Welcome to imagination in action, where we have conversations with compelling people driving the action that will power our futures. These are successful Imaginators you want to know?
Hello, welcome everyone to imagination in action. Tonight we're AR and VR. Really excited about this conversation, we're going to be talking about the whole ecosystem. And we have to Imaginators Jasmine and Nicole who are very experienced and have a lot to say, hi, Allison, how are you?
Excellent. What a great topic, John.
Yeah. So I'm excited to hear the perspectives of jasmine and Nicole. I think Nicole has been very active in the gaming world and has, I think hundreds of millions of games have her kind of fingerprint. And she knows a lot about the emotion of, of humans connection to technology. So I think she'll have some real perspective. And I know Jasmine is very passionate about this subject. It was a little over 50 years ago, that Ivan Sutherland he wanted to see a cube, a digital cube float in front of him as he looked forward at the physical world. And that was the first time someone augmented their reality. He he, the device he created he called the sword of Damocles, because it was so big, that he was worried that that uh, something would fall on you and pail you and kill you. And if you know that you're you're Greek mythology, I think there's a story. Something about that. As we get ready for the show, Alison, why are you passionate about the metaverse and AR and VR?
So Alison, you're on mute. So Cory, as we get ready to start this on stage, if you want to start playing something we're going to get really into technology tonight. So anything that you think will celebrate that?
Well, we've got the electric accordion, man. So there's a good lot of technology right here. No reads and
hold on. Cory. Jasmine, Robert, it's such an honor to have you on our stage. We have to great Imaginators. For those of you who are new to the show, and Imaginator is under the highest honor we give our guests. These are people that we think have incredible imagination and are making action happen. And Jasmine's been a real leader in the AR and VR ecosystem. And she's gonna share her thoughts tonight and in long form journalism. We have two hours to talk with her. And and Nicole. Hi, Jasmine, welcome to imagination in action.
Yeah, thank you for having me. I hope Nicole makes the stage. Thank you so much.
So a tradition with our show is we record them. We also produce the transcript soon after the evening. And we always open with a live musical piece. Cory is the world champion multiple times playing the accordion. He also is a world record holder for playing the accordion for 34 hours and 14 minutes. He won't do that tonight. But if you could play something to celebrate Jasmine and Nicole and the conversation we're gonna have tonight
maybe only 3.2 minutes versus 32 hours.
Okay. Great. Thank you, Cory. So ladies and gentlemen, welcome to imagination action. That was Corey playing the musical opening. For tonight, we have Jasmine Roberts, Jasmine, I'm excited to hear a little bit about what why you think now is is such an important time for augmented reality and virtual reality. And then I'd love to hear a little bit how you got into the tech space and how you found your way to be a leader in this space. I will say at the onset, AR and VR, the hardware hasn't been there there hasn't the latency, the clock speed, but things are changing. And in science fiction, we see Ironman with Jarvis and we see the matrix. I see eventually AR and VR being a continuum. And we'll have this technology where we can choose to immerse ourselves or choose to get digital information on the physical world. And it can really change how we interact. And this pandemic has forced us in a lot of ways to reimagine how we collaborate and communicate and it may have accelerated some things for this space. But I'm really excited about this, this conversation. And I can't think of a better person than Jasmine to represent it and to share her perspective. Allison, or maybe just before I turned out, Jasmine, what are you? Why are you so excited about this topic?
Well, I think increasingly, John and Jasmine, I can't wait to hear what you think about this. But we're seeing sort of a choice that people have between engaging in physical space or virtual space, we're seeing real estate sales and virtual space, we're seeing some people in this time of COVID pandemic, able to travel and experiencing things virtually that they couldn't experience physically like vacation, climbing to the top of Everest, the space station. And as you said, John, we're at this, but I think for long form journalism, it's amazing to have our Imaginators tonight, tell us what she is today and where it's going in the future.
So thank you, Alison. So Jasmine, I turned to you. What are your tell us about where you think we are right now and then eventually, kind of weave a little bit about your background and how you got excited about this technology and these opportunities?
Yeah, so I think the first AR VR boom that we experienced was in the 1990s. But as John had alluded to it I did, because there was a lack of eligible hardware and digital content. And so what we've seen over the past decade is that the concept of immersive displays was revisited. And it received like a new round of funding Oh, Nicole's your great unexcited excitement and so the emerging technologies like calligraphy and lithography have greatly reshaped the entire air vo AR VR play system. And I do think that now Recent advances that we have in high speed communication, and mobile computing platforms have in fact escalated a very strong demand for, as Allison had said, a deeper human digital interactions Just beyond like, you know, the traditional flat panel displays, and I think where I entered in, in augmented reality was in 2012. So I originally got my undergraduate degree in physics, material science and electrical engineering. So actually doing manufacturing of manufacturing display, so I worked. I received like an NSF undergraduate grant, to pursue research in computational displays with the head of the electrical.
Did you work with Definer? I know you're a Columbia grad.
Yeah. So the thing is I so I worked with Steve find her after I had worked with her name is Dr. Karen Bergman. So at the time, she was the Electrical and Computer Engineering chair. And so she had recommended me to do and then I met with Steve finer later when I wanted to explore the UX, proponents of the technology. But I did originally start out in the display, the displays electrical engineering, and then shifted to software, because, as I'm sure like we'll discuss later is that really, you kind of realized that content is king. And I saw a very clear hardware trajectory. And so I felt like I would be of more use creating more of the the tools, the tooling for creators.
Great, thank you, Jasmine, welcome, Nicole, we're really honored to have you on stage. This is imagination and action you and Jasmine we call Imaginators. This is long form journalism, we have two hours to unpack a lot of ideas, a lot of how you've been using your imaginations throughout your career, and the action that has come from it and model that to our public. We're recording this, there'll be a transcript soon after the show. And also share some of your vision for the future. Nicole, maybe take a moment and tell us what you think is so exciting at this time about AR and VR and how you got into technology. I know you have a lot of experience helping the the gaming world and connecting people and emotions to technology.
Awesome, really, really an honor to be here and share the stage with with jasmine and yourself and the other other panelists. And yeah, so for those who haven't met, I'm Nicole Lazaro and I've run Xeo design for the past 29 years, I was the first person to measure emotion on people's faces, you know, while they played games. So this was you know, a couple of decades ago, and it created the Four Keys to Fun, which is, you know, baked into the AI for The Sims inspired IBM Watson sentiment analysis and kind of led, among other things that lead to what we call game of gamification. So, and, yeah, yeah, well, I think that the question what's attracting me a lot is really wanting to echo what Jasmine was saying, in that that it provides us opportunity for deeper human interaction than what we see in social media. And so in my definition of like the metaverse, it's really the intersection of the digital and physical worlds. That's what we're designing now. Because technology has allowed is allowing us to escape, you know, the flat screen. And it's also a spatial media. It's it's our, if you think of the three eyes of the internet, the internet one, web one was all about information access. Web two was more about interaction. So we have social media, interacting with websites, and that sort of thing. And then interacting on websites. And then web three is really about interoperability and immersion. And I think that that we've got this amazing opportunity to capitalize to involve to connect people more deeply with this next generation of the of the internet. My background is psychology. So I have a degree in Coxide, from Stanford. And I use that to kind of humanize technology. And in my view, like the metaverse, it's really all about, it's really all about people just full stop. That's what the metaverse is, it's just it's about people. And if we deliver that, I think the future is going to be you know, really, really, really amazing. And, yeah, so that's, that's a little bit about me. And you know, I can talk more about my inspirations and how I got into tech and stuff. If people have questions.
That's great. So in a moment, I'm going to turn to Allison and then Esther Dyson to post some questions. But let me ask this to both you Jasmine and Nicole. The term augmented reality effort. Artificial Intelligence, augmented intelligence, virtual reality, how, how helpful are those two terms? And how cumbersome and hindering are those terms? As I mentioned at the onset, I see eventually to continue And people will choose when they want to immerse themselves, like the matrix or, or be more like Ironman. But I'm curious on your your takes on, on those words, as we as a new generation kind of becomes exposed to, you know, the content and the technology that enables these opportunities in the ecosystem?
Yeah, I think one thing is that I, I'm not a proponent of like, nominalism. And so I know that Nicole's very familiar that on Twitter, there's continual debates about what the different acronyms are, what the terms are, I think the best case scenario is that the terms themselves become invisible. I mean, most people when they, when you explain to them what AR is, they'll give an example of Pokemon Go. And I think, or like even not even understanding that face filters. That's a very popular thing. And that's been popular since 2014. Not even understanding that that also falls within the bracket of AR. And there was a new continuum that was made by researchers in France, I think it was about three months ago it was published. And instead of the reality virtuality continuum, I think it was like the, the humanity accessorize ation continuum, basically talking about, you know, being human, without all accessories versus a full avatar. So that spectrum, I do think that getting caught up in the terms is very, it kind of like, gets you down a rabbit hole, but I do think they're important to delineate and understand and for that, I would certainly recommend the the Seminole pilgrim paper which find the continuum continuum. Yeah, Nicole?
