• Hi, I’m Brad Abare

  I'm a make-it-happen guy working with big idea people. I design teams and orchestrate strategy so that great ideas I believe in get done.
  
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The ever astute funny man Joel Stein has some great observations about why video chat has yet to become a mainstream mainstay. He says that whenever the person you are communicating with is not physically present in the same room with you, we have better things to do with our time than to give that person our full undivided attention.

That’s because Skype breaks the century-old social contract of the phone: we pay close attention while we’re talking and zone out while you are. As soon as you begin to talk, I feel trapped and desperately scan the room for tasks I can do to justify the enormous waste of time that is your talking. I wash dishes, I file receipts, I read news sites, I make little fake suicide faces to my wife Cassandra about how much I want to hang up that cause her to yell “Joel, I need you now” in a really unconvincing way that I’ve asked her not to do, but I still can’t stop making the suicide faces. In desperate times, when I am on my cell phone in the middle of nowhere, I will pace. The only other time I pace is when I stub a toe or burn myself. But when I start talking, I assume that you are sitting perfectly still, rapt.

I think Joel is on to something here, and it doesn’t just apply to video chat. In our pursuit of real and virtual connectedness, it appears we’ve also figured out how to never really be present. “We want to TiVo our lives, avoiding real time by texting or e-mailing people when we feel like it.”

• I like watching movies/shows online, making appointment television a thing of the past.
• I like online education because I can pace myself according to my learning style, eliminating the need to wait for or burden the rest of the class.
• I like text messaging because I don’t have to type out long emails or make small-talk phone calls.
• I like ordering things from Amazon because it means I can avoid the hassle of traffic, people and lines at the store.
• I like email because it allows me to communicate when I want to.

But I worry that this ability to avoid real time, to create a sense of self control, might be hijacking us from what really matters. The ability to control our own time certainly affords greater flexibility for accomplishing more, but at what expense?

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