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The AR Show: Alex Hertel (Intuit) on Mixing Bits and Atoms within the World Computer | Otter.ai

The AR Show: Alex Hertel (Intuit) on Mixing Bits and Atoms within the World Computer

Jason McDowall1h 7min

Jason McDowall

00:02

Welcome to the AR show right dive deep into augmented reality. with a focus on the technology and uses of smart glasses and the people behind them. I'm your host Jason McDowall. Today's conversation is with Alex Hertel. Alex is the former co founder and CEO of Xperiel, and currently an inventor at Intuit, where he is a director in their futures group. Alex completed his PhD in computer science at the University of Toronto, and is an expert in no-code languages, as well as the use of immersive technologies to make the physical world digitally interactive. After his PhD program, he co founded Walleto, which was acquired by Google and became Google Wallet. After several years at Google, he left to become the co founder and CEO of Xperiel, where he helped to create a user friendly programming language called Pebbles, with a goal of democratizing AR and IoT programming in order to connect the internet to the physical world. In this conversation, Alex explains how he applies his research to a concept he calls the world computer, and how it relates to competing paradigms of the past.

Alex Hertel

01:06

If you think about all the emerging technologies, right now, we tend to focus on them in isolation. So a lot of people talk about augmented reality, a lot of people focus on the Internet of Things, a lot of people focus on 5g and edge computing and wearables. And I have a different take on it. I think that it's not very helpful to look at these different pieces in isolation from each other. I like to look at it as being components of what we call the world computer. And so what I mean by that is like the whole world is kind of literally going to become a computer. And all of these different technologies, these emerging technologies that I just mentioned, they are just replacing the old pieces in the Von Neumann sort of the narrative that we've been talking about.

Jason McDowall

01:55

Alice goes on to describe how a new no code language can make the process of creating AR experiences more accessible. He also describes lessons learned through his two entrepreneurial experiences, and the benefits of now being an inventor into its futures group. As reminder, you can find the show notes for this and other episodes at our website, the AR show.com. Let's dive in. Alex, where did you discover your passion for salsa dancing?

Alex Hertel

02:23

Well, my father used to work in South America. And so the family would fly down there during holidays and vacations and Christmas time and that kind of thing. And down in South America, it's part of the culture. And so I saw a lot of that. And then one time when I was growing up in Canada, there was some salsa dancing, and I got into it, and then I got really into it. And then eventually I even started teaching it. But yeah, that's the origin story there. And as a teacher, Was this something you just doing on the sidewall while going to school? Exactly, yeah, I taught while I was studying my undergrad for my undergrad degree there at the University of Victoria.

Jason McDowall

03:01

Got it. And so at University of Victoria, what is it you were studying at the time?

Speaker 1

03:05

Computer science, so I completed my bachelor's degree in Computer Science there. And then after that, I went to grad school at the University of Toronto.

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