Ping me when the walls are transparent

Aug 02, 2025

The calming white noise of a gentle blizzard smoothly takes over the break room. Display-wrapped walls ripple when his settings override the default ambient forest. He joins the optics lead, who's already grabbing his cup. The machine chirps, now recalibrating to his own afternoon usual.

- Heard you guys were also pitching today. How did it go?

He shrugs with a meh, smiling.

- Fine, I guess.

- Why? Something changed? Her face used to have subtitles.

- Different crowd this time. Two VPs, someone from legal, plus our board of AIs flooding us with probability matrices. Hard to read the room with conflicting signals, but I’m glad we demoed how to slash time-to-metrics in half.

- The usual standard. So why the worry?

- We may be shaking the boat a little, but for everyone. The adhesives team is already unhappy with any changes to temperature cycling tests. Can’t blame them. They've barely finished those sim upgrades with the vendor.

- Hey, we’re a market-leading producer of display foils, turning any flat surface into a working screen. Why would anyone expect business as usual in such a place?

- You’re right in the long term but in the short term we may be the number one problem discussed by all the teams. Orbital applications have already requested a freeze on their processes.

- Well, that’s the price you pay to see if the new thing has any value. I’m glad your metrics were strong enough to get you a demo slot.

He glances at his wrist, a subtle glow beneath his sleeve signalling his next meeting.

- Gotta go. Ping me when the walls are transparent.

- Sure. Still fixing the hazing for retrofits?

- Nah, I have a bunch of next-gen stuff your comfort zone won’t like. You’ll hate testing it.

- Hit me. Always happy to lab rat for you even though after all these years, I forgot what my comfort zone looks like in the first place.

- I hope you’ll get back to it soon.

- I hope not. I’m bored when not worried.

- Okay, leave me to my coffee, and I’ll get you a ton of new stuff to worry about.

- I can always count on you. Enjoy your break.

The coffee station starts chirping softly self-cleaning and recalibrating, to brighten up someone else's day. He takes a sip. The coffee tastes like optimism.

Memories to build from this future:

Picture wrapping your first wall with display foil and turning it into a working screen:

Which surface did you choose first and why - your kitchen wall, bedroom ceiling, or bathroom mirror?
What surprised you most about how it changed your daily routines in that room?
How did you handle the installation process when the foil kept bubbling or wouldn't stick properly?

Think back to the first time your team pitched to a mixed board of human executives and AI decision-making systems:

How did you adapt your presentation style when the algorithms were interpreting emotions while people observed your body language?
Which parts of your pitch resonated differently for human versus AI decision-makers?
What 2 new methods did you discover to estimate whether your presentation was going well for both biological and digital stakeholders?

Think about the first month your conference room walls were wrapped in display foil for presentations:

Which team members adapted most quickly to gesture-based wall controls?
How did meetings change when any wall could instantly become a screen?
What new presentation techniques emerged when you could use multiple wall surfaces simultaneously?