If you don’t know who David Foster Wallace is, you should. If you don’t read him, you need to. He was easily one of the smartest writers of our time and yet he manages to write with such charm and wit that you can’t help but love the guy.

DFW’s great literary epic, Infinite Jest is chock-full of philosophical ramblings on could-be and once-was human conditions. Among his observations are the following thoughts on video calls, which in light of the recent iPhone 4 announcement, seemed appropriate to share.

Good old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention to her. A traditional aural-only conversation […] let you enter a kind of highway-hypnotic semi-attentive fugue: while conversing, you could look around the room, doodle, fine-groom, peel tiny bits of dead skin away from your cuticles, compose phone-pad haiku, stir things on the stove; you could even carry on a whole separate additional sign-language-and-exaggerated-facial-expression type of conversation with people right there in the room with you, all while seeming to be right there attending closely to the voice on the phone. And yet — and this was the retrospectively marvelous part — even as you were dividing your attention between the phone call and all sorts of other idle little fuguelike activities, you were somehow never haunted by the suspicion that the person on the other end’s attention might be similarly divided.

[…] Video telephony rendered the fantasy insupportable. Callers now found they had to compose the same sort of earnest, slightly overintense listener’s expression they had to compose for in-person exchanges. Those caller who out of unconscious habit succumbed to fuguelike doodling or pants-crease-adjustment now came off looking extra rude, absentminded, or childishly self-absorbed. Callers who even more unconsciously blemish-scanned or nostril explored looked up to find horrified expressions.

God damn it he was brilliant. For more of his thoughts on video calling, check out the source post at Kottke.org. Better yet, spend a month of your life reading this book.

Once upon a time I worked for a Steelcase dealer in Ohio. Though we specialized in systems furniture (the industry name for cubicles), we also dealt in some of the tech stuff associated with office life, including video conferencing solutions. The most expensive is a product from Steelcase’s conference room division, Polyvision, called Thunder. A basic system installation cost $100,000 and boasted a feature list that has now been largely duplicated by Skype. A few years back the ability to quickly share your desktop wasn’t as easy as right-click, share desktop. Now, though, Skype can handle it, and Skype’s free.

Next week Skype plans to add five-way video calling to its service offering. The new feature will be free for starters, but may start to cost over the course of the year. You can bet plenty of businesses will be reconsidering their video conferencing options (or consider using video conferencing for the first time) when this rolls out. On the personal side, this is perfect for families and friends spread across the country. My own immediate family is currently spread across three states, soon to be four. It would be great to jump on and video chat with all of them for free.

It was a big surprise to see the iPad launch without a camera, front-facing or otherwise. The device seems perfect for video calls and could easily be used as a point and shoot in a pinch. But, as Engadget reports, iPhone OS 3.2 includes support for video calling, among other new features.

Some of those other features include file downloading with local browser storage and SMS support. Basically, the iPad launch was just the tip of the iceberg. As with the iPhone, this first release is likely just going to get the ball rolling, driving interest and presales among the truly fanatic. From there, it’s a matter of referral. In the first six months the iPhone was out every owner I spoke with was in love with the device, or at least were willing to say that were.

This is how Jobs works – he breeds a sort of elite fanclub around his latest device and builds on that kind of elitism to drive insane sales. Whatever the iPad is now, it’s going to be a whole lot different in the next couple years.