have been projected elsewhere to have a significant impact on the future. In his book The Singularity is Near, Ray Kurzweil lays out his conception of the “Singularity,” an event in which technological progress will become so rapid and impactful that human life will be forever transformed. “The Singularity will allow us to transcend the limits of our biological bodies and brains,” Kurzweil writes. Reasoning that the exponential growth of knowledge will result in an explosion of potential in both technology and humanity, Kurzweil believes that the ultimate goal of research will be this Singularity, in which human and robot become one: a cyborg.
As we move toward the future, then, we can observe the ways in which human and technology have begun to merge. The introduction of Google Glass to the market promises to sync users with their tech in a simplified, noninvasive manner. Through Hayle’s definition, we can see that this merge need not be biological in nature to create a cyborg—returning to Skype, it becomes clear that the duality of user and application can create such a thing as well.
Even if Skype is similar to future projections, however, it is not yet clear that it will retain its power in the market. To do so, we must look at additional affordances of the product—some inherent, and others emergent from other properties. As a commodity, Skype is accessible to a growing number of people—with the Information Age upon us, access to computers and Internet capability is quickly becoming a resource as widespread as water or electricity. Skype is also nearly universal with respect to platforms: it is useable on both PC and Apple operating systems, and has recently become available on Linux as well.
These advantages are in no small part due to advances owing to Moore’s Law: As time passes, the power of computing increases exponentially, even as prices go down. Soon, computer chips will be as cheap and as universal as paper, and with that eventuality will come a true “cyberspace paradigm.”
It must be admitted, of course, that Skype does not make for a perfect model—its technological limitations are readily apparent when compared with the capabilities of science fiction. Telegraphic or holographic presence are still beyond our reach, and while Skype covers nearly all modes of communication, the longer-term affordances of other social media do present a desirable add-on. Still, however, an admittedly incomplete model is superior to no model at all. With time, we are assured to develop these predictions further in both accuracy and precision.
In the Future
In conclusion, we have successfully developed a model in which Skype is used to explain and predict advances in future communications technology. By drawing on the concepts of the cyborg and the Singularity, Skype was shown to be a clear link between man and machine, thereby pushing communications past what would otherwise be possible. Its specific affordances and other details were shown to be significant in the construction of a proper model.
In the future, more research will be needed to be done on possible advances in technology, both communications and otherwise. Holopresence, for example, has already been mentioned, and there are undoubtedly many different possibles—virtual reality, for example.
A subject that has largely gone unconsidered in this paper is the interaction between communications and other technologies. Although a simplified model can be desirable for constructing a basic understanding of a phenomenon, a more complex, wider-reaching paradigm can only work to improve our understanding of both our society and the forces that shape it.
The moral implications of this study have yet to be argued as well. While it can be shown that the cyberspace paradigm is the most likely eventuality, it remains to be seen whether it is the most desirable one. Further debate on this matter, however, is reserved for a different paper.