Device for the Suppression of Absence

If only they had unveiled this last week, my sister and I could have taken advantage of it while I was in London. It's an art project by British artist Paul St. George, and it's sort of a glorified webcam, shrouded in a fanciful story of tunnels and tragedy. The idea is that people can go up to the giant telescope-like lens of the thing in either London or New York and see the people in the other city looking back at them, and vice versa. It's called the Telectroscope, and it sounds like something from the imagination of H.G. Wells. Sure, we have telephones and email nowadays to communicate with people, but how cool would it be to walk up to the Telectroscope and be able to see and talk in sign language, for example, to someone on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean? Maybe I'll go take a look at it, and try it out, this weekend.