Yeah, I totally I completely agree with, we've seen this, I've been in the computer business, you know, for, you know, 2029 years plus. And so we've seen, you know, terms come and go, we've seen technology come and go, and the having, I really go with like Howard Ryan gold's definition, in a sense that it's, you know, language is really a tool are there tools for thought languages, tools for thought, and then, of course, these computing machines or tools for thought. And it's, so it is like, like Jasmine was saying, it is a continuum from you know, that you have, you know, fully occluded VR, you know, where you're, you're immersed entirely in CGI. And then you have the partially occluded, where you've got the more sunglasses, like the magic leaps and snap spectacles, which I have, and the, you know, the upper end reel, and some of these other ones, where you can see the real world. And it goes back, I like to go back to I love going back to history, because it's often prologue and Mark, Mike, Mark Weiser, you know, who did you know he was a number, when he talked about the ubiquitous computing, he coined that term, he was, you know, the CTO of Xerox PARC for a number of years. And that's where we're at, we're sort of finally the technology in is getting to the point where we can have these CGI where we can have computing that's happening off of a screen. I'm not old enough to remember, you know, programming computers with punch cards. But, you know, in future generations, they're going to be people who don't remember computing the screens and laptops, those sorts of things. So I think we're on a continuum. And so if you understand it, just to boil it down, I really do like to boil it down to it's this interoperability between the digital and physical worlds. And that's, that's pretty much if it's doing that, then it's something it's been it's been, it's new. The other thing to think about with language is that when we coined a term in tech, biotech with tech folks, like myself, coined a term, then it's often about the hardware and not about the user experience. But the terms that often catch hold are really, the term of art eventually becomes the pattern of use. And so when we If you cling too tightly to VR, and AR and XR, Mr. MX, that's really describing the tech. And what we're really talking about is an experience. And that's part of the traction. We're getting. I think with this the concept of Metaverse because Metaverse isn't a, a technology, it's more of a place to be what are we going to do in the metaverse? Are we gonna have economy? What are we gonna be able to do? So when we think about the way these terms evolve, when you start bringing more human centric terminology, then that's got a lot more potential to go mass market.
Great, thank you so much, and you know, to our audience, and to those who are going to listen to the recorded version or read the transcript, you can tell our two Imaginators are very well versed here. So a little bit later in the show when we open up to questions. These these two you know have have a lot of To say, so get your questions ready. Allison and then Esther. Allison. You know what, what, what questions do you have to Imaginators?
It's so exciting. I also love the idea that women are leading part of the metaverse, but I'd love to understand a little bit from you, since most of our audience and those of us who track it have problems distinguishing what is here already today versus what could be here. Can you share each one of you what applications you've experienced today of the metaverse that most excite you? And what when you think 20 years out, you feel it could be I mean, would you imagine by 20 years out people could live fully in the metaverse would they dip in and after this hear both of your senses of where we are today in the in the journey versus 20 years from now.
We use blockchain to see for real or memory X.
Yeah, I feel the just the tools because I do think that we're on it. Like in order to get to the full fledged experience we do need. And at the moment, like the choices of Cross Platform products is pretty small. And so we'll use unreal unity, good dough, some even use cocoa marmalade, Mano game. So they have like good technical performance and support. But the thing is, developers make their choices not only on the number of supported platforms, but also on the ease of transferring code. So interoperability to different platforms and performance. So there's a lot of constraints that come around performance. And I think that's something that we're working towards with edge computing. Yeah, I think I think where we are now is we're just exploring different characteristics, ranging from sound to graphics, to animation. But then again, I think one of the issues is that there are advantages and disadvantages of using each platform. And I think those kind of have to be unpacked and understood before we truly understand where we are, because there's different stakeholders and different intention, and building this metaverse. But there there is the capability for developers to create independent, you know, programs or games. And so there are at this point, there are self sufficient tools. And there's new tools that emerge, I would say every three months, because this is a field that that that prides itself on continual iteration, meaning if I make something today, it's probably not going to run well, anyway, within the next three months. And so I can probably share just, you know, a baseline of like, the tools and technologies that we have available, but I do think it's, it's not as well defined as you would assume, like people create, but but a lot of times it's particular ecosystems. And there's really, you know, sharing content across ecosystems is something that we as a community, and other or like organizations like I Tripoli, or ACM will have to assist with developers and engineers to define.
Yeah, that's, that's really that's really great. Jasmine, I think. I think my answer to the question would be, you know, here and now, you know, what is that that we're experiencing? And if if I've mentioned the word Metaverse, hopefully that's alright in this in this context, but yeah, again with like the metaverse, I really see that you know, clubhouse, you know, here and now we're in the metaverse, we're in a live conversation. It's not 3d, it's not visual, not graphic. But you go down the hallway and it is essentially the street you know, all of these wonderful conversations happening that you can dip into and out of that kind of social interaction this two way podcast, especially if you're you know, on stage that this this live performance, if you will, that is that what what the metaverse is going to bring us so I think clubhouse is like one of my you know, surprise, I guess probably my most surprising example of what you know what the metaverse is, in addition to a lot of the wonderful games you know, like that people are creating. When you think about like Roblox rec room Manta core, those those platforms, they're user created. So there's a lot of you know, people are creating content and experiences. So it's user created content, and then user created experiences and the best kind of content. Or at least you know, when one should think about it as a developer is the content. Like like a snap lens. Like I mentioned, I have this snap AR spectacles and it's The you're creating a tool for someone else another creator to entertain their friends with. So if I create a fun lens like I did one for the dune movie that put a tattoo on your face and you know gave you spice or whatever, that it wasn't just that experience, it was the ability to take that tool and then make your own little thing with it, so that you can share it with with friends. And that's of the second generation the second order of creation feeds into trends, like we're thinking about with the crater crater economy. But if we want to look at technology, like what's happening in 20 years from now, it is really I believe that it is the, if so many is so many are trying to recreate the street from Snow Crash. But I'm more inspired in the future by the primer from Neil Stephen since Diamond Age. That that the primer, the educational books and leadership is has live actors in it, it was very prescient from what we could do, we could do right now. And we can get things that allow us to, you know, evolve as, as humans evolve, as people entertain, learn, you know, do work and stuff like that. And the technology is really I if I had to choose one tool, and this might be odd for AR and VR, but it would be the Dow's decentralized tech. So it's decentralized autonomous organizations. They are, you know, sitting on top of decentralized technology, such as blockchain, and the ability to use this, this distributed ledger, you some sort of some sort of cryptography allows us it's going to change ours are going to change virtually every human institution on the planet, the way that the internet has, before the internet, the way that the automobile has way before that, you know, the electricity did, we've got some amazing things that are going to take because it allows people to organize and people to come together to do amazing things, we're going to see a lot of human potential unlocked. And that's I'm all about, you know, unlock using technology to unlock human potential through play.
Great, thank you, Jasmine, and Nicole for those thoughts. Esther Dyson, you're no stranger to way new waves of technology. You convene some of the pioneers who are leading technology today, and you've helped facilitate a lot of technological breakthroughs. Do you have a question on this topic?
Yeah, I really do. It's, you know, we've, we've made many mistakes with technologies in the past, and it sounds like it. So imagine, we decide a lot of humanity is going to move to Mars. And Facebook, now meta says, Well, you know, we'll, we'll create a place on Mars for you guys. And you don't have to worry about anybody else. And there's a couple of other companies that say that and, you know, suddenly will do I want to live in a world that's run by meta, do I want to live in a world that's run by tick tock? You know, the, the clearly you're going to take my money, or they're also going to take my voice. And so the, I think we're moving forward, and I'd love to hear what you women think about the questions of governance of, you know, suppose I don't want to pay a fee to metta. And I don't want to be used as an advertising subject. How are we going to ensure that people get educated enough so that they can take advantage of all the the self realization that this the metaverse promises, we really need to think more about how we're going to, we have to think who we is, does it include people who can't read and write? Does it include poor people? What if somebody wants to leave? I mean, there's going to be things similar to problems of emigration. And you know, who's going to be running the Dows? Because people aren't going to want to vote every day on really important questions. So maybe we're going to need some kind of a governance structure. These are the questions that I think it's, it's really important to think about before we go too far. And just as another little aside, you can sort of imagine doing sex in the metaverse you I cannot imagine actually really eating and, you know, we're still chemical physical beings, not not electronic beings. And it's important to remember that it's, you know, everything from food and smell and we're Still physical beings, there's a lot of really interesting neuroscience right now. And being a physical being makes a huge difference. So the question is kind of what do you think about these issues? And how are we here? Think about addressing?
There's always a great question. You also remind me, you know, we have many senses. It's not just visual and audio. How are AR and VR going to be tapping into those other senses? But yeah, Jasmine and Nicole a lot there. And feel free to ask Esther a clarifying question. If you want, but yeah, love to hear your thoughts on what Esther just post.
Yeah, that's very interesting. Actually, a lot of the research that I did in graduate school was I love how you mentioned that it's, especially with the smell and taste, a lot of that's just, it's just chemical biochemical processes of like how we perceive bitterness, taste, I mean, like those two, the the gustatory system, and it's just intimately interconnected. It also is the the sense that's the most pervasive, primal connected to memory. And I do think that it's obviously easier to map senses like vision into binary digital representations. It is, it is more difficult to do that with taste and smell. But I would, and John has had her on stage before I would look at the PhD work of of youth amorous at the Media Lab, she just graduated with a PhD in just this last year, in terms of smell, that was her olfactory interfaces, and want to want a lot of awards at the Human Computer Interaction conference. And in terms of taste, I, I cannot pronounce his name, I think it's like, I'm not going to try, but I know that he's in Singapore. And if you look up tasted VR, his lab exclusively worse on that, in, I think it was in Berlin, pre pandemic, like, I think it was 2018. In Berlin, I tried the taste interface, it was, it was pretty, it's pretty good. So I do think that there are real, there is active research in that. So I don't really see that as far off. Because there is something that I do personally admire about those senses. They're very hedonistic senses. But I mean, we live in a very, a world that you know, is chaotic, and really is just founded on entropy. So it's really good to have those senses. So I agree that of the importance. And in terms of identity, I mean, that's, I think what you're getting at is really just like identity, and how do we define ourselves and our relationships to community? And yeah, there has also been a lot of work in that. And I do think we do have to sort of reinvent ourselves to sort of understand our identity in the digital world. And I think in order to do that you kind of have to encounter oneself in the physical world. And so like the development of an inworld Metaverse identity would depend on a large range of factors. So it would depend on the technology, the characteristics and intentions of those of us who choose to participate. I mean, you can think of things like the role of clothing, when you develop identity accessories ation, as mentioned earlier, you can think of even the use of movement, locomotion, the role of gender role play, and the inclusivity and exclusivity of technology. With respect to people, like you said that have disabilities, and especially something like hearing impairments. Yeah, I think this this is something I'm personally very passionate about. Because I mean, as someone who is visibly a marginalized person I, you know, you can try to escape that the physicality of identity, but you really can't. And a lot of marginalized people actually use they use the virtual world to escape their the physicality of the identity they have in the tangible world, and they're able to find a sense of community. So as many problems Bergeon from the metaverse, a lot of people find solace in technologies like this, too. So I do just want to want to bring that up. But I would say that a lot of what I've come to come to the conclusion of is that really this would have to be addressed with legislation. We understand that legislation is decades behind technology I do I do see more people who are engineering focused and STEM focus who understand the breadth of the technologies pursuing law degrees, and that really makes me excited. But we also have to we have to govern our our tangible physical world, and then transfer that in because in essence, the metaverse is a microcosm and macrocosm however, however large you want to see it have our lived experiences in real world. So there yeah, there's a lot of and I think Nicole will be great at answering this because there is a lot of a lot of psychological aspects to this. But yeah, thank you.
