It's been well over 30 years since a ghostly image of Carrie Fisher first told Obi-Wan Kenobi he was her only hope, but the technology to create full-motion holograms has remained stubbornly out of reach. That is, except for the lab coats at MIT.

Joi Ito, the Director of MIT's MediaLab recently paid a visit to Mashable and told us about the progress the institute has made in creating holograms, and how close we are to building a compact holographic projector that can display images akin to Princess Leia's hastily recorded message.

Ito explained that the projection tech already exists, but it's too large to be practical. That's changing, however. (His remarks on holograms begin at 2:24 in the above video.)

"The next version we're going to have is going to be about the size that you will fit inside an R2-D2. And we'll will be able to transmit the hologram over the Internet. Within the year we'll have a reasonable-size thing."

Besides the MIT projector, Ito also talked about the Tupac hologram, why 3D television hasn't taken off and how it might be useful if your entire house worked like a smartphone.

In the comments, tell us what you'd do with a holographic projector as well as your take on MIT's other groudbreaking work.