The Texai robot isn’t quite as cute as WALL-E, but it’s sure to become a coveted plaything of office life. Developed by California-based robotics research lab Willow Garage, the Texai machine is considered a “Remote Presence System.” Essentially, it’s Skype on wheels. Designed for office workers who need to be “present” at work remotely, the Texai allows a user to manually control the presence of the machine from wherever they are, allowing them to interact with others with a two-way camera and speakers.

Willow Garage originally created the Texai to allow its engineers, located 2000 miles apart, to collaborate and work together throughout the day. Though it’s still in its testing stages and isn’t yet being sold, it’s already catching the eyes of technology bigwigs. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, used it to be present at a fundraiser he couldn’t attend physically. The lead technology writer for The New York Times Bits Blog, Nick Bilton, had his Texai counterpart wheel around the office for a few weeks as he sat on his couch at home.

There’s a growing focus in developing methods of “telepresence” — which refers to technologies that allow a person to have a virtual presence in another geographical location. This whole concept brings to mind Jason Reitman’s 2009 film “Up in the Air” (based on a novel by Walter Kirn). For those who aren’t familiar, the film tells the story of a “corporate downsizer” — more simply, someone who flies around the country firing company employees for a living (who could have easily been a loathsome character, if he wasn’t played by George Clooney).

The movie, among other things, centered on a freshly-graduated new employee launching a system by which people could now be fired by corporate downsizers via video conferencing. This idea of something so personal and distressing done without even the slight comfort of human presence is jarring to Clooney’s character, who tries to ascertain that such an act should be done in person (and, in the movie, it’s eventually done away with).

Video conferencing as a means of business seems logical. But what I think we often forget is that working together requires at least some base amount of camaraderie; which, on a digital level, seems hard to accomplish. Experiencing the same things; sharing in small everyday victories, laughing at that one guy who always has stains on his tie, bouncing ideas off one another in person — those are things that help people understand each other.

A study about the differences of interacting face-to-face or via video-conference was conducted at the University and published in 2003. Participants’ levels of confidence in their group-made decisions and their enjoyment in arriving at those decisions in person, as opposed to in a video conference, were measured. Their results showed that video-conferencing groups demonstrated lower levels of confidence in decision-making, among other things. They concluded that, all in all, video conferencing is a “close approximation” for face-to-face interaction — but not nearly the same thing.

All that aside, I’m not trying to say that we should try to shackle the steadily rising level of technology. The Texai was built for a purpose and it serves that purpose well. But as the product is streamlined and sold for company use, will the American office become a hive of Texai systems, their operators simultaneously in seven separate states? For the sake of foregoing exorbitant travel costs and saving time, I can see the merits of video conferencing as an occasional communication method. I just don’t see, though, how a machine (though it may bear the face of a coworker) could ever quite resemble the experience of working every day with a living, breathing person. Call me old-fashioned. I print out my class readings because I hate reading from a screen. I will only read the Chicago Tribune in paper form. I take my class notes with a black #2 Dixon Ticonderoga, never on my computer. Maybe my real question is, why do we really need computers to do things we’re perfectly capable of doing ourselves? Do I really need to take an online course just so I can do my class work with my bunny slippers on? Will we reach a point when we send out our Texai systems off to KAM’S to frolic with the other coeds as we stay in bed sipping drinks by ourselves? After hearing a girl in one of my classes say she had to delete her Facebook over the summer because “she forgot how to communicate with real people,” this future of face-to-face contact seems to be bleaker than ever.

As good ole’ George Clooney’s character said in “Up in the Air,” “If you think about it, your favorite memories, the most important moments in your life ... were you alone? Life’s better with company.” I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean virtually.

Megan is a junior in Media.