Some years ago I gave a lecture in Italy over the telephone from my home office in San Jose. From my end it felt too much like talking into a void. A year or two later I repeated the experiment with better technology. This time I was sitting in a videoconferencing room. My audience in the Netherlands could see me and I could see them. Still not quite real, but a good deal closer.

The next time might be closer still. Not only do I save on the airfare, the audience does too. I am at home; so are they. Each of us is wearing earphones and goggles, facing a small video camera. The lenses of the goggles are video screens; what I see is not what is in front of me but what they draw. What they are drawing is a room filled with people. Each is seeing the same room from the other direction – watching me, standing at a virtual podium as I deliver my talk.

Virtual reality not only saves on airfares, but has other advantages as well. The image from my video camera is processed by my computer before being sent on to everyone in my audience. That gives me an opportunity to improve it a little first, to replace my bathrobe with a suit and tie, give me a badly needed shave, remove a decade or so of aging.