The telepresence promise

A younger generation
Finally, there’s one more element that may ultimately be the biggest boon for telepresence: a younger generation — the next workforce waiting in the wings — that is adept at meaningful online relationships. Since childhood they’ve stayed in touch and often even developed strong friendships through online games, texting, IMing and videocams. For them, physical proximity is not as important a part of a successful relationship as it was for their parents. Put them into a telepresence-based working environment and they’re likely to say, why not?

But that’s still some years away. At present, besides the steep prices, only a few manufacturers sell the equipment for telepresence rooms — among them, Cisco, Polycom and Tandberg. The cost is high because telepresence requires sophisticated software to make the systems easy to operate, and sending multiple channels of high definition video over the Internet takes expensive network technology.

Systems at present are also not fully compatible, although work is underway to establish standards. But if there’s one thing that technology history teaches, it’s that hardware, software and bandwidth all get cheaper very quickly. One can imagine telepresence rooms of the future in which one entire wall is a high-definition video screen — opening onto another telepresence room half a planet away.

Leave it to science fiction author Ray Bradbury to have the final word on telepresence. In his 1951 short story “The Veldt” some future parents give their children a nursery with walls that recreate the African veldt so realistically that the father has to reassure the nervous mother: "Walls, Lydia, remember; crystal walls, that's all they are. Oh, they look real, I must admit - Africa in your parlor - but it's all dimensional, superreactionary, supersensitive color film and mental tape film behind glass screens...”

Or so it seems, until father learns that some of the virtual lions are a bit more real than he thinks. Telepresence, of course, won’t create more carnivorous creatures in the workplace than already exist. But it may well become part of the office landscape sooner than most of us expect.

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