Yeah, really great. Jasmine. I definitely think that there are I want to agree with you with the The different supporting different taste different senses, because it isn't just all about vision are all about audio and even audio isn't being supported as well as it could addition to the way you know, taste and smell. I think I'd also want to add haptics, and I've been working with some pretty cutting edge haptic technology for the past couple years, and the ability to create surface textures and directional force. It's a company called horizons. And there's just some incredible work that's going to be done to make to make the much more immersive experiences. But I want to dial back a little bit to how Esther started her question. And again, it's a privilege to be on the same stage with you, Esther, I've been a fan of yours for for years and years and years, after Jerry Makovski introduced me to you is that in addition to identity and privacy, I think if we were to just do focus on one silver bullet, if he will, one fact when one angle to prevent a dystopian evolution of this Metaverse car or a colony on Mars owned by IOI, or you know, a Facebook or you know, something, something like that, is really check again, our definitions and so with identity identity, like what is identity and you know, in the in terms of this, and what is it that we want to we want to do we want to have as as in the metaverse is We the People, what do we want to do? And then it's also there's a lot of talk about privacy you've seen, you know, meta slash Facebook, they've got a new, you know, a lot of new meta employee interviews about about privacy and how they're going to protect our privacy and stuff like that. But it is, it's often the arguments often couched in web point, oh, or maybe web 2.0. You know, consider terms. The privacy, meaning the definition, meaning by definition to, to, to pull back on the dissemination of information about you detailed information about yourself. And that is definitely important. And I'm not saying that that should go away that concern.
The angle is often like, well, it'll be safer. So let's, you know, have, you know, strong privacy so that we can be safer. And that's also good, that's also good, but it's also a preventative, and it's not a proactive, like, let's make the metaverse better, in that. It's all just about protecting, it's just about protecting and we need to actually create tools and things for people to do that aren't just you know, pushing on buttons so they can earn, you know, another dodge coin or something so they can buy, you know, stuff for their avatar, we want that pushing the button to be life affirming. We want it to be really connecting with other folks. We want to build a great orchestration of emotions and identities and ability to interact in ways that we can't in the real world. But back to privacy. And that was a little bit long intro. Because really is what what what's at stake is something quite deeper. And it's not just the dissemination of personal information that may be used for nefarious purposes. Right now, what we have in web two is social media and not not just social media, but many things that exist on the web, on the social on the on web 2.0 is we actually what the real battle is for mental agency. So mental sovereignty mental agency, these are basic human rights that need to be baked into the metaverse and you do baked into every you know, AR and VR, you know, companies, you know, the standards and guidelines the way that we the way that you might take a Hippocratic kradic oath, if you become a doctor, and because it's sort of a sense, it's this mental mental privacy is what we're talking about. Everyone in the room has probably you know, don't you know, hopped on their phone or hopped onto the web and you know, intending to do something and then find themselves three hours later, scrolling through yet another infinite scroll of something on you know, a social site. The it's when you get you can marry from a sector psych Professor perspective, is that you can join together operant conditioning with private information or behavior patterns. And then it's it's not just that they're selling your data like, you know, a bunch of wallets and eyeballs in a deli case, they're actually stretching you the eyeball and the wallet, they're actually stretching you to conform to a shape that will go to the highest bidder. So imagine if you wanted to be an astrophysicist and you're but the but the platform you're on is actually going to make more money. If you change your job aspirations to be a bitcoin miner, you're going to get you could they can get they can barrage you with, you know, with information and opportunities and that sort of thing to actually shift what you want to do with your life. And you know, that we wouldn't have q&a on if people were if these platforms were a little bit more socially socially responsible. But in any case, so what we I mean by mental agency, just real quick is the the these platforms with operant conditioning is it can adjust your self image, it can rearrange your priorities, it inhibits your ability to focus it can, it can actually adjust your attention span. In the case of, again, operant conditioning, you can actually adjust your beliefs, it can actually be in a sense, we've all heard of product placement in movies, they can actually these systems can actually place ideas in your head, that can actually, you know, make you much more likely to depending on your personality and what's going on in your life. They can actually make you they can actually plan actions almost, you know, in your in your body. You could it affects your mental reserve your ability to complete tasks, and then the ability to, you know, to even to even to even talk and even connect with people because they recommend who your friends are. So those those kinds of things are all very thing. So roll it all back to the thing that we need. We definitely need privacy, web web to privacy, we absolutely do web three version of privacy as we also need to be able to have tools so that we can preserve our mental agency. And that goes down on a feature level, we've seen a few organizations take take some steps, but we need to do a lot a lot a lot more.
Nicole know what you just described sounds like Total Recall. Very dystopian. In a moment, ask Alison ask a question. But Esther, any reaction to those thoughts? Are you satisfied with those answers? Do you have a follow up question before we go to Alison?
Honestly, I do. I mean, I still feel that what I'm really asking is, we need to understand that we're now letting Facebook slash Mehta become our government. It's not we asking for stuff, we need to control the government's rather than sort of treat these. These impending governments as if they were just companies they're not there's something much bigger and broader and scarier unless we recognize what's going on. And yeah, I mean, I don't see it as a conspiracy. I see it more know just how things happen. But it's. But what I just think we need to be much more aware of the fact that you know, somebody, the politicians want our votes, and ultimately, they want our money so that they can campaign and get our votes. But these companies, they're, they're designed to make money for their shareholders, and I'm not sure I want them running. The place in which I'm going to be living most of my life. I'm I'm not necessarily looking forward to the metaverse and, you know, even though I understand about haptics, and smell, and so forth, you know, ultimately, you know, how are you going to make the food in my stomach feel like food is going to be pretty difficult, and I'm not sure I want you to I actually would like real food inside my real stomach. So it's not that I don't like this stuff. But I think we're getting way too excited about how fulfilling it would be. It can be very fulfilling for meta, but I'm not sure it's gonna be that fulfilling for all the people.
I think you want to, I think there's there the assumption I would challenge there is that there's an assumption that meta is the meta, which is a pivot for Facebook, Facebook, as a social media company, they're trying to pivot to web three, and we'll see, but the jury is definitely not out in terms of who is going to dominate, or who is going to win. And if you look at a company, the kinds of companies I want to win in that are ones that have a long history of caring for their customers. And unfortunately, you know, since I've seen Facebook from the very beginning, when they started selling phone cards that had no value, you know, some scam throw cards, you know, and they didn't take those ads down, if you remember estar. You know, to like text your vote in they didn't take those ads down either. So I think we need to, it's going to be you know, there is opportunity, and it is definitely not you know, the jury isn't out as to who's going to own it. They are a lot of marketing dollars are going into them owning it. Right and a couple of other platforms as well. But I'm I'm a little bit bullish that it's not going to be Facebook. I don't think I think it's going to explode. And we're going to have like lots of people that worked with, you know, pitch reality labs and they're going to start their own companies and it's going to be somebody else. I don't think they can do it.
Yeah, I don't think Facebook is uniquely evil. I think it's, you know, the whole notion that the world is something to make money off rather than, you know, where are the public parks, where's the public school system? We need something that is not a company. That is, whoever, whichever company it might be that is in charge of the world we live in. That's all I'm trying to say.
And I want I want to, yeah, I want to echo Esther that I wholeheartedly agree with you. I'm not someone who was disillusioned to, to the technology, I care more about the humanistic emotional aspect and what that means for us as a as the future of our species. You know, one thing that was very that resonated with me while you were talking is, I don't know if anyone in the room has read Octavia Butler's pit, you know, Parable of the Sower parable of the so she's a, she's probably one of the best science fiction authors, but it's very underrated because she's in, she was an African American woman. But I would look into that, because she actually had predicted what she had said, again, I would highly recommend the trilogy, but talks about company towns exactly as you're describing, and virtual reality are actually referred to dream basket or novel. So I also recommend Philip K. Dick as well, clearly. But I would say that that book is very prophetic to the future that everyone should have a little trepidation for. So I would want to I do want to validate your concerns. And that is something that we do need to consider. And I do, and that's why I bring it back to legislation really needs to keep up because people are understanding that our autonomy is being lost. And I don't think people do want to live in those foreshadowed, quote unquote, company towns, because it doesn't matter if it's Facebook or another company. Right. It's the fact that we should not be cut, we should not have our livelihoods dictated by corporations. I mean, you know, whatever people feel about the government, the government, you know, by definition of government, it's, I mean, I know people in tech don't will disagree wholeheartedly with me. But I do think that if you gave me a choice to trust a company or a government, I would trust the government. Because the way it's the way that they were elected by the democratic processes. I know some people also will debate that. So I just wanted to reaffirm that I agree with you. And there are people that are thinking about this, and I think it would be really great to get I'll try to see if I can ping some people that are more on the legislation legal side. But yeah, just wanted to confirm that. These are considerations that both Nicole and I have. So thank you.
