

Gartner: Telepresence will replace 2.1 million airline seats annually over next 3 years - gravitycop
http://www.cable360.net/ct/news/ctreports/Telepresence-Market-Grows_33945.html

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pg
Rtm's going to attend the next YC dinner using a QA

[http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/technology_news/429862...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/technology_news/4298623.html)

which actually bear more than a passing resemblance to him...

~~~
brk
While that's novel, I predict it will be a bit of a letdown for him
personally. A robot with a video screen of your face and relatively-limited
field of view is going to make for very poor interaction on both sides.

Until/unless that technology gets a lot better, I suspect it will be like the
"cell phone lag", only 100x worse.

~~~
pg
We already know what it will be like for him because Trevor and I both tried
being QA for a while at the last YC dinner to test it out. It's much better
than being on a speakerphone-- you can actually roll up to a group of people
and join their conversation-- but not, obviously, as good as being there in
person.

It feels roughly like being in a cardboard box with a small, smudged little
window to look out of. Which tells me the most important thing for Trevor to
improve: the cameras.

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gravitycop
From the article:

 _Again, Gartner was saying the technology would take away $3.5 billion from
the airline industry - this year. And that's just airline tickets. The total
figure of corporate savings would also include room, board and other travel-
related expenses.

All of this adds up to a persuasive return on investment (ROI). "Most
telepresence systems pay for themselves within a year," said Erika Schroeder,
senior marketing manager of Cisco TelePresence._

