Among other speakers at our Internet2 Day was Doug Van Houweling, President and CEO of Internet2, etc. Just about every discussion of Internet2 seems to come back around to video delivery. I was hoping Doug, speaking on the topic “Beyond Tomorrow’s Internet” would help open peoples’ minds to some real innovative ideas. Unfortunately, while his notes about partnerships, neutral nets, and the nuts and bolts of Internet2 becoming everyone’s bandwidth were well taken and on-point, when he had a chance to talk about innovation he fell right back into the same old song and dance I’ve seen a dozen times before.

Doug’s house of the future was essentially my household with some Jetson’s style video layered on top. So you have kids surfing the net and using IM and eyeball cams, and you have work and downloads happening with impressive speed. But beyond that it was just more video: high def videoconferencing, video phones, high def delivery of movies, high def entertainment delivery and storage. I’m not denying that most of these are good things that will happen. They are happening now, they’ll just be happening faster and with more clarity.

But that’s exactly the problem. When it comes to communication, there’s a reason George and Jane Jetson’s video phones haven’t become ubiquitous, and it’s not about bandwidth. It’s because people don’t want them. Videophones are a dead idea. Videoconferencing, no matter how high-def, is a highly constrained technology. The fourth wall remains, the high transactional distance remains in full force. Video conference works in certain settings and with a certain definition of “works” that is usually based on there being no other technology available. But adding increased clarity and more frames-per-second will have almost no effect on that rate of success. Videconference is simply a very poor educational tool that is highly desired by those who don’t have it, valued by those who have nothing else, and easy to understand by those who don’t use it.

No matter how speedy and how many pixels there are, the heart of videoconferencing is hollow. You can make it bigger, you can make it faster, you can make it sharper, but it doesn’t make it better. It has an undeniable hold on the imagination of administrators (and when it comes to entertainment it makes great sense), but ultimately it’s just what I’ve started calling “polishing the poo.” No matter how lacquered and attractive, it’s still a turd. It’s not innovation.

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