Few people have experienced some of the dramatic new advances of virtual reality technology. I will be participating in a meeting in a few weeks where at least one of the persons in the room, sitting at the table, speaking at a lectern, will be a three-dimensional life-size image of a friend who will actually be in Boston as we conduct the meeting at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. My friend will be able to make eye contact with everyone in the room. He will hear us speak even as we hear him discuss with us the effect accelerating change is having on people.
These new technologies are also bringing people back to entertain us even though they are no longer living. This will be dramatically demonstrated in a series of concerts...
...at Radio City Music Hall in New York City this October. The promoters expect to gross over $7,000,000 during the two-week run of Sinatra crooning all of his hits. That's right, Sinatra is doing another concert tour. Here is an article from CNN about the unseemly commercialism of it all: Use of dead celebrities to sell stuff - Jul. 23, 2003.
Virtual reality is becoming more like reality every day. The time will come when it will be very difficult to perceive the difference.