Great to this is imagination. Action. We are 43 minutes in, we have another hour and and over 15 minutes left. This is long form journalism. We have two extraordinary individuals who are very thoughtful Jasmine Roberts, and Nicole Lazaro. And at at the hour mark Corey is going to play a brief Musical interlude. But thank you, everyone for joining. I turned to Allison to pose the next question.
Actually, if I could just make a recommendation. Just real quick, sorry to butt in. But Jasmine, that book is awesome. And then the reason why I'm so optimistic is I'm reading a Jerry's recommendation and Gil girlfriend, the dawn of everything by David graver. And he is one of the founders of the Occupy movement. And the interesting thing is a new it's a history. It's about 500 pages long. And it's where the indigenous American critique of European society launched the concepts of freedom, liberty, equality, you know, equality in society before the law, you know, and then private property and poverty and stuff where you know, criticized arbitrary authority was criticized. So I'm just in this really interesting space, I highly recommend folks read it to Jasmine's point, science fiction is often dystopian science fiction is often a warning like 1984. And then, but it can also be then this book is more of a history and we can reimagine. So this is a new world. The Metaverse is a new world, and I do the physical, you know, it's coming into the world. I don't remove myself from the real world. So there's real food, there's real plants, there's real people in it. It can have augmentation on it, but it's not going to I'm not going to be eating out of a to or at least I hope I'm not. And so it's kept that human because there's the computer that can be over the computer graphics can be overlaid on my physical world. And I think that that's something I'm doing a lot of work in. Anyway, thanks for your question. So it's really, really great. And back to you, John,
Jett and Jasmine. We did a show on Mars. And some of the NASA people mentioned, the word perseverance was going was named after Octavia Butler So it was nice for you to reference her as a, as a she's one of the first Imaginators that I've ever come in contact with. So Alison, I turn to you. This is imagination action, we're hearing people share their thoughts on how they're using their imagination, how they've used it, and action action.
A little bit deeper into the direction that you had already established. And this is one of the many things I love about long form journalism. So if we think about who the alternatives are to Facebook, and also understand more sort of the strategy as Facebook moves into actually controlling Oculus and the hardware, I'd love to hear a little more from each of you about who the alternatives are to Facebook. And then also, Nicole, I'm fascinated by what you talked about of the tools that we would need to have to preserve mental agency and web 3.0. And one of the things that scares me is I don't really even understand how people can monitor where their thought processes are being interfered with or you know, friends are being introduced to them. I find that even hard to see in social media. So could you share a little bit more on those two questions, one who are alternatives to Facebook and what could we do to support them? And then what would that look like that kind of tools to preserve mental agency for humans?
Just real quick, and then I'll let Jasmine respond is that Apple has not released their product yet folks. So I don't know I haven't seen it I have no idea but that has not happened yet. And so if you think about what happened pre iPhone there was a lot of clunky devices out if they get it right they may not they may ship a Kleenex box you know like one of the maximum it may it may be a dead I doubt it I doubt it. But I think that that the apple is still is still an unknown Go ahead, Jasmine. No, I
was just gonna list companies and then yield to you of who's working on it. So that you can further dive into her follow up question so so what I mean the company's just in terms of names I mean, there is nine antics and I antic PokemonGo wizards unite is the the products of Niantic there. I would also recommend listening to John John Hankey. Who's there the CEO he has a very different version of the metaverse then meta outlines. Of course, there's the the game engine platform so you have both Unity engine you have Epic Games who develops Unreal Engine, you have Roblox I think that that's kind of one of the more obvious ones since that has really latched on with Gen Z. You also have like newer startups that, you know, people like you know, people have alluded to that they're working on. So we had a Twitter space with Avi bardziej. Last week, and he had mentioned, there's campfire, which is a startup that he's working on. I mean, there's really, there's really a lot I mean, you could still argue that some of the the like the predecessors could still be considered the metaverse like so like expanding on Linden Lab, like work, the work of Linden labs, or the work of like, like, even even the even the continual work on the original MOOCs. So I think that those are like some of the main corporations, but also, there's also the infrastructural corporations to that provide the communication technology, which often gets forgotten. So I mean, there's Nvidia, Intel. And so that's why I don't think that these individual companies, there's also snap, snap, of course, but I don't think that these individual companies will be able to establish their own ecosystem because they sit on top of each other infrastructure, which I think people forget, I would say that clearly, besides Apple's walled garden ecosystem, that everything else is pretty much reliant on something else, like a lot of people don't even realize that snaps technology and their lens studio platform relies very, very, very heavily on GCP on the Google Cloud platform solutions. So I think that with the exception of Apple, these are all interconnected, but I would say those are the biggest ones. And I will see if I can add a link to the space but John Reed off has actually outlined all of the companies that comprise the metaverse, so let me try to put that in there. Go ahead and call sorry.
You know, let me just also throw in one other thing, China, you know, I think they have a lot of real challenges center. Working hard here.
Yeah, completely. You know, if you think about, like, you know, speaking of China, what was the most visited website, this in 2020. It was Tik Tok. And you tick tock didn't exist in a very substantial form, you know, the previous the prior years or two or three years ago. So it's again, I would say with the metaverse, the jury's out, and I think that the the rebrand of Facebook, they, they didn't make major announcements, right? It was all about what was coming, the big message from Facebook Connect or MediConnect, whatever gonna call it was really about we're changing our name. And all of these billions and billions of investment dollars are going into. I mean, obviously, Facebook is investing heavily in the metaverse their own, you know, cash of billions of billions of dollars. But outside, it's just an amazing amount of money is getting invested in other companies. So I think that that is going to be that is going to be a big, big, big factor. Or, you know, I think there's hope, I think there's hope I don't think anyone's got a lock on the market, because it's going to be a very different media, its spatial media, it's going to be it's quite quite quite different. For preserving mental agency, I think it is really inspiring people who are Metaverse, architects, people who are imagining what the future could be, to come from a human centered perspective. So to get them to get encouraged design patterns, and thoughts and solutions that can add to quality of life and unlock human potential that's sort of our mission is to design and to limit or be conscious of using what I call dark design patterns, which is, you know, such as, you know, loot boxes, and the, some of the we tend to like and share. That wasn't always the case, like in real early social media. And I remember, an ester does, I'm sure as well, it's like when Twitter put the number under your profile of like the number of followers you had, that suddenly, you know, change the game, the game was no longer in my book anyway, you know, following people that had, you know, interesting things to say, so that my feed was, you know, interesting with, with with content, it was more about well, how can I post to generate, you know, more followers, because that was the score, it's sort of gamified, the acquisition of followers, and that significantly shifted the content on the platform. What we need to do going forward for the metaverse, again, this is a new world is be highly critical of where we are now as a society, where we are now with current web 2.0. And take those criticisms and then design new products that solve those critiques. That's probably the the most important thing. In terms of preserving mental agency, I think one of the things that you can do is insist that we are able to transparency is usually a very, very good tool. And the other thing, so being transparent about like, well, what is the data that you're sharing? And what are you doing with the, you know, the that that data, the ability to control it, and the ability to reset AI? And that is something I've all wanted for years on both on all the social platforms, and it's just like, just reset my AI, let me start from zero, keep all my friends but you know, don't, don't don't, don't assume that you know me anymore, because I go off on a wild tangent for a while, and then I don't, then I'm done with it. And I don't want to see any of that content anymore. So allow me to come back and do something else. You're allowed to use scrub your advertiser profiles now, but you're really not able to scrub your, your feed profile, because you can get into some very dark places. And it's really hard to get out just by liking non dark content.
Your name? Jasmine, oh,
no, I said it. Yeah, I think for my own. So to preserve my own mental health on both Twitter and Facebook, I have muted out turns but the thing is, it ends up being an active endeavor. That's what I had to say.
Yeah. And I think just Nicole, you were making me think of artists, you know, Georgia O'Keeffe for, or Picasso, they went through a blue phase or something doesn't necessarily mean they're always going to be in a blue phase. And, and these algorithms don't lend themselves to let you kind of reset.
Like on Twitter, like I made the mistake of like looking at gowns at the Met Gala. And now I've got tons of fashion stuff. And it's like, that for that day. I was really bored. And that was fun. But like, No, I don't care about so and so and so and so and so all of this celebrity garbage, not garbage. But you know, stuff is happening with me. I know other people love it, and they're interested. Great that goes, but I can't You can't do it. I want to be a little bit more optimistic, though, because we are making progress. So for example, with Twitter, and with linked, I think it's LinkedIn. You have the bottom of the feet, definitely Twitter. So if you click on a topic and you're scrolling, you will get to the bottom of the feed like in 15 posts. I haven't counted recently but you said you're up. It says you're up to date, so they no longer allow the limitless scrolling. That's amazing. That's a very that's a very light and human centric, affirming, you know, response. And then that with Instagram Facebook company, they allow you to not show your liked totals. And the hot you're allowed to hide that. And so if you're a person that's very sensitive to this, that that kind of instant, you know incentive and it's it's disrupting your life, you just you can turn it off. So being able to customize some of these, again, kind of loot box or operant conditioning mechanics can really help with web two. And we're going to be really vital with with web with web three. And some people I think the Facebook vision was we're going to have that screen on your face for 24/7. Or at least you know, you're waking eight hours or eight to 16 hours. That's not the only view of the metaverse and that's really dystopian. That's definitely a shareholder increase shareholder value. It's like look, we have their attention for all their waking days. Look, imagine what we could get them to do. Going to the highest bidder. That's that's not that's not it. And you know, when we get contact lenses, you know, do they turn off when you blink? You know, you get into this Clockwork Orange scenario, if we're not careful.
