“You Won’t Finish Reading This Article” is a column focused on YOU and the device you’re holding in your hand right now. This piece of Glass has changed the world, and it may have changed the way we think.
This edition is about why video calls are magic and always will be.
One of my favourite movies of all time is Back to the Future. The entire trilogy is amazing, but in the second movie, Back to the Future Part II, we actually get to go to the future and get a glimpse of their version of the year 2015. While they got a lot wrong, like hoverboards and magic ovens, what’s remarkable is one thing they got right – video calling. This movie came out in 1989, yet it depicted the technology we now use daily. Metropolis, the mother of all sci-fi movies, showed video calling all the way back in 1927. These films captured the futuristic dream of being able to see and talk to someone face-to-face from anywhere in the world.
While movies have long imagined a future where we could talk face-to-face from anywhere in the world, my own experience with this technology felt deeply personal. As a six-year-old seeing Australia (my new home) for the first time, I noticed exciting things like clear blue skies, a Maccas around every corner, and Queenslander style homes. But one thing I wasn’t excited about was not being able to see my grandparents, cousins, and friends who lived over 9000 kilometres away in India.
In 2009, video calling existed. I even have a vivid memory of seeing my dad trying to set up an old webcam (it kinda looked like this), but the whole process had too many problems. Internet was expensive and slow and, at the same time, webcams were blurry and expensive. So, if you did end up being able to set something up successfully, you’d often have a terrible experience calling someone. That is, if you could actually find someone to call. But like those old movies, the potential was obvious, so the work continued to happen behind the scenes, slowly trying to turn the tide.
These incremental improvements reached a turning point in 2010, when three perfectly timed things happened; faster internet to more people, the explosion of the video calling app “Skype” and the first modern smartphone with a selfie camera – the iPhone 4.
Now I could Skype my Grandma from across the world, though there were still lots of technical hurdles to cross. But that didn’t matter, because for me in that moment, video calling had finally turned from a distant dream into a real and functional way to see people, no matter the distance between us.
While I didn’t have an iPhone at the time (I was 8, afterall), it was one of the most influential smartphones ever made. It drove the development of new apps, like WhatsApp, and established that a selfie camera should be a standard feature for all phones. This broke down even more barriers, making video calling easier and easier to the point where I’ve seen three-year-olds video calling casually on their own. Now WhatsApp video calls and Facetime are just an everyday thing.
At this point, you might think video calling is like a simple loaf of bread—perfected, familiar, and with little room left to innovate. But I’ve got some CRAZY news for those who feel that way… we’re on the verge of moving from bread to the croissant of video calling—layered, intricate, and full of new possibilities (sorry, I was hungry while writing this)!
Think of the holograms from Star Wars or any sci-fi movie. The technology for that is already here. With the Apple Vision Pro headset, we now have spatial personas—hyper-realistic avatars that make it feel like someone is physically present in the room with you. Google’s Starline project is developing meeting room displays that create the sensation of seeing a full 3D person on the other end of a video call, with no glasses needed. And AI-powered dubbing is in the works, allowing people to communicate across languages by making it seem like everyone is speaking the same one with perfect lip-syncing.
I feel like every generation has wanted a way to effortlessly and reliably see the people they care about, even when they’re not geographically close. I think we’re the first generation to finally realise those dreams.
Video calling is a deeply personal thing; seeing someone’s face, their expressions and their eyes is a uniquely human desire. That’s what makes video calling one of the few technologies today that’s closest to becoming indistinguishable from magic.
Abishai Sujith (he/him) is a QUT student (Bachelor of Urban Development) and a content creator. With a keen eye for the intersection of technology and everyday life, he delves into the impact of emerging technologies. Abishai is driven by a passion to understand how our daily lives are shaped by design, construction and technology.
