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.
** “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.” **
This happens, depending on the degree of immersion.
One of the reasons cell-phones are dangerous is because people lose track of where they are and what they are doing, blithely sauntering or driving into danger.
Just as a surfer might be blithely unaware of the circling Great White.
Better immersion techniques will exacerbate this problem. I recommend virtual reality chambers for recreation and for remote presence participation. In such a chamber, you would don a suit designed to feed you with information about the remote location and its occupants, and capture motions and facial expressions, as well as speech that you might produce.
In such a chamber, one might well “pace” back and forth while “presenting” information on a “stage”.
Or one could simply relax and observe while someone else does that, and look around at the other participants to see what their reactions are.
The easy configuration is to have everyone seated. Then you only need to put on a jacket with data-gloves, and a visor-type helmet or cap.