The Time Machine by H.G. Wells is widely regarded as one of the most iconic and influential time travel stories of all time. There have been two feature film adaptations—one in 1960 starring Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux, and one in 2002 starring Guy Pearce and Samantha Mumba.
I prefer the 1960 movie, but the 2002 adaptation had its moments. I’m currently thinking of the scene when the time traveler, who hails from 1899, visits a futuristic library in 2030 and meets an advanced artificial intelligence (AI)-based holographic librarian called Vox. When I first saw Vox back in 2002, two things came to mind. The first was that we would almost certainly have this type of technology one day. The second was that we probably wouldn’t have this level of technology until a long time in the future, say 2050. So, you can only imagine my surprise to discover that truly life-size and life-like holographic assistants are already with us. Recently, I had a chat with Edward Ginis, who is Co-Founder and CTO at Proto (protohologram.com). The combination of cloud computing, generative AI, and Proto’s hardware means you can have a no-holds-barred conversation with what appears to be a life-size 3D volumetric hologram. In fact, I’ve even seen two such AI holograms chatting with each other.