Webcams

I was at school yesterday killing some time, reading a really bad book (why don't I stop in the middle? I can't figure it out.). There was a guy in the lounge I was hanging out in when I came in and at first I thought he was talking on his cell phone via a headset in some foreign language (it sounded vaguely Spanish, but I really wasn't sure). He had his laptop on his lap and was typing while he spoke. I wasn't pay too much attention to him until I really got tired of my bad book. At one point during a lull I was looking around and I noticed that he was fairly intent on his computer while still talking. Looking a bit closer, I saw that he had a webcam arranged on the top of his laptop and he was not actually talking on a cell phone, it was a microphone attached to his computer. I realized he was talking face to face with someone somewhere else in the world, all via the Internet.

I've always found the webcam thing to be a bit disturbing, never understanding the need for it. (This also goes for plastering pictures of myself all over the Internet, which I refuse to do, which explains my lack of photos of myself on my blog.)

It was kind of surreal realizing that this guy was beaming pictures of himself and seeing the person he was speaking to from the lounge at my school. But kind of cool also.