Wil Wheaton: Just a (Smart Geek)

You may remember him from the movie "Stand By Me", or the hit TV show, Star Trek: The Next Generation", today Wil Wheaton is best known as a technology author. Wil's constantly updating his popular Blog, wilwheaton.net, where he discusses his take on life and technology.

In a recent post, "still building and burning", Wil comments on the first time he discovered the Apple Mac computer back in 1984. I too recall the first time I saw a Mac. It was at Dalhousie University where I was a student. The Mac had a profound, life altering effect on me and millions of other "geeks" and "not so geeks". Pretty much everyone knew the second they laid eyes on that thing that the world had changed; for the better.

I didn't feel the same way until nine years later when I saw a web browser and HTML pages for the first time.

So, what's next? When (and what) will introduce us to the next future?

There is no way to know for sure, but if we keep our eyes open, maybe, just maybe, we can get a head start on the Next Big Technology Thing.

Imagine for a moment that you had unlimited bandwidth at your finger tips. Now imagine that you have to give a presentation at a conference thousands of miles from where you are, and it absolutely, positively, must be live and in person. Your only option today is to spend hours eating stale peanuts and hoping the guy next to you took his medication before boarding.

But what if we could "Beam" you to the conference, a la Star Trek! Wait, it's not as wacky as it sounds. What if we could send a complete three dimensional map of you and project it in Real Time using existing holographic technology. You would "be" in the room as far as everyone was concerned. They could see you, talk to you, walk around you, stand next to you, maybe even touch you if we had enough sensors.

Three dimensional holographic projection technology promises to revolutionize the concept of a "Virtual Classroom". Imagine a "Virtual classroom/Hollow Deck" where the instructor and all the students are projected holograms and interact as though they are all in the same room. For all practical purposes this virtual, internet based training class would be a "real" live training class. Students and the instructor would get the sense that they were really in the room, and would begin to interact with one another naturally. This "Hollow Class" would offer the best of both worlds: The travel and cost advantages of a Virtual Class, and the Real Time, personal interactions of a live instructor led class.

Far Fetched? Maybe, but so was the idea of a Personal Computer with a mouse back in 1984.


Related links:

SPIE
Military Instructional Technology Overview
The Cave!