The Doppelganger Surrogate
Late for your early Monday meeting? Fret not! Just hire a surrogate to attend. ChameleonMask, invented by Jun Rekimoto, is a mask-shaped display worn by a surrogate that shows a remote user’s live face and transmits their voice.
Just imagine an iPad strapped to your head but projecting somebody else’s face. With the ability to cover vast distances, a surrogate tech may soon be seen at venues, conferences, and events. Invasion of the body snatchers anyone?
Elon Musk Launched His Car into Space
If you have the ability to launch a 64-ton payload (the equivalent of five London double-decker buses) into space, what would you send into orbit? For Elon Musk, it’s a space-suited mannequin strapped in his old cherry-red Tesla sports car. The launch took off yesterday and Falcon Heavy has officially made it through Mars’ orbit and is now headed for the Asteroid Belt. “You can tell it’s real because it looks so fake,” he joked. “It’s just literally a normal car in space, which I kind of like the absurdity of that,” Musk said.
Full-Time Pollster Monitors Zuckerberg
Tavis McGinn applied for a market research job at Facebook, but the company had something else in mind for him. How would you like to track the public perception of Mark Zuckerberg?
“It was a very unusual role,” McGinn said.
“It was my job to do surveys and focus groups globally to understand why people like Mark Zuckerberg, whether they think they can trust him, and whether they’ve even heard of him. If Mark gives a speech and he’s talking about immigration and universal health care and access to equal education, it’s looking at all the different topics that Mark mentions and seeing what resonates with different audiences in the United States. It’s very advanced research.”
McGinn declined to reveal the results of his observations. “I decided after six months that it was a waste of my time to be there. I didn’t feel great about the product. I didn’t feel proud to tell people I worked at Facebook. I didn’t feel I was helping the world,” said McGinn.
(Source: The Verge)
