Must We Still Travel?
Has the internet relieved us of the need to travel? Partially perhaps.
St. Augustine once said, "The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only one page." This would have been true until very recently. The internet has changed the world, however. In this global village we now inhabit, communication across borders is easier than ever. There are virtual worlds out there reducing the need for travel. Online education and training, virtual business meetings, and applications such as Google Earth are just a few examples. Before we know it, tele-immersion will be at our fingertips.
“What is tele-immersion?” you may ask. It is technology, using holographic environments, which will allow users in different parts of the world to interact virtually, in real time, in three-dimensional space, giving them the illusion that they are talking face-to-face in the same room. While tele-portation is a far-fetched futuristic idea, tele-immersion is not. Its applications will include contexts such as conferences, theatre and sports performances, education and training (such as that of soldiers and doctors), and tele-presence in other remote or hazardous situations. The technology will allow users to have unrestricted views of other users’ environments, greatly surpassing current video-conferencing. Some holiday travel may also be replaced with tele-immersion. Of course there will be technical hurdles, such as bandwidth issues and the need for expensive supercomputers, but, as with any new technology, these hurdles can gradually be overcome.
In the future, the curious and restless among us will still want to explore far-away places at first hand, in a manner similar to that of Robert Louis Stevenson who once said, “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” However, future travel will be more out of choice than necessity when the new technology succeeds.
Posted by May Mikati on 12 February 2012, 9:37 AM
Has the internet relieved us of the need to travel? Partially perhaps.
St. Augustine once said, "The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only one page." This would have been true until very recently. The internet has changed the world, however. In this global village we now inhabit, communication across borders is easier than ever. There are virtual worlds out there reducing the need for travel. Online education and training, virtual business meetings, and applications such as Google Earth are just a few examples. Before we know it, tele-immersion will be at our fingertips.
“What is tele-immersion?” you may ask. It is technology, using holographic environments, which will allow users in different parts of the world to interact virtually, in real time, in three-dimensional space, giving them the illusion that they are talking face-to-face in the same room. While tele-portation is a far-fetched futuristic idea, tele-immersion is not. Its applications will include contexts such as conferences, theatre and sports performances, education and training (such as that of soldiers and doctors), and tele-presence in other remote or hazardous situations. The technology will allow users to have unrestricted views of other users’ environments, greatly surpassing current video-conferencing. Some holiday travel may also be replaced with tele-immersion. Of course there will be technical hurdles, such as bandwidth issues and the need for expensive supercomputers, but, as with any new technology, these hurdles can gradually be overcome.
In the future, the curious and restless among us will still want to explore far-away places at first hand, in a manner similar to that of Robert Louis Stevenson who once said, “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” However, future travel will be more out of choice than necessity when the new technology succeeds.
Posted by May Mikati on 12 February 2012, 9:37 AM
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