Great. So I think what I'd like to do now is Cory Are you available to play a brief Musical interlude and then I wanted to stack a few questions go through people on stage Todd, JT and others and get a few questions out there that Jasmine Nicole can react to Sure sure.
Since it will be the last week the future before the new year I said well as I'll play the the one two in that there is four years which is what are we what are you doing New Year's Eve?
Great that was Cory when you say something about yourself. We have live music on imagination action and Cory is one of our musicians in residence
Think about that for a second. No, just John Wooden God, when did we meet probably decade ago or something? But yes, playing a digital accordion this way hearing bass and drums and electric pianos things on the left in the virtual reality world of playing accordion here. But yeah, I've won World Championships, playing accordion have a Guinness World Record playing accordion, trying to make the accordion a thing again, which is quite a quest. But it's what I have chosen as my life quest and do events all around the world playing everything from racing events, and there's actually some people from the Formula One World listening in John it's kind of funny to this great, great guy. conversation that's going to affect us all with VR and AR and who knows, maybe there'll be some kind of accordion app with this in the future.
Great. Well, thank you, Cory. And coming up in the next few weeks, we have a conversation about growing organs. I'm also excited to have Larry Nagle Nagler, he played basketball at UCLA for John Wooden for two years. And he also won the NCAA championship playing with a wood racquet. And he, upon graduating from UCLA with Arthur ashes, doubles partner, and has a lot to say about Arthur Ashe during his formative years. And we have some great shows in the new year. This is the last show of 2021. And I can't think of a better topic than AR and VR, because I think, you know, the years to come, this technology, that web 3.0 is going to definitely change the new normal. So let's get questions from our audience. We'll just go around the way we do this, Jasmine and Nicole, we, we have a few people ask questions. You don't have to give equal time to all them, you can answer them in a blended way or do however you want. But we're excited to get some questions out there. So Todd, do you have a question?
Yeah, what a great discussion, we really jumped to the heart of the issue. So I thank everybody for contributing here. And I want to refine Esther's question a little bit into maybe a more practical version of her. How do we not live in a company town? Have you ever visited one, there's one in Alaska, where they announced that 2pm and Kennecott mining company and Kennecott Alaska that aren't we're closing found out everybody leave by 2pm by and so last train that was it, everybody left? So I don't think we live in that world. And so my question is, we've faced this problem somewhat in the past and the dawn of the internet, right, DOD funded the ARPANET, but you had to be an ARPANET defense contractor to be on it. So IBM didn't that Dec Dec net, Apple AppleTalk, all these commercial vendors were ready and waiting to own the communication media that would spread around the world. And that didn't happen. Instead, we ended up with an open platform that anyone can connect on Maybe Bob Metcalf a couple of weeks ago, I wonder if we could have should have made it quite as anonymous as this but But nevertheless, it ended up not being owned by anyone. And so we kind of want to do that again with with the metaverse and one of the critical important things that happened in that was just the DoD funding. People not collaborating kind of with the let anyone company on it, but then the BSD Unix port came out and suddenly was free to put any computer on the internet because there was a free version of it. Is it possible? What what are the opportunities here for kind of open source to be sure that the metaverse isn't the company town? Kind of at the technology level?
Great. Thank you, Todd. And Jasmine and Nicole, you may want to get a pencil and a piece of paper or write on your phone that just have these these questions, because now we're gonna go to the next one. And Todd did reference last week we did interview, I have a conversation with Bob Metcalf. And that's online. And you can hear it or or read the transcript. I'm not sure if I'm saying your name. Right. He Son, do you have a question? Hi. Thank you for a very nice discussion, I've been enjoying it. So we have been also focused on this immersive systems for about a decade now. And I didn't hear much about healthcare. So our area of focus in our health care using immersive technology on health care, particularly for surgery, and for both doing project performing procedures and also training procedures. And we we kind of discovered that big challenges lack of supporting ecosystem in in in like we don't currently have a killer app because you know, each each application is focused on an individual aspect of their spatial computing. So my question is, how do you think? Or how how would the this challenge with supporting ecosystem would be resolved? And how long do you think it would take for it? I personally believe that it is technology is still at its infancy because of a lot of other it depends on a lot of other technologies, like sensor fusion, computer vision, computer graphics, and your At the beginning steps of, of what is going to come in the coming decades, but I would be happy to listen the comments from from your great guests. Thanks. Great, thank you. So that's a healthcare question or a JT welcome a question from you.
Hey, thank you for having me here. And thank you for creating this room. That's very difficult to question. Don't really have
feel free to pass on a question. Or if you just want to say what you're doing in the space. That doesn't sound like an infomercial?
Yeah. No, I think I have maybe a question in the form of maybe just Nicole, if you can give me I guess your perspective or your I don't know, opinion on what do you hope to see in 2022? with respects to AR? The development of AR to development of VR? And the metaverse in general? Maybe that question?
Great. Thanks, JT. So we'll go to Tom and then Ryan. And then we'll hear from Jasmine and Nicole Todd Ryan.
Thanks for that, John, and Allison. And thanks for a great conversation. So far, Jasmine, and Nicole, I. So just a couple of quick questions based on what has already been discussed. I wonder about your view on the use of obfuscation in order to create a reset of sorts in our feeds. And then secondly, Nicole, in particular, you talked about unleashing or unlocking human potential. And similar to JTS question, my question is around, you know, where you see the low hanging fruit to use mixed reality, to achieve some of unlocking human potential, especially as it relates to learning and underserved communities if that fits for you. Thanks.
Great. Excellent. You know, a lot of people say AI is going to take all our jobs of humans, but I think AR and VR, there's a lot of opportunity for creativity, collaboration, that that wasn't there. And that could be very empowering for the species. I don't know I'm kind of extrapolating Todd, on what you just said, Ryan, and then ask us your question. We'll hear from our Imaginators.
Okay, thank you. Thank you for inviting me up on stage. My name is Ryan Schultz. I'm an academic librarian who writes a fairly popular blog about social VR, virtual worlds in the metaverse, it's in my profile if you're interested. My question has to do with interoperability and standards and open source code. I actually last October, severed all ties with Facebook when they announced that, from that point going forward with with within two years, anyone who owned an Oculus VR headset had to have a Facebook account. And I just decided that was the last straw I traded in my Oculus Rift for Valve index, I gave my first edition Oculus quest to my sister in law, who is using it in work with developmentally challenged adults. And I basically, you know, I refuse to have anything further to do with Facebook, because they insist on having a Facebook account in order to use their hardware, and I'm gonna die on that hill. But I guess this has given me a lot of I've been doing a lot of thinking about open source software. For those of you that may not know there was a very, there was a very good social VR platform called high fidelity that was founded by Philip Rosedale who was the original founding CEO of Second Life and Linden Lab. And, and what happened was, is that high fidelity pivoted instead of 3d spatialized audio. And the code for the platform was open source and two successor platforms for Cadia and Tivoli cloud VR, have kind of used that code and kind of branched off into different directions. So thinking about that, I would be very interested to hear what Jasmine and Nicole have to say about interoperability and standards and open software. My name is Ryan and I'm complete. Thank you. Great, thank
you. So Jasmine, and Nicole, love for you to to take these questions don't have to do it in order and you could say some general comments or you could address people directly. We also at the end of the show, we always have this summary from Allison. A lot of people, that's That's their favorite part. So Allison, thank you as always for that. And then we definitely want to get more questions from our audience and from Esther and Allison, but to our Imaginators, please, what are your some of your reactions to the questions posed?
Okay, I can, I can go, I can go first, that is a lot, there's a lot to cover,
I,
what I'll do is I think I'll just cover a couple and then give Jasmine a turn, and then maybe do a couple more does that work in this format. But the I'll take the last one first, because I think it's super important the Facebook requirement requirement for a Facebook account in order to get into the Oculus platform, it really hit home for me, because a year ago, I was my Facebook account was disabled three times after the election, because of a rogue AI, this is real, this is real. This is real talk, right? They actually disabled my account, which meant that I couldn't develop on Oculus I couldn't I was a judge, I am a judge for some of the big one of the largest do immersive workshops, I wasn't able to judge because nothing on nothing would work on Oculus. And then thirdly is that I also have used Facebook, particularly, it's been an amazing tool to help, help build help build community, and help marginalized developers, whether was was race or gender or you know, gender orientation, that sort of thing. And I would not, I cannot have my social graph, in danger of you know, for example, someone's not out at work, but they are out on Facebook, I can't endanger these people that I mentor, you know, on a, you know, on a on a on a daily basis. So it's just a non non starter for me, there has to be another, you know, another way for, for me to be to be there. I think that's just really, really clear. need, we need to be really, really clear about that they did meta did announce that they are going to exploring the idea of you know, not having not requiring the Facebook account in order to get in. So we'll see how that how that goes. And then the Yeah, did you wanna say something? Okay.
I was just applauding.
