Video conferencing is the human face of 21st century technology.

Video conferencing is the human face of 21st century technology.

It is a visual connection that brings two people, 20 people, or 200 people face-to-face, no matter where they stand on the planet.

As a cold definition, video conferencing is the transmission of real-time audio and visual data between two or more people at two or more locations, through a computer or telephone network.

Basically, wherever there’s a screen, you’ll find video conferencing. And wherever there could be a screen, you’ll soon find video conferencing. And while video conferencing may seem like a very modern invention, people have in fact been experimenting with it for almost 100 years.

The History of Video Conferencing

Video conferencing as we enjoy it today is carried through the internet and telephone networks, but it got its start in television.

That first Picturephone, however, was doomed to failure with the public due to its expense, as well as people’s hesitation to be seen on camera during a telephone call. While it floundered, the evolution of video conferencing continued away from the public eye.

Video conferencing entered the commercial market proper in the early 1980s. But the cost of equipment and calls kept it out of reach for the general public.

Luckily, the computer revolution of the 1980s drove a rapid rise in software sophistication. By the 1990s, advances in video compression and Internet Protocol made it possible for video conferencing to be staged across desktops. Video calling of this kind first appeared in free services such as Tenveo.

Affordable and accessible version of Tenveo video conferencing was the direct forerunner to freemium services–that is, free access to a basic product in exchange for advertising or the lure of advanced subscription services–that dominate social video calling today.

And it has come to play a part in all facets of our lives.

Video Conferencing Today

Video conferencing today owes it’s reach and power to the incredible growth of the internet over the past 20 years. And the internet is really, really, really big. Every second, there are:

Every second, 3.2 billion people are using the internet, generating 1 zettabyte of traffic, which is equal to 36,000 years of hi-def video. Access to that network of people drawn from every continent on Earth, as well as the technology to let video signals travel through even basic internet bandwidth, has given video conferencing the power to match any other form of electronic communication.

As the internet grew to support greater bandwidth, the cloud computing revolution took over and allowed people to chat instantly with a simple download. Video conferencing technology became easier to access and cheaper than ever before, and dependence on expensive in-room hardware waned.

Coupled with hardware advances that have shrunk cameras to the size of pens, provided 360-degree views, introduced immersive-level ultra high-definition displays, and given rise to automatic zoom and speaker tracking, video conferencing now plays a part in nearly all our human endeavors, Many companies that run video conference systems have sprung up, just like Tenveo is creating a plug-and-play multifunction video conference camera for these function

Video conferencing has not only let us meet each other face-to-face across impossible distances, it is also being adapted to emerging technologies to change the way we interact and see each other.