The use of webcam, especially through Skype, has recently become
established as one more standard media technology, but so far there has
been no attempt to assess its fundamental nature and consequences. Yet
webcam has profound implications for many facets of human life, from
self-consciousness and intimacy to the sustaining of long-distance
relationships and the place of the visual within social communications.
Based on research in London and Trinidad, this book shows how
'always-on' webcam is becoming an entirely different phenomenon from the
initial use of webcam as a videophone. Webcam is examined within the
framework of 'polymedia' - that is, the new environments created by the
simultaneous presence of a multiplicity of communication technologies -
and used to exemplify a theory of attainment that accepts media
technologies as aspects of, rather than detracting from, our basic
humanity.