Laura and I are travelling today to N’York,N’York for the Nebula Awards Weekend and following big time fun with our old stomping grounds. Hope we don’t get mugged.

Though Laura has been back several times, I haven’t been back since before 9/11 and I expect a little cognitive dissonance, especially as the Nebula venue is down in the Financial district.

I’m sure we’ll be online but I’ve already placed a few posts in the queue, waiting for their itty-bitty nanobot timers to go off and propagate themselves across your screens.

I’ll also try and post pictures of all the glitteratti.

Telepresence is the operation of remote devices with sensory imput back to the operator such that their sense of location shifts from where their body physically is to where the remote device is. It’s been around for a long time in Science Fiction and, even in Fantasy if you include posession (demonic or otherwise.)

Remotely operated robots for handling radioactive materials was an early non-fiction manifestation of this as was bomb disposal units for the same purpose. With the internet and the advent of sites that not only allow you to look through remote cameras, but will allow you to control the pan, tilt, and zoom of that camera, it’s expanded hugely. If you do a google search on ‘telepresence’ you’ll get over a million hits.

My wife, Laura J. Mixon, has three books that delve deeply into this topic: Glass Houses, Proxies, and Burning the Ice, but it’s Proxies that examines the use of remote humanoid forms indistinguishable from humans.

So, don’t like how you look? Stay at home and send a proxy instead. Or send the proxy into an environment that is too dangerous for mere flesh. Use it (and its superior mechanical musculature and electronic senses) to spy on mere humans.

It’s getting closer to reality every day.

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