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To: sionnsar

I would suspect that the speed of communication will continue to advance remarkably, while the speed of travel will remain stagnant.

Eventually, virtual travel will be regarded as better and more efficient for most purposes.

Then real travel will be reserved purely for the sake of being able to say, “Yes, I was really there, and I saw it.”

For those of us who wear glasses, if seeing the world through a display device very like our glasses were a possibility, it would be very easy to fool us.

Then the next step is bringing the other senses along. Hearing is obvious and easy, but others are rather muted. Their physicality can be relatively easy to simulate.

Virtual travel will seem real enough when simulated reality gets enough bandwidth.


307 posted on 02/02/2009 6:48:17 PM PST by NicknamedBob (It's getting harder and harder to distinguish those ululations of joy from primal screams of anguish)
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To: NicknamedBob
I would suspect that the speed of communication will continue to advance remarkably, while the speed of travel will remain stagnant.
Eventually, virtual travel will be regarded as better and more efficient for most purposes.

It's happening already. Teleconferences are becoming more more common. Video-conferencing was tried at my site a few years ago, but apparently deemed inadequate because I don't see it being used any more. The "speed of travel" has been pretty well fixed for a long time, for those of us lacking Concorde budgets.

BUT all that said, all the "virtual meeting" arrangements to date are really deficient. I hate conducting Internet classes -- sure it costs much less than traveling, but you miss tons of feedback from the class. Sharing a powerpoint over the Internet doesn't give you visual feedback on their reception of the material, participants tend to be less ready to raise their (virtual) hand and ask a question...

When virtual travel gets to the point where surfing the web in the virtual class carries the same penalties as surfing it in a physical-presence class, then I might say it's arrived.

309 posted on 02/02/2009 8:49:32 PM PST by sionnsar (IranAzadi|5yst3m 0wn3d-it's N0t Y0ur5(SONY)|http://trad-anglican.faithweb.com/|TaglineSpaceForRent)
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