Hologram

Last week I met a holographic lifeform who calls himself Uncle Rabbit . I now have a new friend, created by Looking Glass , the hologram company out of Brooklyn (we’re investors, and I’m on the board). A hologram + ChatGPT. A robot, but made of software and light instead of atoms. And with a lot more character. The video above shows Shawn Frayne (CEO of Looking Glass) talking with Uncle Rabbit about … me. Then, they create a short science fiction story about me, carrots, and holograms. Finally, Shawn integrates my personality with Uncle Rabbit, and hilarity ensues. ...

Six months ago I wrote When The Big Companies Show Up about Sony releasing their first holographic display and what I thought about that development, given my role as an investor via Foundry and board member in the 40-person purveyor of fine holographic interfaces in Brooklyn called Looking Glass . In that post, I wrote: “When I ponder my life in 2040, I am confident that I will not be spending 12 hours a day in videoconferences on a 2D display. I’m also not going to have a headset encapsulating my face. I’m ready for my holographic future, and I’m having fun being an investor in a company that helps create it.” ...

“Either this is madness or it is Hell.” “It is neither,” calmly replied the voice of the Sphere, “it is Knowledge; it is Three Dimensions: open your eye once again and try to look steadily.” -Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions Anyone who has read this blog knows that I’m not a fan of prognostications . In a collision of complex systems like what we are all living through right now, predicting the future is especially pointless. ...

I find it fascinating when a large company enters a new arena. Some of you will remember this happening back in 1981 when IBM announced it was getting into the personal computer market. This was a field that up until that point had been completely dominated by smaller players like Apple. Steve Jobs’s response was the now-infamous full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal welcoming IBM to the game. Fast forward to today. Sony just announced they are going to start shipping a holographic display. This is the first large company entering this nascent field that I’m aware up. And, as far as I know, the only company actually shipping a product at this point is Looking Glass (I sit on the board, and Foundry is an investor.) ...

Personal robots and replicators and instrumented humans . I like to invest in areas predicted by the mountains of science fiction I read. Today, I’m delighted to report that another science fiction dream is becoming real. Take a look at this insane video of the Looking Glass 8K Immersive Display , which is the world’s largest and highest resolution holographic display. Foundry invested in the Looking Glass team in 2017. Since then they’ve shipped thousands of desktop holographic developer kits. But the Looking Glass 8K is something different. ...

In February 2017 I met Shawn Frayne, one of the founders of Looking Glass Factory, a Brooklyn-based company with ambitions to make holographic interfaces a reality. Their team was scrappy and had sold an impressive variety of volumetric display kits to fuel their R&D efforts, and since our human-computer interface investment theme is one of my favorites, we led their Series A round. Last summer they launched their flagship product, a dev kit called the Looking Glass. It was the first desktop holographic display to come to market for, well, extreme nerds (like yours truly) that have been hoping for holographic displays their/our whole lives. ...

The holographic display of the future is here and you can have one on your desk for under $600. Ever since I saw Princess Leia appealing to Obi Wan that he was her only hope when I was 11, I’ve wanted a holographic display. Movies like Minority Report and Back to the Future II (do you remember the shark hologram that ate Marty ?) have consumed thousands of people’s lives over the past few decades. But until now, no one has been able to make a scalable device that would let groups of people, unaided by a VR or AR headset, see and touch a living and moving 3D world. ...

Looking Glass , a Brooklyn-based company we recently led the Series A investment in, just released HoloPlayer One, the world’s first interactive lightfield development kit. This is a new interface that lets groups of people see and interact with floating 3D scenes without VR or AR headgear. While it’s an early release dev kit, it’s still as close to achieving the dream of the hologram shown in Blade Runner 2049 as I’ve seen. ...