In 1995, my brother and I lived in different cities, and we were just starting to get the hang of this internet thing. I remember installing some software (can't believe the name escapes me at the moment), plugging in a microphone, and trying to talk to him over our 14.4 kbps dial-up connections in order to cut down on the long distance bills.

Of course, it didn't work very well, and we run into something I'd never heard of before, the "half duplex" problem. One of us had a sound card that wouldn't let you talk and listen simultaneously, so we had to take turns, like on a walkie-talkie. We would have been able to live with that issue if the quality had been good enough to warrant further efforts, but we're both old enough that we went back to just picking up the phone and paying the long distance charges.

Not so Brent. As he grows up, he won't have to deal with long distance charges because of the cell phone he'll eventually get and Voice over IP (VoIP), but for now he is enthralled with the idea of talking to a girl who lives but a few miles away through a microphone plugged into the computer.

It wasn't even his idea; theyv'e been IMing, but recently she just started talking via AIM because her family had set it up for other calls. So now they talk in the morning and at night, and the phrase we most often make out is, "What? I can't hear you." Ah, youth.

I've had to explain what over-modulation is, and that if he wants to hear better, he should turn down the music he is playing for her from Rhapsody. And of course while they're talking, they're typing text back and forth in an AIM window. There's no point in explaining that they'd be able to hear much better on the phone because for whatever reasons, this new way of communicating just feels more natural to them. I think they just connect better in this medium, they multitask, they can still IM with their other friends while doing it, and even participate in group chats. It's a dynamic I don't think I'd ever want to replicate for myself (although I do end up IMing and talking on the phone at the same time every once in a while at work), but for them, it's just natural.

Which is why I was chuckling to myself while reading Will Richardson's post about Skype Ideas for the classroom.

"But I happened to be watching an online presentation by my friend Alan November yesterday and he suggested a use that just made me slap my forehead in a 'Doh!' moment: Skype to allow parents to listen to their child's presentations at school!" [Weblogg-ed]

Will goes on to give eight great other ideas for using Skype in education, all of which Brent would totally groove on for learning. That's the kind of interactive environment in which he would learn best, because he's a very experiential type of learner. That's why he learns so well from video games, too.

Sure there are some security issues with Skype right now, but it's the concept as applied by Will that is so intriguing. The security issues will work themselves out or better software will come along (there are already good competitors).

While I see it in my job every day, I'm still constantly amazed how quickly the internet has pervaded our daily lives in just ten years. All of which is especially appropriate today as we celebrate the 15th anniversary of the creation of the first web page.