I've begun teleworking in earnest this year - pure teleworking where I'm living 8 hours drive from the org I am coding for, and where I never meet my coworkers in person. Soon I'll be working directly for a US org in the same manner.
There's lots of very cool tools for this so far. I've been using Netmeeting with a guy I work with in Australia; I find that using commonly available tools such as internet phone, chat screen and a shared whiteboard are better in many ways than being in the same room, even for initial design work.
Anyway, it would still be good to actually be there. Travelling between US and Australia is expensive and crappy. So, what I need is to be able to tele-travel. I'm thinking of companies that rent out robot bodies that you could control via VR helmets/gloves/etc..., so that I could rent a body and get about "in person", by remote control.
It seems to me to be a logical next step. Science fiction has been drooling over telepathy and teleportation forever, but what we get are mobile phones, and perhaps soon robotic telebodies controlled via net/mobile networks.
Anyone think this is likely in the near future (ie: pre singularity)?
Emlyn
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