At tonight's Technology Horizons conference, Larry Smarr gave a terrific talk on the history and future of telepresence-- i.e., systems that "eliminate distance between individuals who want to interact with other people and with other computers." I'm a bit fuzzy-- it was a long day, and tomorrow will be even longer-- but a few notes.
Telepresence has a long history in the laboratory and story. The first AT&T PicturePhone appeared forty years ago. Even as that system bombed, science fiction explored what a world in which telepresence really worked would be like: for example, the bridge of the USS Enterprise (with its giant screen that can alternately be a portal to the outside, a communications screen, or a data display) still resonates with some researchers.
Smarr argues that we're now at the point where we can seriously contemplate creating systems that, under certain conditions, are indistinguishable from reality.
The two most important developments, as I heard them, are
- The world has an awful lot of fiber optic cable, and we know how to push an amazing amount of information through it; and
- We have displays that can push as much detail as humans can handle. The input rate to the human eye-brain system (which takes up about 25% of your brain) is roughly 1 Gbps. We're crossing that threshold now, meaning that the foundational capability to do telepresence is here.
What'll this mean? To me, Smarr's most compelling line was that Thomas Friedman argued that relatively slow technologies had made the world flat. In 2015, Smarr argues, a world in which telepresence work won't be flat; it'll be a single point.
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