What will everyday holography mean?

Inspire links to an Technology Review story that PC-driven and practical holographic video is closer to reality. Among the potential applications cited are better medical and architectural modeling. Yuri van Geest asks to what extent 3-D will replace 2-D visualization.

MSNBC's Practical Futurist has suggested that such 3-D visualization might permit travelers to choose electrons over aircraft.

Like both, I'm wondering how practical 3-D technology, like the Internet and paved roads, will shape society. I'm also assuming - though I don't know - that there are significant differences between the technology that enables holographic video for computing and the kind that will teleport Ray Bradbury to Louisville in September.

Wayne

Comments

[Eric]

The 'Practical Futurist' link is fascinating. Really imagine: Physical presence and thus corporal transportation lose their necessity. Huge implications here. Among other things: 1. Auto/jet/train emissions and fuel needs drastically reduce; 2. Population can be redistributed, notion of "prime" real estate shifts focus; 3. Function of one's physical presence changes, in that bodies are only "needed" for specifically corporal acts (especially: leisure--and with all the free time gained by removing so much of the various "driving times", one suspects leisure-time will sharply increase).

Will it happen? At 24, I'm very comfortable working and interacting with people I've never shared a room with. Being able to do this is what has kept me in Louisville, instead of moving to the coasts. Interestingly, this online or "tele-" communication also has an ironic advantage over physical contact: Because of its distance from your "real" life, one feels strangely safe divulging honest information to "trusted" strangers. Kind of like throwing a bottled message into the sea. So through this unguarded communication, tele-relationships can almost become MORE trusted, and trust is of course the foundation of solid relationships.

It's an exciting and, I think, enormously beneficial pursuit.