Paired
by Imran Ali
A couple weeks ago, my good friend Surj (aka GigaSURJ!) and I got into a late night videochat about the pain of video calls as his daughter Naiya caught her first glimpse of an unshaven Uncle Imran.
We figured that increased fidelity, convergence and imaging sophistication weren’t the only trajectories for video call products, but simplicity could provide enhanced emotional connectedness.
Imagine a phone that could only call one person, or deliver photomessages to only one other person. Sounds dumb right? But that very constraint could be its most elegantly singular function. So how about this…
- Two webcam-like devices, that are paired or twinned at the factory.
- ‘Get1Give1′ - one cam is shipped to you, the other to a loved one.
- Whenever the cams find connectivity they connect to each other - automatically and permanently. Zero-configuration required.
- Wherever those cams are in the world, they’re always connected to each other, like a portal between any two points on the planet.
The possibilities are kinda interesting, essentially permanently collapsing the distance between any two points - both physically and emotionally - creates a sense of intimacy that families, partners and even coworkers would welcome. The simplicity of unboxing a cam and just switching it on is irresistible.
We realised we’d actually seen such a device at MIT’s Media Lab, albeit on a larger scale; the iCom project provided always-on video connectedness for Media Lab’s US, Indian and Irish sites, helping students and faculty feel part of the same community of researchers. Also, I remembered the story of a friend in London who’d leave her Skype connection open all day to her husband in Helsinki, not to talk, but to be able to hear the rhythms of each other’s lives. Human Connectedness 
Surj, a resident of Oregon, was thinking of his Mother here in the UK; something he could give her that always worked, didn’t need calls or presence or sessions - it just helped to keep his kids in touch with their grandma.
Simplicity in design. I think we’ll be seeing more of it