Okay, great, then I think the other one would be a really good. Yeah, what are we going to see in 2022, and AR and VR that this digital universe? And how does it unlock potential? Like, what are these low hanging fruits? Well, I think that it is in, I see the ability, again, it's your transparency and putting tools, putting new kinds of tools into people's hands, you're building apps that do that. So there's a lot happening in the mindfulness, and mental health care space in AR and VR. So some of those things like like trip VR, or helium, or, you know, the low calm is more of an app than in VR. So there's a lot of different tools that you can use, and we can even build better ones that can help people do just the opposite, right? So we can help them improve your self image, we can help them you know, help people to speak, help them focus, put them in the right mindset. And this is something I've been saying since the very beginning with the Four Keys to Fun. So for, you know, going on a couple decades now, which is that when we open up a piece of software, like just say, on a pancake monitor, it's so you know, it's a photo editing software, or it's a spreadsheet, at the beginning of the project, you're doing something for with a goal in mind as beginning the project, you need to be in a very positive, you know, emotional brainspace, right, you want to be able to imagine we're Imaginators here, right? So you imagine, you know, crazy, you know, alternative, so what we see his reality, then later on, we've got to boil those down those wild imaginings, so you need to have positive effect very human, a lot of humor, a lot of different emotions that help you with that process as a human being, then later on, we had to winnow those down. So you need a different emotion profile, different set of emotions. And then once you then you need to have social emotions when you're getting feedback from other people. And then at the end, you need to focus and have almost negative effect, negative emotion so that you can focus on you know, getting it done, so it hits your hits a deadline, but yet most software is whether it's a spreadsheet or you know, photo editing, or anything, doesn't take those brain states in mind, you know, they it's the same interface from beginning to end for that whole process. And so I think that we need so in a sense, the tools we're using are very phasic they don't recognize they don't respond, they don't allow us to manipulate our or move our emotions in a very transparent way where we are in control you the end user, the person running the human you run the system is that way. And so I think that what we're going to see is we're going to be able to see You know, I'm looking forward to AR and VR experiences that allow us to to do that. And you know, I'm doing that with some of our products. So I have a game, follow the White Rabbit, which is a mind bending, you know, adventure in the metaverse about a magician whose magic one day suddenly works. And it's, I'm taking the emotion profile to recreating the one Wonderland really. And I grew up in Wonderland. So I grew up overseas, you know, riding camels, climbing pyramids, you know, we stayed overnight at a curve Ansara, you know, on the Silk Road, when I was young. And as you get that full body wonder I has a kid and now we can have these tools that can allow us to do that. And I don't see it as an escapism, right tool, although you can, you can do that. And if you're in a toxic situation, sometimes that is helpful. But it is more of like empathy with these other cultures. And people, there's the way I'm designing the puzzles, or it's a, it's connecting with your friends in a more meaningful way, where we're not just, you know, sharing, we're just sharing little, little clips or little URLs, so that we get the most likes. So that's why I'm sort of optimistic about where we're going. I'm gonna hand it over to Jasmine to answer a few.
I could try to answer the the healthcare concerns because I feel like that was the only question that was that was like open ended that I that was not directed towards anyone in particular. So I think that one of the, I kind of want you to repeat your question, just so I make sure I answer in a song. Can you just summarize it a little bit? In a few words, I just want to make sure I'm answering it.
Sure, thanks. So my question was do youth? How long do you think first? Do you think that this lack of supporting ecosystem, do you agree that this is a major challenge? For for having a clean and nice application? In the US for for for health care? Or? Or some similar type of?
Yeah, I got it. Right.
And also, how, if if you agree, how do you think we can solve that? And how long would it take considering all the other pieces of puzzle that should come together to build this ecosystem?
Okay, yeah, I thought that was a question but didn't want to want to make sure it was answered. So yeah, I think that really the the key is, is trying to sort of coalesce different stakeholders. So really, what it comes down to is that it's that some of the users of VR techniques, technologies fulfill other roles within the overall ecosystem. And so you can have a firm that's involved in the production of like immersive contexts. And those, those firms need to connect with government agencies to keep update on the legislation. So to ensure market success, the different stakeholders can't operate in silos. So they need to work together, as they all do, to some degree influence the future of the overall market. And I do think that as the VR market grows and matures, adoption will accelerate across a diverse range of industrial contexts. And it will become increasingly important to like certain company's overall strategies. I think when you get to healthcare, specifically, there are higher labor costs or the cost of, you know, or other industries where like, the cost of air is high. And so I think healthcare gains the most on VR investment. So I think I get I guess, what I'm trying to say is that healthcare is very contingent upon funding. And so really, when we're talking about health care, we need to make sure there's allocated time and resources to explore the varying methods of the technology to best add value to whomever is investing in it. And so yeah, like, I think it's more of a competitive thing. And in terms of the technology, there's a lot, a lot to be done. And I think it's mostly in terms of optics. And so there's a lot of high expectations for engineering challenges, to just squeeze a very high performance display system into a tightly packed module, right for like daily wearing or analyzing. And I think right now, there's some researchers at University of Florida, Rochester, doing this work, but really, people are trying to find alternative solutions to these traditional optics. And so I think now they're looking at things like multiplexing and polarization and if you cross reference apples patents, you could see that so I think in terms of time if I were to guess a timeline, I do know that the the field of view things are imminent, and I can see the the work from some of the seminal people in the field. But like I said, in terms of when you get into stuff like healthcare, you start to have legislation. I mean, like one of the first VR software experiences that I developed happened to be with a Veterans Hospital. And there's there's so much, and there's people's health, that's really all we have right is time and health is human beings. And so that's something that really has to be regulated appropriately. So when you take into account regulation concerns, when you take into account just the the optical concerns and optimization concerns that, you know, that are that are prohibited by conventional geometric optical devices. I mean, I would say that even the plan for something like apples contacts or anything, I mean, that's that's, I mean, I don't want to give like a hard date. But that's at least just knowing the cycle of healthcare that's at least 10 years out. That's not. And that's like the that's the floor, I would say is the base minimum, because there's too many different stakeholders. One of them is, yeah, like I said, I'll just reiterate, our health is like too valuable not to regulate. And I think the base is 10 years, I don't think with healthcare. It's it's not it's not as close as we want it to be. But I have seen some advancements using Web VR technology, specifically, with healthcare and those have sped on quite well. There's actually a lot of work in the Boston area. I'm sure you're familiar with that technology. So I guess the the hard coded answer is 10 years at the minimum, but more likely 20 years, just because Yeah. When you when you combine, like technology plus health, I mean, it's just yeah, I mean, I mean, I can't like I mean, there, there are certain things that I know that like, I'm not at liberty to say, but I would say the baseline is like 10 years, like even on companies like Apple's roster. It's not, it's not going to be in the next five years. So
great. Thank you, to our Imaginators for answering those questions, you know, to the people listening and who will be listening, the recorded version of this and thanks to relays in clubhouse, Jasmine, can you maybe say a few things about Nicole and what makes her so special? I know she's been a leader in in the gaming world, and has really helped do some transformative things. And then Nicole, can you say some things about Jasmine, I want our listeners to appreciate the the leaders the two of you are?
Yeah, I mean, Nicole has. I mean, Nicole is basically one of the the inspirations for a lot of the women in this space. Like there's not many women in the space. And one thing that I I mean, just I mean, Nicole did outline like all that she's achieved at the beginning. Like she was one of the first to develop iOS apps. I mean, you know, me, particularly, particularly who's interested in affective computing, like she's specifically worked with, you know, algorithms dealing with emotional expression. So just that that's something I really admire about her. But then also she's, you know, she's also someone who is a mentor in general in this space. So I mean, I kind of see her I mean, basically, her and Jeri, Ellsworth are the two, the two women that a lot of us, like younger women look up to because they have such a, just they have like such a track record of just complete excellence. And yeah, I mean, I really like listening to Nicole and her cognitive aspect, because I feel like a lot of times just because I don't want to, I don't want to say something that's that's out of left field. Since my specialty is more of the hardware software aspect of the technologies. I really appreciate Nicole's expertise in cognitive science, and she's able to humanize and disseminate the information in a in a more digestible and political way. And then also just like, yeah, existing in this space as a woman of color, like Nicole has always uplifted me and I feel like, I mean, like, I don't want to get emotional in the space, but I feel like you know, just existing in the space of someone. Like, as Esther and Alison allude to who is a woman but also a woman of color. I feel like you know, just because of identity, people might not value my opinions the same. And Nicole is always someone who is willing to uplift and include others. So when she talks about human potential, she embodies that like and how she lives her life. And yeah, she's just really an inspiration. So if you don't follow Nicole, I would follow her like her and Jeri Ellsworth are the basically the prime women to follow in the space. So yeah, you'll
know thank you, Jasmine, that was very heartfelt, and, you know, does justice to Nicole. Nicole, if you could do the same for Jasmine and then I'm going to turn to Allison and then Esther for questions. And, you know, we find that pairing to people who are coming from different perspectives, you know, you've been kind of a lot of had a lot of experience and Jasmine being kind of the next generation Wonder Woman, it's kind of exciting to hear the different perspectives and how you you two are synergistic at the same time. But yeah, Nicole, how would you describe Jasmine?
Well, I don't know that, that thank you, Jasmine, I'm very blushing right now that those very, very, very kind, very kind. The things are, there are so many things that I really admire about Jasmine that I think that's important to know. And definitely you should follow her is that she has such a strong, technical, you know, technical background. And so what she is doing, she isn't just talking about, you know, the metal, she's actually building it, she is the she is on, she's on a number of patents, and she that she can't talk too much about. So even I don't know, much of the details, but she's worked with NASA with PlayStation with Unity 3d, you know, at Google, in very, very senior, very cutting edge, very cutting edge projects, that are really laying the foundation for the stuff the technology that we that we take take for granted. She's also a person who has been a very active community organizer as well. And she also, you know, mentors, interacts and uplifts other other people, other marginalized developers and people in the, in this in the space, and has had, I mean, she's just, you know, I just, I'm just amazed and just I always, like, sit in this, it's just been such a privilege to watch, you know, Jasmine grow and bloom, and, you know, from, you know, from year to year, and from project to project, and I just can't wait to see what she does next. I think the most remarkable thing is that often, I'm just black, you know, I'm just like blown away by Wow, this is what you just did this, this is just amazing, amazing, amazing stuff in the way that she pulls together, you know, technology and really, you know, digs into the the hardware and the software and the meat of things. And her technical knowledge is exceptionally deep. So if you do have questions or need that need that kind of edge, I highly recommend her you know, following her on LinkedIn and on Twitter and other other other platforms
in clubhouse, too. And clubhouse
as well. Definitely, yes, yeah. And clubhouse as well, because she's always got an amazing perspective, and is a real shining as a real shining light. And I just, you know, you're you're amazing now and I just can't see wait to see what your what you're going to be doing, you know, in 2022.
