A tip of the hat to Michael Anderson for drawing my attention to an article at futurism.com that explains how hologram doppelgangers of ourselves can make us sound a whole lot more linguistically agile than we actually are. Equally mind-boggling: the technology is available today.

At a recent Microsoft Inspire partner conference, company executive Julie White gave a demonstration of how it’s possible “to not only create an incredibly life-like hologram of a person, but to then make the hologram speak another language in the person’s own voice.” Microsoft has combined virtual technology with text-to-speech techology to create holograms of individuals that can speak in local languages almost anywhere in the world.

Here is a segment of White’s presentation:

This technology would have saved me about 8 million miles in the last 25 years. When it comes to rolling it out in practice, clearly the devil will be in the detail – but there is no doubt that at some point in the not-too-distant future, global meetings are going to look and sound 今日とは全く違う *

I welcome your thoughts on the potential of holograms to deliver talks at meetings and conferences, or on any matter relating to the management of law firms. Please contact me either in the comments section below, or directly via email.

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* totally different from today