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Coronavirus Exposes Our Need For True Telepresence
Let’s meet nowhere
I’ve been convinced for 30 years that telepresence is the “killer app” for extended reality (XR). Now more than ever, it seems like it could be an important replacement for face-to-face meetings and conferences.
This same idea led to the first HoloLens prototypes and a visually rich TED Talk by my former boss, Microsoft technical fellow Alex Kipman. The first two augmented reality (AR) devices Microsoft has released aren’t yet great for representing “live” holograms of people, mainly due to their narrow fields of view. Unless a person fits entirely within this field of view, we perceive them being virtually “vivisected” by the device, which can be disconcerting. Still, the tech is moving in a direction that will let us someday see remote, whole people sitting across the table, seamlessly blended in with the real world.
Humans are deeply social. Most are reasonably empathic. All of us have a need for positive human attention. Anything resembling an XR future has to embrace these qualities to the core.
As I write this in March 2020, many of us are reeling from the cancelation or postponement of key tech conferences due to the coronavirus. Some people have argued that meeting in VR would resolve the current dilemma. Why wouldn’t entirely XR conferences…