Great. Well, thank you for that. The two of you. Now I turned to Allison and then Esther, let's get some more questions. I know we kind of went it was a little dystopian, a little dark. But you know, that's that's the reality with these, this new wave of technology.
Some positive stuff to put in. So
yeah. Allison, what do you have teed up?
Definitely. Well, gosh, this is such a rich topic. I must feel we need like two long form journalistic sessions on this. But I'd love to hear from both of you a little bit more what it's like to be a woman pioneering in the metaverse. I mean, in other words, do you think we could end up with a different type of Metaverse because they're women leaving it? Is it as hard to lead the metaverse as it is in the physical world? So I have one set of questions on that. And then I'd love to know you mentioned some of the names you follow. But I'd love to hear a little bit more about, you know, who do you see as sort of the most brilliant content creators in this world? I mean, you hear about will right, and John and Samantha B. But where do you kind of go to get deeply inspired? I find I'm reading more about the technology. And the thing that most excited me about tonight is the fact that it's moving to the immersive experiences itself and not just lengthy discussions about the the Hardware and Technology. So where do you guys go to just immerse yourself and get inspired?
Go ahead, Nicole. Okay, great. Yeah, the Yeah, so I have a tweet. I'll try and put it in my bio from a little while ago of three lists, or you can go on my Twitter feed. And there is an amazing list of these were the speakers at AWS, the augmented world expo. These were the female identifying speakers at AWB. And there are, I don't know, it's like 186 speakers at the conference, which is just just blows me away, AWB has always had a very inclusive I mean, gender wise They've been doing a really great job. We're working on the getting more, more bipoc, Rick rep representation and stuff like that. But I highly recommend that for people to follow. She mentioned Jasmine mentioned Jerry, who's like a deer. Yes, definitely a huge inspiration. Jeri Ellsworth, she's the CEO of tilt five, and she is like a phoenix, you know, gone in and you know, salvage that the IP and done it again and again, again, they're about to release. And it's an augmented, it's a reflection based augmented reality table, where you wear shutter glasses, and it's amazing. I'm always admire, if you look her up her stories of having you she was she pulled her IP out of valve where she was working, she pulled it again, she bought it back after casting our, you know, faltered, and then now she's doing you know, tilt five. So she is kind of like a huge inspiration. The other one, like Jasmine was mentioning my so my inspiration was of course, Brenda Laurel, who at the very at the first round, you know, in 1992, and those those era where I started and I was in VR, then that round two. But Brenda, Laura is amazing. She wrote a book called computers as Theater, which is really laid the groundwork for a lot of what, what we what we do with computers, in a sense, especially in terms of enter entertainment. I think that that's, that's good. I'll go ahead and I'll see if I can find that tweet and put it up as a list. Jasmine, do you want to respond to that?
I mean, I think my my inspiration came from just playing games. So I sort of alluded to that earlier. Yeah, so I just I don't know, I was always someone that was drawn to games, because I felt just there was a sense of belongingness connectedness and just improve well being, at least for me, because like, despite what people think of Second Life, I do think it provided, you know, provided place safety and relationship opportunities. And you know, now we see clear parallels with social media. But in terms of like, who I was inspired by, I mean, a lot of times I'm expired by the experience. So one of the experiences that really, that really propelled me into the space was waves of grace, at least on the content side, and on the hardware side was waves of grace by Chris Milk. So his company just got actually acquired by Meadows within but or supernatural. But I really liked that experience, because it was, you know, he had touted that it was an empathy box. And with that experience, I was able to feel that and so that sort of yeah, that that sort of like empathy sharing is something I I've resonated with, like, I also might announce something here in this space, which I haven't really told anybody except for Cece, I think she left. So I'm also deeply deeply inspired by German linear, because I think we sort of have like a similar view of what we see the technology so I mean, even though I'm, you know, I'm a left brain person, I'm also like, equally, if not more, so a right brain person, like I really value, you know, human connectedness, human consciousness. And one thing that I that I really enjoy, I haven't done as much of it anymore is music. That's why I find my inspiration because there's something about music words, its own language, and it's able to imbue and impart empathy. Like, if I seeing if I, you know, if I play the violin, like, there's something that is so profound and spiritual, not even not even yet able to be distinguished by, by science of why it resonates. So that sort of just empathy transfer is what I, I really want for the space. Um, and yeah, and in terms of just like, being a woman in this space, I think it's just, there are very supportive people. So there are other women like Nicole, they're also allies. I mean, John, I mean, John, John himself, you know, all we put on the air and Action Conference, and he had, you know, equal representation, because John just, you know, understood the value of everyone's lived experience and, and, yeah, was very, was very integral in getting me even involved in this space. So I do want to thank John, who's on here now. And yeah, I think it's really interesting. Another person I'm inspired by is Jody medic. So she was one of the only women who was working on the HoloLens. And now she works on Geron team. And so yeah, like, I guess I'm excited because I'm actually going to soon work with the work with the both of them. So it's good to then be able to work with the person who inspired me and one thing that's like, maybe not as well known about Jaron because he doesn't often go on social media networks is that he has been a an inspiration for many women in the space. He has actually helped women's careers behind the scenes. I mean, there's like a terminology people use of like, Jaron Valkyries because he's always been of help but I think just What inspires me is just like the need to connect with people that need to understand people and I get my inspiration from from experiences that I'm that I'm personally moved by. So yeah,
yeah, that's really great. I, I wanted to add that I put the that I did find that tweet and so it's been to this it's a second item on my profile if people want to go and look at my clubhouse profile. It has three lists of both the AWB list that I created and then one by Susan Olsen and Joanna popper. And though they both also created these amazing lists of women, you know, building this women building the metaverse and because we are we are It was a rough start because the platforms the major platforms funded very few if any female led teams so six years later, we're sort of seeing that you know, come home to you roost as far as valuations, but I think we're you know, we're, we've made a lot of progress. And a lot of people like you know, like Jeri Ellsworth is are setting the stage. I think there's also I was very inspired by bio Bob studios, Maureen fan, she She's been an amazing inspiration for me. And then if you look at the snap platform, I think there's a number of really amazing creators for the spectacles, the AR spectacles program, people that are posting, they've done a really, really great job. So like Heather Dunaway Smith, I like her her tweets a lot in the art she's creating. And you know, Don Allen is also an amazing thing. And then you also may want to check out XR women there's an organization for for for women in XR and they do they did last year this year. They did a talk a week, one talk a week. So there's a lot of content coming out of there with women. You know, again, building the metaverse and every Wednesday, not this week, but I co host with Maddy calendar, Kathy heckle Amy Lemaire, and JT actually, as well, we post a conversation Wednesday nights 5pm Pacific on this weekend AR VR. So we we feature a lot of really interesting content in that in that as well. So that's another way to, to get a hold of a more diverse background.
Great, thank you. Answering that question. I'm going to turn to Esther. But just to telegraph the rest of the show. I am going to ask Nicole and Jasmine if you have any kind of closing statements, anything that's top of mind how you're using your imagination these days or action that you'd like to see happen. Before Alison does her summary. And I'd also love to hear a little bit more about your thoughts on web 3.0. I think a lot of people throw that around. But what does that mean to the two of you? And in how are you contributing to it? Or what are you looking to get from from it? So but Esther, do you have another question that you want to ask her? Do you want to build on on your prior question?
I'll make this really brief. It's, I still have all the concerns I mentioned earlier. But the the more practical question is interoperability. It's, I find it tough already to do texting and email and WhatsApp. And then there's, you know, all these different messengers and Instagram. How? How do we make it so that you can use your three preferred tools and not have to suddenly keep adopting? Now, it's not just messaging tools, but actual sort of meta versus how can I hang out with my family, even though they're in all these different virtual locations? Do I get to bring my part with me? Just how is this all really going to fit together and keep us together rather than balkanized?
