TW2007 Speech: Marc Trachtenberg, CEO Teliris

2007.06.04 by John Serrao

One of the first speeches at Telepresence World 2007 Day 1 was Marc Trachtenberg, CEO of Teliris. Marc concentrated his speech on the fundamentals of how a new technology, like telepresence, becomes widely accepted into society. Read on for more about Marc's Speech.

Trachtenberg laid out technological development on a spectrum consisting of 3 distinct phases: Invention, Experimentation, and Standardization. He thinks we are currently somewhere near the experimentation phase. He suggested that the evolution of telepresence into the standardization phase will only take place with a killer app of telepresence. His vision of the killer app is an invisible telepresence system, meaning neither party would have any idea the system was even operating.

The speech went through the dynamics of how the printing press was developed and how each stage relates to the modern world of telepresence. With this lead, he concluded that the printing press' complexity and size were whittled down, through the experimentation phase, into what he termed an, 'inert technology' - referring back to the original 'invisible' telepresence idea. Precise eye gaze, multipoint capability and line of sight were all part of this invisible package of the future.

He concluded by saying telepresence still has a ways to go but that will be overcome with advances in technology that help telepresence systems seamlessly integrate into their surroundings.