During the United States v. Elizabeth Holmes trial, over a thousand emails, slides, texts, and documents were made public.
Bo Lau, an engineer at Extend, developed a website that lets users experience a simulation of being Theranos’ CEO before its downfall. (Daily, I appreciate the American legal system for making the discovery process public.) Lau’s creation offers an impressively detailed environment, transporting users back to 2016 when iPhones featured home buttons that required a swipe to unlock.
The MacBook Air in the simulation runs on OS X El Capitan. Users can navigate the environment by clicking, allowing them to view documents from the court case as they appeared on Holmes’ iPhone and laptop.
Additionally, the simulation includes the ability to operate the Theranos Edison machine, the company’s failed device intended to analyze health data from a single blood drop. While the project appears to be primarily for amusement, it provides an engaging method to explore documents from one of tech history’s most notorious court cases.
Navigating this simulation is far simpler than downloading numerous PDFs from court sites. However, there’s an underlying purpose.
Lau is advertising a watch party hosted by her company for Nathan Fielder’s forthcoming documentary on Elizabeth Holmes, titled ‘You Can See Everything.’ Naturally, she’s also promoting Extend itself.
The company claims it can ‘parse, extract, and split your most challenging documents with exceptional accuracy.’ Although I’m unclear on the specifics, if it enables a simulator like this, I’m optimistic about B2B SaaS.