Telepresence has a near end and a far end. At the "near end" you wear your headset, gloves, and work the foot pedals. At the "far end" is your presence, a motorized tea-trolley carrying stereoscopic cameras servo-ed to your headset, microphones, and a loudspeaker. You drive it about using your foot controls, keeping your hands free to manage your local computer and work the light duty robot arm which permits the far end to open doors, turn lights on, and press the buttons on an elevator. The deluxe version of 2015 has the cameras mounted at eye level, but is only 20cm long/deep, and remains upright (balances) using internal gyroscopes. A short radio link connects the presence to the LAN in the premises you are visiting, and the internet completes the connection to where ever your body is.
Telepresence is not teleconferencing. The telepresence camera is under the control of the near end, not the far end. It can roam and see things it is not meant to see. It is a tool for bosses not workers. The location is laid open to the inspection of the visiting dignitary, while the presence itself reveals nothing of the near end. Electronic security becomes vital, lest a hacker get into a telepresence and obtain a degree of physical access to your premises over the internet.
Telepresence is not telecommuting. First, telecommuting is outworking plus modern communications, so telepresence differs in that work is plausibly being performed at the far end. Second is the difference in cost. The cost of a six hour plane flight versus the cost of a one hour car drive. The cost of time at the hourly rate of the CEO versus the hourly rate of subordinate workers. The cost of commuting is usually paid by the employee, while the cost of business travel is paid by the employer, so the travel budget can be directly transfered to the hire of telepresences.
Telepresence is not remote control. The owner of a supermarket chain can install a telepresence in each shop. Then he can visit anywhere, anytime to walk up and down the aisles, checking that the shelves are stocked and the goods attractively presented. Remote control carries with it the suggestion of stocking the shelves by remote control. This is an error because it stands the economics on its head. Shelf stockers do not fly to work business class. Robot arms are much more expensive if they have to lift significant weights, and more expensive again if they have to be mobile as well.
I keep talking about cost because money is the neglected key to accurate futurology. There are two preconditions for technological disruption: the current solution to the problem must be very expensive, and the problem must be so important that persons pay anyway. Business travel fits this exactly. You simply can't run a world wide business without going to see for yourself, and you spend a fortune doing so. There are a great many applications for telepresence. Replacing business travel is the one with the large market and the favorable economics. One must not neglect social factors, but business travel is a terrible burden on senior executives. This is one change that will not get bogged down in corporate bureaucracy.
Much of the technology required is in place already. Webcams are familiar. Many companies save on telephone call charges by using the internet in the form of Voice Over IP. Short range wireless connections to Local Area Networks are already in use. Radio controlled cars capable of driving about offices are popular children's toys.
Servo-ing the cameras at the far end to the users movements at the near end exists as expensive military technology. It is the kind of technology that will plummet in price with mass production. Speed of light delays will cause lags when working on the opposite side of the globe, which may lead to seasickness. Seasickness did not block the development of sea travel. It can probably be avoided by suitable signal processing, such as near-end caching
Trade shows are an important hybrid, partly in competition with physical visiting of customers and suppliers, partly in competition with ink on paper advertising. Rather than visiting each of your customers or each of your suppliers, it makes more sense for all of you to meet in a big hall on an appointed day. This trades off travel costs against the superficiality of not visiting actual places of business. Telepresence makes this compromise unnecessary. Trade shows cannot survive as an alternative to ink on paper advertising because that kind of advertising is itself being replaced by corporate websites and search engines. No one will travel to a trade show to find new entrants to the business because the World Wide Web is a permanent, no-travel, trade show.
Trade shows have two hopes. The first lies, paradoxically, in the collapse of business travel. If the decline of business travel is truly dramatic, to two or three trips a year, then flying off to an annual trade show might feel like fun again. The second is the social side. All over the internet like minded individuals are forming virtual communities. They soon desire to meet physically with the persons they chat to online. Telepresence will feed this desire, as businessmen spend more and more time with contacts all over the world, without being physically present.
One travels to build up trust. Trust is important. Will the parts you ordered come on time? Will they be of the quality promised? Doing business at long distance is worrying. Part of the point of business travel to soothe those anxieties. With telepresence you can pop in to see your supplier for a few minutes, anywhere in the world, as though they where on the same industrial estate. Alternatively, when the delicate and expensive instrument arrives at goods inwards, you can phone the supplier's long distance deliveries consultant. He then 'travels' 5000 miles to your goods inwards for half an hour to supervise unpacking. Having the person who specifies the packaging at the sending end oversee the unpacking at the receiving end changes things.
It is easy to take too narrow a view of these changes. At first sight, it appears that one will not have to travel to build up business relationships because one can use telepresence to sort out problems more easily, and that business relationships will consequently decline. Maybe not.
Imagine that you are a Paris based executive overseeing the installation of delicate and expensive instruments from Peru in London, New York, and Tokyo. Your body will stay in Paris. The long distance deliveries consultant's body will stay in Lima. You will meet, each of you in a goods inwards telepresence, in unloading bays in London, New York, and Tokyo. When you finally get one of the expensive pieces of equipment installed in Paris you might not bother to walk over to goods inwards to see it come. You have seen the man from Lima fussing over his packaging three times before and have built up confidence. You do not have to travel specially to build a working relationship because, liberated from distance, you are actually working with distant persons on a day to day basis.
Capital investment is not as geographically diversified as portfolio theory advocates. One reason is the time and expense of travel. Investment opportunities all over the globe are passed up because they are too risky to do at long distance. Companies that offer foreign investors easy access via a telepresence can tap new sources of capital. Banking will become more "hands on", with loans divided into more, and smaller stage payments. Physically dangerous countries will no longer be off limits for lenders. When you visit by telepresence you are still safe in your office.
A productive use of time in the aeroplane is writing up your notes of your trip. These notes are important. When you get to the Philippines in five days time you need to compare procedures there with procedures in Chile. Wrong! With a presence in both countries you can flip from one to the other at the flip of a switch. Pick your vantage point in the Chilean factory. Flip. Move to the corresponding spot in the Philippine factory. Flip. Flip. Back and forth comparing. Compare on-the-spot with on-the-spot, not one place with notes and recollections of the other.
Business travel dominates modern work. When do you get two hours uninterrupted time to sit and think? On the aeroplane. The collapse of business travel will force the reinvention of the office, with a door, guarded by a dragon who can hold all calls. It also gives back a lot of time which is currently used up by traveling. Does this lead to a glut in the market for executives or is it an opportunity for companies to be run more thoughtfully?
What does this mean for the leisure travel market? Nothing. You cannot taste the food, feel the sun on you skin, the sand between your toes, or swim in the sea. You are not away. The grass that needs mowing is out front. The shelf that needs putting up is next door. Remember though, that a failed substitute gets a second chance as a thing-in-it-self. Telepresence offers visits to the Himalayas without the altitude sickness, the antarctic without the cold, the deep sea without the bends, active volcanos without getting roasted. Since one is not physically traveling, these activities need only take an hour or two. Hence they are in competition with other leisure activities that can be fitted into that time, such as listening to a CD, attending a football match, or watching a film.
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