Chicago (IL) – This year’s presidential election made history in several ways and it appeared that news networks were also in a competition to show off the most elaborate technology to explain polls and other election events. It all started with fancy Surface tables and a “Magic Wall”, but if there was one technology that completely stood out form everything else, it was certainly CNN’s holograms.

Change was the theme of the presidential election and if you looked closely you could see change in many places, not just from a political viewpoint. Comparing this just concluded election with previous elections is also especially stunning from a technological view. Remember the famous white board of NBC’s Tim Russert, who unfortunately could not live to experience the final phase of this election?

Many of us still remember his trademark white board that clarified key data in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections – but there was no white board this time around. Touchscreens, Surface tables and a much hyped magic wall dominated the election coverage whenever any data of data needed to be visualized and put into perspective. CNN pulled another trick out of its hat on Tuesday, demonstrating a hologram technology that allowed the company to virtually “beam” a person from a distant location into the studio to talk with Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper.

That person (CNN’s Jessica Yellin and singer Will.I.am had the honor of being the first persons to testdrive the technology) was located in a tent with dozens of HD cameras that shot video of the person from any angle and transmitted that video to the CNN studio, where the image of that person was rebuilt.

The effect, of course, was that there seemed to be a more natural conversation between two people rather than between a host and a person on a screen. The benefit for the viewer may be questionable, but CNN claimed that the hologram allowed the audience to listen more clearly to an interviewed person, since that person was in a closed tent, and not somewhere in the middle of hundreds (or thousands) of screaming people. Sure, you could have put that person also in front of a simple camera and provided video in a more traditional way. But it was, of course, a technology presentation that secured CNN the prize for the most elaborate election coverage technology.

The Hologram was also used to build other 3D models – such as the Capitol, to visualize Senate seats. From a technology perspective, this was, without doubt, very impressive.

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