Wake up...and smell the coffee!

By Zoe Kleinman

Technology reporter

Future Zoom users will be able to smell the virtual coffee

People in video meetings will, in future, be able to feel their hands being shaken and smell coffee in their virtual space, the founder and CEO of Zoom has predicted.

Eric Yuan was speaking at the Web Summit tech conference.

Mr Yuan said he believed artificial intelligence would bring a physical aspect to virtual meetings.

He also said he thought many workers would not return full-time to the office after the pandemic. Unsurprisingly perhaps, he argued that video meetings were here to stay, stating that the pandemic had demonstrated that "it works" - despite Zoom's share value plunging following the first announcement about Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine. He said that for office-based staff, coming in for maybe two days a week could become the norm.

"The world will become a hybrid [workplace], and I think that's a world we have to embrace," he said. However, he hinted that even he had experienced "Zoom fatigue" after attending 19 video meetings in one day.

Here's the full article from BBC news [technology] website:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55173270