November 6th, 2006
This weekend, my house fell eerily silent, even as my entire family communicated and collaborated with each other.
My daughter was chatting with me on IM. At the same time, she was chatting with my wife on IM. At the same time, my wife was chatting with me on IM. At the same time, my wife and I were having a discussion by co-editing a document on Google Docs.
It was awfully cool.
It was sort of like the whole family getting together to watch TV. Except we could each watch whatever channel we wanted. In fact, we could each watch as many channels as we wanted. We could each listen to whatever music we wanted, write, create or edit images, play games, and create and edit content on those channels we were watching. And we could have conversations with each other (and other people, if we wanted and they were available) while we were doing all of this. I think that’s amazing.
I do love it when we all get together in the living room and watch TV or a movie. But in many ways, this beats watching TV all to hell.