Yes, that's right: Videoconferencing is the next new thing — for the third or fourth time since 1964.

This time it's for real, though. Conferencing vendors say sales of their gear has skyrocketed — even over the past few months, when every other tech vendor was reporting gloom and doom. And 79% of the IT pros I work with say they're deploying videoconferencing to reduce travel. Forty-three percent say they have formal policies governing the use of videoconferencing.

What's changed? Plenty. First is that compression technology has gotten steadily better, to the point where high-definition (HD) video can be transmitted across roughly the same bandwidth that was once required for its poor-quality cousins. Second, vendors have finally wised up and applied Hollywood lighting, camera placement and set design techniques, so that telepresence really delivers the sensation of "just like being there."

But most importantly, now that we've spent a couple of decades internalizing the concept of virtual communications, we've gotten collectively more comfortable with remote interactions. We buy big-ticket items from e-Bay and Amazon (remember when they said nobody would ever spend more than a couple of dollars online?). We Facebook, Skype and instant message our friends. So talking to a face on the screen really doesn't seem that unusual.