Why the airport of the future will include a chat with a celebrity hologram

If you happened to be waiting for a flight at JFK Terminal 4 on May 23, chances are you bumped into the comedian Howie Mandel. Not in-person, of course. Mandel is averse to germs and doesn’t like to fly. But rather in-Proto, a life-sized hologram machine with the ability to “beam” anyone or anything inside of it. At noon, Mandel appeared. He was beaming in live from Van Nuys, California, from a showroom of the holographic communication company Proto. “This is how a germaphobe comes to...