What's blowing your mind these days?

I have become bored with video chats in the span of six months.

When I bought a Macbook last July, the built-in webcam was a revelation. Now I rarely call Davison, who lives 250 miles from Oakland. Instead, I click on the video icon next to his name in iChat. I say hi to Lori, his wife, if she walks into the room. I get to see his kids. If there’s something in his office he wants to show me, he picks up his Macbook and points to it.

Sometimes we conduct three-way video chats with clients who use Macs. Sometimes there’s a little chit-chat about how cool it is. Then it’s just another meeting.

Technology now moves at a pace that leaves little time for amazement. Our “capacity for wonder,” to borrow Fitzgerald’s phrase, is now filled with “transitory enchanted moments” on a regular basis.

The fantastic becomes banal in a matter of days.

This is exciting, fleetingly, but also exhausting. At least it is for me. I find it tough to keep up with everything flying by the window as we speed forward.

Once in a while, though, I slow down enough to let something sink in. And damn if that video chat isn’t something! The possibilities, looking forward now, are pretty stunning. Take the integration of 12seconds with Tweetdeck announced today. Or the rapid dispersion of Seesmic across the web. These things, or their progeny, will radically alter how property is merchandised and sold online. It’s easier to see that when you pull back from the grind.

Perspective

My grandmother turned 91 today. I just got back from visiting her. It’s shaken me out of my unconscious disregard for the extraordinary for a few hours.

She grew up poor, the daughter of Italian immigrants. They had a goat in the backyard for milk, a wood stove inside for warmth, and a drunken illiterate uncle (exquisitely named Guido Guidi) living in the basement.

Now I video chat with my business partner from my home office… and take it for granted.

So enough aimless rambling form me. What’s blowing your mind these days?

Brian Boero