Despite the horrors of the pandemic, it did require a series of substantive changes in our way of life, and many of those are turning out to be affirmatively positive. Thinking about ourselves and truly assessing the important people in our lives might be a timely evolution for all of us.
Walk this way. Tech this way.
The Sense of Self
Penthouse offers up a little there-step session with some excellent way to work the body while getting into the mind.
1/ NordicTrack VAULT
The VAULT is a premium personal home gym — an all-in-one unit with a full-length mirror, immersive HD touchscreen, and storage for a suite of dumbbells, kettlebells and other fitness accessories. Featuring a full-length, 60 x 24-inch mirror and 32-inch HD touchscreen display for immediate visual feedback, it allows you to match the form of the iFit trainer for a better workout.
Tech This way: NordicTrack
2/ The Hydrow
Skip the gym membership and get a full body workout with the award-winning Hydrow. Featuring a 22-inch touchscreen, impressive front-facing speakers and realistic visuals, the Hydrow has been designed to be an immersive experience, with each stroke making you feel like you’re out on the water. The Hydrow’s 10-roller system seat has been ergonomically designed, guaranteeing you comfort for your workout’s duration.
Tech This way: Hydrow
3/ Wave Roller
Designed to assist in pain reduction, tension release and improve flexibility, the Theragun Wave Roller, with its five-speed vibration and Bluetooth connection, takes muscle rolling to the next level.
Tech This way: Therabody
Just a couple of clarifications here before we move on. First of all, the NordicTrack Vault differs in some key ways from our own “Tech This Way” Penthouse Vault. Secondly, despite these being truly exemplary fitness tools, made to the highest quality standards, and back by first-rate organizations, there still may be better ways to get sweaty while still building cardio.
The Sense of Others
[Since this article went to press, the company Penthouse profiled changed its name from PORTL to PROTO, for whatever reason. We have updated Jennifer’s article to reflect that change. – Ed.]
Hot Damn! Holograms!
Chances are if you’ve thought about holograms in the past 40 years, you’ve thought of Star Wars’ Princess Leia being projected by R2-D2, asking Obi-Wan Kenobi for help. More recently, a hologram of late rapper Tupac Shakur played Coachella in 2012, introducing a new generation to the sci-fi technology. But in the decade since, holograms have gone from real life to science fiction once more. However, L.A.-based company PROTO is trying to change that.
Founded in 2019, PROTO has created what founder David Nussbaum calls “holoportation” devices, allowing more than intergalactic royalty and legendary rappers to access the Jetsons-style technology.
At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Nussbaum’s devices — the Epic, which is PROTO’s original full-size device, and the Model M, or Mini — received three CES Innovation Award honors, with each device being cited in the Video Displays category, and the M adding a second honor for Streaming.
The holograms we’ve all come to know so well, including that 2012 Tupac, were done with Pepper’s Ghost, an illusion technique which essentially shoots an image at a tilted piece of glass, and that glass then reflects the image back to create a free-standing 3D image. But it requires darkness to look crisp and clean. Not so with PROTO. Nussbaum’s creation lives in the light, with the devices using light to create realistic shadows and depth.
“I can’t tell people to turn the lights off every time [they turn on their PROTO],” he says. “I mean, it doesn’t make any sense.”
Another shortcoming of previous holograms? Interactivity. Sure, you could watch a hologram perform at Coachella, but you couldn’t have a conversation with it. PROTO’s devices both include built-in external mics and cameras, so whoever is holoporting in can see and hear the people around them and respond instantaneously. Instead of the hologram being a piece of art, PROTO’s holograms are as close to real people as you can currently get.
That real-life feel is what has made PROTO the hologram of choice for the University of Central Florida’s medical school, where the device is used to beam in patients for students to examine and diagnose, allowing them to interact with a broader range of people and ailments than they might otherwise experience so early in their careers.
“For me, it’s about connecting people,” Nussbaum says. “That’s why we started adding audience-facing electronics like microphones and speakers and cameras, so that the person being beamed sees the audience in real time and can feed off of the energy of the [audience] and interact with them.”
Currently, that interaction is only available for big spenders who can afford the Epic — an eight-foot-tall PROTO largely used by Fortune 500 companies, medical schools and other organizations looking to serve a big audience. But by the time you’re reading this article, the Model M, or Mini PROTO, will have likely launched, allowing anyone who wants a PROTO to get a version fit for the home. And the ability to bring PROTO to the masses is something that Nussbaum is excited about — and not because of revenue.
“I think this is a travel replacement,” he says. “Some of our customers are Fortune 500, Fortune 100 companies, [and they are] saving billions of dollars in travel. But even more importantly, they’re saving the Earth because they’ve seen their carbon footprint shrink to almost nothing because they’re just not traveling.”
While travel was largely cut back because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nussbaum believes that once the pandemic ends, more and more people will forgo unnecessary business travel and simply holoport in when they’re needed, saving time, effort, money and, yes, the planet.
Not looking to give up your frequent flier miles just yet? You still may want a PROTO M, which has a starting price point of $2,000.
“What if we could put a face to Alexa?” Nussbaum proposes, name-dropping Amazon’s AI device. “What if we could make hologram Zoom, but also make hologram MasterClass?
“[We could] make hologram gaming, make hologram life. We can take all of our favorite things and add volumetric effects and depth and dimension and just make it all much more real.”
The home-sized devices, Nussbaum says, can be used as displays for NFTs (non-fungible tokens, or digital art cryptocurrency) or other art, as a Zoom alternative for more engaging meetings, or as a way to attend concerts from the comfort of your couch. Or, yes, you could use it to have an almost in-person meeting with one of your favorite adult performers.
“You could beam in any person, whether it’s the president of the United States or an adult performer, and I find that very exciting,” Nussbaum says. “Anybody can use the PROTO however they like. And if someone wants to use it [adult performers], I support them.”
With end-to-end encryption, PROTO is also incredibly secure, so whether an individual is using it for personal pleasure, or a government is using it to conduct top-secret meetings, only those they choose to beam to will ever know what they’re doing.
“When two people are communicating through a PROTO, it’s like those two people are in a room alone together,” Nussbaum explains.
“If you can’t be there, beam there,” Nussbaum says. Anyone with a camera and the PROTO app can beam into a PROTO device if they’re invited, and because of the all-in-one design, anyone who buys a PROTO can set it up right out of the box with little effort.
So whether you want to display your NFTs, safely visit with grandma during a pandemic, hold meetings, attend concerts, or even get up close and personal with your favorite adult star, PROTO can help you do it. Just remember before you beam that PROTO sees all.
“Sorry, world,” Nussbaum says, “but you have to wear pants again.”
Yeah, that doesn’t sound scary at all. What could possibly go wrong? … It does sound like grand fun before all that happens, though. … Should you wish to reserve your adventure immediately, you can (currently) do so for a mere $100. We invite you to check it out — and then start thinking about what kind of furniture you need to put between you and the camera. Pants? … They still have those?
