Web Camera
Type in the words “web camera” into any popular search engine and the results are staggering. A recent search for GOOGLE turned up 224 Million related responses to that phrase; a phrase, which ten years ago, wouldn’t even register an image to the American lexicon. So what happened? How did web cameras make such a splash?

Web cameras or “web-cams” first got their start in 1991 at Cambridge University; a shot that ran for more than ten years of their coffee pot. Web cameras were quickly embraced and extorted by the porn industry for their use of live web-casting which is still done today.

Live chats were an early application of web camera software and web camera servers were soon overloaded with fascinated kids, tying up internet activity for the whole house so they could ‘see and speak’ to one another. Web camera camaraderie became every child’s alternative to actually seeing and playing with their friends. Its appeal was two fold; they maintained privacy and freedom of choice as to whether or not to partake in the conversation and they could include or preclude anyone they liked.

Early reviews of web cameras were mixed as the application seemed like it made sense but in practice it took on a much more lukewarm response. People still preferred to do business in person, across a table, in the flesh. USB, Logitech, and Phillips all came out with models of web camera and web camera software to draw in both consumers and big business.

Today web cameras are a part of life. So many people have them in their homes yet most sit, unused a great majority of the time. In business they’ve been slow to warm to the application and use of the web camera; however it’s not uncommon for a meeting of different departments or on different coasts to take place via webcam to announce general policies and keep everyone up to speed on what’s going on.

Many would still argue, though, that the best web camera is no web camera. That we need to get out and get back together with our fellow human being in the flesh and leave these cyber technologies for someone else’s application. Only time will tell.