Hopefully the home ISP market won't follow the cyclic model of the cell phone industry. With cell phone data, first you paid by the kB, then they introduced unlimited data plans, then they capped the limits and you paid by the GB, now they're going back to unlimited data plans. I'd prefer the home ISPs to not do that. They've always been unlimited (within reason) so I'd wouldn't like to see some small company changing the model for the industry.

I remember this was called a con job. You con someone into believing you are someone else, just like conmen have been doing for thousands of years. There's nothing really new about it.

I work at a hospital, in a research department. Surprisingly its more efficient to talk to people over the phone than it is through other means. You can only type so fast, and sometimes you need to use a lot words back and forth when you're talking with someone who's in a different field than you.

I'm not talking about help desk stuff... if a scientist needs clarification from an engineer about a technical problem.. the phone is the best method. If you are trying to recruit participants for medical experiments... the phone. If you are talking to someone from a different department about transferring data... the phone. If you are talking to a nurse or surgeon on a medical unit about a patient in a research study... the phone.

As always, just because the engineers think it will people time if they improve technology doesn't mean it actually will. Hospitals have tried replacing phones with other devices, and it just doesn't work. The phone is the simplest device for communication, and it will stay.

One of the biggest challenges engineers face is accepting that the current technology is adequate and that no radical changes are necessary.

Wow, did you work for the RAND corporation in the 1960's?