New technology has brought us microwaves, mobile phones, the internet and now we have something new, the virtual journalist, which will probably come as a relief to celebs and guilty politicians.

Perhaps we have not gone that far yet but I can now bring you live reports on America’s Cup racing without getting my feet wet. Times were when you had to be crouched in a bucking RIB, stopwatch, damp notepad and binoculars in hand as you tracked the boats around the course.

That has all changed now thanks to new technology and what was originally called Virtual Spectator which was developed to bring new life to sports reporting. Now boats are tracked to the nearest fraction of a metre, the data fed back, interpreted (don’t ask me how) and real time, 3D images projected on a screen near you.

So today I took this option rather than going out on the press boat. It meant that I – and several others – could follow the racing via this technology, plus live TV from the race course and file our reports before the press boat docked.

Here we see virtual journalists hard at work at the AC Media Centre.