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The real problem of videoconferencing

Found this copy of an old New Yorker article, from 1936, where E.B. White describes the new technology of television as it appeared three years before RCA debuted their version at the 1939 World’s Fair. In it, White relates an speech given by David Sarnoff.

“Mr. Sarnoff next gave a little talk, in which he cheerfully, and with enormous self-effacement, admitted the real problem of television was not its mechanical vagaries but finding programs for it when it finally gets ironed out.”

I think that’s where we are at with videoconferencing. There are still a lot of technical hurdles, but live, interactive “television” is the future and finding quality programming is the real problem.