Video calls have been with us for a while. Except, they were rarely used. IME, people sometimes had Skype calls with relatives abroad and that's about it. And then, COVID happened. Suddenly, Zoom skyrocketed, with Google Meet not far behind. The reason is obvious.
Now, the time of lockdowns and restrictions on gatherings is over, the incentives to do video calls are (AFAICT) more or less the same as pre-COVID, and yet video calls persist. They became a completely routine way of doing business meetings, academic seminars and occasional social events. Why? AFAICT it's just the initial adoption barrier: once everyone did lots of video calls, and realized they are actually pretty convenient, they just kept using them.
So, here's a fun question: What other things are like video calls in the pre-COVID era? That is, the technology exists (more or less: maybe the UX needs some trivial improvements), the use-cases exist, only nobody uses it just because they're unaware or because it's not a "normal" thing everyone does. Given something to create initial adoption (like COVID did for video calls), everyone would start using it and never go back.
Here are some examples that aren't free to adopt, but don't cost much extra compared to business-as-usual when it comes time to build or buy something similar, and/or pay for themselves over time.
Waste gasification to make hydrogen, or syngas, or fuels, or chemicals. Renders hazardous and/or non-recyclable material into a valuable commodity at net profit, while freeing up landfill space. Starting to pick up steam slowly, finally. (And before you toss this in the "not available to individuals" bin, there are companies making and selling models that fit in a pickup truck and are scaled to provide a few kW of electric power to a household, farm, or small business. If I had one I'd never have an electric bill and would produce almost 90% less trash by volume).
Having air-source heat pumps for more efficient heating and cooling, or combining heating/cooling infrastructure to save space. People still think this is only viable in a limited set of climates, but that's much less true than it used to be. Becoming more valuable as more people get home solar panels and otherwise cleaner sources of electric power, and as movement away from oil and gas for heat continues.
Drawing/annotation/virtual whiteboard in video calls. If my work laptop had a touch screen and stylus I'd use this all the time.
Prefab construction, especially for houses. Labor is expensive, centralized production is more efficient in labor and materials, quality monitoring and continuous improvement are much more reliable in a factory, and it's mostly zoning/permitting/inspection rules + popular perception of the low quality of existing "mobile homes" that hold this back. See things like log home kits, some of them are really well designed, full size houses with all different floor plans and high quality materials.
Composting toilets, especially in dry climates.
yes to drawing and annotation. This has been an itch of mine ever since I got into web dev over a decade ago. The same way the mouse allowed us to designate "this thing" to the PC without having to literally name it, we could communicate the same way to each other on the web potentially