Looking for an exit strategy for the next boring roundtable meeting you are forced to attend? A new “listening table” developed by the New York Times R&D Lab doesn’t exactly give you a hall pass, but it does take note, literally, of all the good stuff and forces more purpose into lifeless meetings.
“The R&D Lab is focused on cultural, sociological and technical changes that might impact the way we use, find or share information,” according to Noah Feehan, maker of the table prototype.
With voice recognition software, microphones, thermal cameras and sensors built into the table, the goal is not to take full, flawless transcriptions of a meeting (who wants to read that?), but to rather use technology and user-pressed “markers” to take notes similar to what one would realistically take at a meeting — blips of the most important words or phrases that best help to jog your memory.
Worried that such a device would be too Big Brother or a clever ploy by a competitor hoping to steal your trade secrets? There is an on/off switch and no “cloud” storage technology. The database lives right inside the table itself and has “enforced forget(fulness)” since it only stores 28 days’ worth of data at a time.
While you probably won’t see these tables available in a high-end business furniture store anytime soon, the main idea is to fuse different technologies into a singular design and to create intellectual stimulation in the process.
Now if it only had a “Beam me up, Scotty” sensor in the middle of the table…
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