In Other Media...

If you were one of the unlucky bunch who had neither the time nor the patience to watch the television coverage of the presidential election on November 4, let me catch you up to speed: CNN now has hologram technology, and they are not afraid to use it.

That's right, the fantastical image-concept of science-fiction folklore has now hit the big time. On that fateful Tuesday, Jessica Yellin, playing Princess Leia to Wolf Blitzer's Obi-Wan Kenobi, was magically "beamed" into the CNN election center in New York City from a tent outside the Democratic Party's campaign headquarters in Chicago. Perhaps years from now we will be able to mark this as the watershed moment that began a new era, the long-awaited instance when Star Wars came to life.

Or perhaps not. Although CNN hasn't released much information, critics have assailed the network for misrepresentation, citing the hologram is, well, not really a hologram.

According to Holophile.com, a hologram "re-creates-in space-all the points of light that originally came from the object. The resulting image, either behind or in front of the holographic film, has all the dimensions of the original object." But critics claim that CNN never projected an image of Yellin within the election center. Instead, Blitzer was asked to speak to her disembodied voice while looking at a vacant red circle across from him in the studio. Then computer engineers, using motion software technology, superimposed Yellin's image above the red circle. The important point is that in order for CNN to have created a proper hologram, Yellin's image must have been projected in front of Blitzer. But this never happened in the studio; it only appeared that way on our television screens.

Not only was the hologram a charade, the technology used to generate it was garish and expensive. According to Yellin, a Matrix-like ring of 35 high-definition cameras captured her image from different angles in Chicago. While she was being filmed, the Chicago cameras, aided by 20 computers, communicated with a ring of New York cameras. The computers synchronized the angles of the two camera sets, so the two images maintain a consistent perspective.

The word hologram comes from the Greek words holos, meaning whole, and gramma, meaning writing or message. In other words, a real hologram is supposed to visualize the multiple dimensions of a living image. But CNN's hologram is a complex combination of many flat, photographic perspectives.

When gadgets are marshaled with such excess, one can't help but ask: What is it for? By my estimation, the costly gadgetry had little to no value as far as political commentary goes. When Blitzer spoke to the hologram, he might as well have been interviewing a talking head, which would require only one extra camera and a few computers.

CNN's idea was, I guess, that by reporting on the election with newfangled gadgetry they could intensify the historical significance of the moment. Other networks, like MSNBC, played a similar hand but bet much smaller, fashioning a light-up blue-and-red map from the floor of the ice rink at Rockefeller Square. Strange as this might seem, I have to give Fox News some credit. Their election coverage may have been somber, but at least they resisted such needless ostentation.

Then again, maybe CNN's "hologram" technology would have been better received if they had introduced it during the primaries. Imagine a weary Hillary Rodham, pleading urgently with the press: "This is our most desperate hour. Help me Anderson Cooper. You're my only hope." Now that might have actually changed the course of history.