Holograms for the People
So Mom, you already know that people are using their communicators all the time—to listen to music, to text each other, to catch up on the game last night, and (really occasionally) call other people. With all the upgrades made to the bandwidth that our communicators have now, Comcast (you know, that company that controls our internet and owns NBC and ESPN) has introduced a new device that is even better than Skype Pro… in-person holograms!
All you have to do is set the communicator down on the table and the 180-degree field-of-view camera will capture you and anything you interact with. With the advances in mobile technology, reduced in-air collision of transmission and increased power from transmission towers (yadda yadda, I know I need not bore you with the technical details), we can now transfer three-dimensional data! Instead of just pixels, we’ve figured out a way to transfer voxels (volume pixels) efficiently and largely flawlessly! Oh boy, there I go again. I’m just so excited that this technology is here. This stuff used to take gigabytes of RAM to even store, but now these communicators have really caught up.
What’s the end result? Well, instead of being stuck in front of the camera when using old-fashioned video chat, all we have to do is put the phone down and just go about our business in our space while seeing the other person walk around. We can have our conversation while not being chained to sitting down in front of our communicator! Anytime we sit down in a chair, the hologram will also bring that object into view, letting us see whatever we’re interacting with. Our friends will walk around our room, and even though we could be hundreds of miles away, we’ll feel like they’re just right next to us!
No more of these static holograms like we see in those kitschy hologram museums (“Hey look Ma, it’s that joker Tony Blair!”). We’re going to actually interact with our friends. Hell, with all these networked devices now, I wouldn’t be surprised if we could even play board games together physically. Now we can play Settlers of Catan with the Dream of the ‘90's expansion pack, even if I’m at my friend’s cabin up north!
Short of teleportation (WHEN IS THAT GOING TO BE HERE?!), this will probably be the best way of communicating. No more traveling just for a meeting, collaboration will be easier (people will actually be on task!), and since we can interact with our connected objects in our respective places, we can even physically interact with each other! To play board games, of course Mom.
Now, they need to hurry up and get us the color version of these holograms..
[submitted to Information Landscapes for the ‘Scenarios & Fictions’ response]