I think it's a really great question as sir and when I think about a lot and nothing that I can say or think anyone can say can alleviate the concerns. And I share those concerns as well. Because it's the future. And but what we can do as leaders in the space is inspire people to take action or to have preferences. And I don't think that Facebook would have announced at Facebook connect this year that Facebook logins may not be required in the future for the Oculus platform in less people had, you know, had protested right had voiced their concerns. And so I think the antidote is, is to be sure that we have both voices raised concerns and voice voice are things voice our concerns. I a couple of things. You've probably read Tony Parisi seven rules of the metaverse for those on the call that haven't I highly recommend it. And I think the first One is, is that there is only one metaverse. There is one metaverse. It's not. I think it's not multiverses or multiple things. No, there's just one Metaverse, just like there's one internet. You folks probably had a great conversation, I believe with Bob Metcalf last last week. But the big one of the biggest arguments for interoperability is that the value of a network it's Metcalfe's law, the value of a network is the square of the number of nodes. An open system generates more value creates more value than a closed system. And we're simply in that early days, many people remember on the call of AOL and prodigy trying to own the internet, you know, trying to create these walled gardens. And to a certain extent, we have app stores and we definitely have siloed messaging platforms. And I think that if you can ask people to imagine well, can you imagine a you know, a Metaverse where you don't have these siloed things. So you don't have to remember whether it was on Twitter or you know, Facebook or LinkedIn. I think that's a real human can, you know, human centric, that's a great argument for human centric design. Because those it's not human centric, the way we have now, that can kind of raise raised the important importance on people's radar, and interoperability. That's why I say the third eye of the internet is interoperable. Because if we may, if we get an interoperable Metaverse, then so many things can happen. It's a much more level playing field for competition. And we can you know, people can compete based on value as opposed to addiction, which I would I would really, I would really love. And one of the thing that was suggested on clubhouse, I think a week two weeks ago, on our, you know, this weekend, AR VR at the extending realities, clubhouse is that if we had just one, again, kind of like one thing that we could do to keep or make something interoperable, is that the ability to insist that we have the ability to move your avatar, but please, between platforms. And if we do that, if we insist on that, then there has to at least be a doorway between these different platforms, and then we can move between and then that might be the forcing function. For other forms of interoperability, I'm a little more optimistic, I don't think it I think we can get more than just you know, then just then then avatar, but that might be a way it's very concrete thing for people to you know, demand or rally around. And sort of that's your example is the one I use a lot for the argument for making it interoperable. It's there are, you know, for all intensive purposes, web 2.0, they own your social graph. And they make it very hard to very hard to use that your your social graph across across platforms. So I think that's, that's I just think, if we if we insist, I think we can we can win.
Yeah, I, I think having a singular avatar across different platforms. I mean, I love the intention behind it. But just even if you think of the current web 2.0, I mean, I think there's some weird disambiguate is and I do think that avatars are different dependent. They are different depending on what platform you're on. I mean, the way that people present themselves on LinkedIn is fundamentally different. Not for all people, but for a lot of people than how they present themselves on Facebook, Twitter clubhouse, so people already have a plethora of identities. Just use this to segue to John's question, and then Nicole can have the floor. But I do think at least the larva labs a larva labs, crypto punks, the me bit project, if you will, that was the premise of it, the premise of it was to have a unified avatar, or identity that exists across multiple platforms. And so I would say because, you know, people have very strong, dissenting and agreeable opinions regarding web three. But that's, I do think it it works in tandem with, you know, with AR VR and the metaverse anyway. And so I do yeah, I do think that's, that's something to bring up. Because I do know, from like Matt and John, personally, or more, so John, because John actually worked in my group at Google before they, you know, became multimillionaires and left. I do know, the intention of, of what they were doing was really to like, create like a unified game identity. So I really liked that Nicole mentioned that can further expand?
Definitely, just because it's interoperable does not mean it has to be singular. There's one Metaverse, there's multiple identities, you can you can have lots of different personalities, I think, and there are lots of really hard problems that have to be solved in games right as well. And that's also true with interoperable you know, swords or you know, cosmetic cosmetics will be easy, you know, functional items are more difficult. But the idea is to get people craving for that motion between platforms, and that means that they aren't just walled citadels that we have to have a good you know, software We have a really good, you know, system for moving between them. And the more open that can be, the better. And he just imagined, you know, if you could only browse, you know, the, you know, five websites on the internet, you know, it's not it's not fun, right? It's because I can access everything on the internet, presumably I can access it just through any but there are five, you know, web browsers that I can do it from, that's interoperable. We need the same thing for the metaverse.
Yeah, one thing I do want to say, and then is that I read some literature on that when you are, you know, boundary crossing between the different platforms. I forgot who it was the someone had written something about what it's called. It was multiple personality disorder within the metaverse, so it was just like a further exploration on how identities conform to each other, and how the characteristics of each of these differ from each other, and from the physical selves of putting the people in the study. And so then there was like an analysis of like, why people create alternatives. And also, you know, there's a lot of burner accounts or a non accounting. So I do think that at least using avatar as a baseline does also create further problems is well, because we're, then in essence, we're sort of like creating an online identity for a physical role purpose. I do think the world the work of Jeremy Bailenson, in the avatar dream, and that that text definitely touches on that. But yeah, I think I think there is a problem in managing multiple identities across different environments. I mean, even in the tangible world, right? I'm not going to act the same here that I'm going to act it like, I don't know, a bar. So
that's true. It's like a dissociative identity disorders. One, one or more that, you know, there are a number of ones that can relate to this. But then again, thinking of it, so that that is definitely true and valid. And then then if we also think about, well, what what's new with this platform, because we're going from the horse and buggy to the Tesla, we're in this awkward, you know, the Tesla being the metaverse if you will, or hopefully not that Tesla, but you know, the idea of car and automobile. And when this awkward, you know, horseless carriage phase right now with our ideas of what the metaverse should be, we're not we're definitely not there yet anyway, in any stretch of imagination, but using our imagination, because I do forget that that's what this call is all about is, well, what could we do? And the most amazing thing for me, in working in, in VR, you know, this this current round I've been in since you know, 2014, I think, is that it allows you to experience other dimensions. So we talked about a disorder, well, what's a positive thing, and in a sense, it's not so much identity, but I in the game I'm building, you know, it's multi dimensional. So if anyone who's in the audience has read flatland, you know, you go from, you know, you know, 2d land line, land to point land, and then up to, you know, 3d land. And then beyond, right, four dimensions five, well, I'm routinely navigating six dimensions, you know, I'm a man, I'm navigating the three dimension of the physical space i Man, hopefully, well, I'm not knocking over things or stepping on the cat. And then imagining the, I'm using the 3d world that I'm in, you know, this cafe in Paris in 1889, even the World's Fair, and then I can go now with AR and VR, I can actually go between them, like with paths pass through cameras, or, you know, VR sunglasses. And that whole, that whole thing does amazing. I mean, it just, it's it's mind bending, exploding, and then there are new capacities, new capabilities, and probably a number of folks on the call have always wanted to imagine, understand or experience what the fourth, a fourth dimension is, well, you can already get there, in a sense, simply because we're being are now able to blend two 3d realities with each other, and I really looking forward to, you know, some experiences that help us really expand ourselves as that experience, but then also, what does that do to your math, you know, what does that do to your other, like, you know, brain skills, you know, can you imagine electricity, and, in quantum theory, in a new way is this, I think it's definitely going to change, you know, astrophysics, and, and, you know, you know, and computing, because people are going to have these new capabilities of putting things together and people will create new experiences that will expand our, you know, expand our consciousness, not in a UI way. I mean, maybe yes, but it's also like in real concrete terms. And again, I'm already experiencing, you know, six six dimensional space just working every day on my, you know, on my on my, on my snap AR lenses.
I am so glad this has been recorded and that there'll be a transcript soon after we shut the show down because the two of you just said so much rich stuff that I think people are gonna want to go back and listen, to listen to it multiple times. To really just process it. This has been great. What I'd like to do now is have the people who are on stage that haven't asked questions, just ask questions, please be succinct. And we'll give our Imagineers one last chance to kind of react to some of the audience questions. Jasmine and Nicole, you definitely don't have to answer all the questions you can kind of say, you know, respond to the things that that you want to react to. But, you know, I want to show what some of our audience is thinking. So just going. So Chris, do you have a question? And feel free to pass if you don't?
Thanks. Yeah. I had a reaction. That was kind of a question. I love what Nicole said. I love the idea. I mean, since doing like, TTY, one on one communication with someone like 1993, a long time ago on the internet. It's great, awesome, fascinating thing about the metaverse is you get to be like, like one of these gods like Athena Athena of this, of that, or like all these different facets of a person. And you get to present a range of different aspects. And depending on who you're talking with, you can present like, one prism or another prism, and then you can, like learn different ways of talking with people. And it's like a different way for minds to connect. And that's really fascinating, because in the real world, you see someone and then you, you have all these assumptions, but in the virtual world, you can block or present in any number of different ways that like, trigger them to think different things or approach you in different sorts of ways. So it's a really interesting experiment. And I think it'll be really interesting. Sort of consciousness, consciousness, expanding kind of way.
Great. Thanks, Chris. I remember speaking with Ben Gordon, and he was telling me how many women really are playing games and that people don't appreciate it or how many, you know, the avatars people use that aren't, maybe reflect their gender. And so I do think there's something there. I'm not sure if I'm saying your name right, Begum. Is that right?
It's okay. Hi, Tom. Thanks so much.
Yep. Do you have a question you want to ask? Yes.
First of all, I won't say thank you to Nicole. Because after I met with the Nicole on clubhouse, I just got my VR glasses and started working on the XR. I mean, I started augmented reality, of course, but we didn't XR. Right now within the VR glasses. We are building our own our own company right now in Turkey as well. I'm working about architectural products on the metaverse and the in all we have one of the design which is termed largest space, and we located that term larger space in the Mars. So I'm just want to met with the jasmine, because I'm wondering what kind of approach she has. Because as I understand she's also creating those simulations on NASA. So I would love to mess with you just me man. You have a moment on the metaverse as possible. As well, because of the gym green he just is is tired to me a lot to buildings to be in worse. And also the all the team in on the clubhouse. So right now what we are doing like we are we just typed I'm an artist and like I'm not artists anymore. I feel like entrepreneur these days. Yeah, working together like designers, engineers, developers, and architects. And those architects also Metaverse, architects, not only in the real life, they're also building those places in the metaverse, which is great for them also to see their works on the digital life, right. So I just want to say thank you to Nico and as I'm happy to see jasmine in here. Thank you, Joe.
Great. And I'm going to go to our last two questioners. But this being our last show of 2021. I do want to point out that I see Kelly and Pam are are in the audience. Kelly, who's one of the leaders of clubhouse has been such a source of support for the show, you know, every week she can't wait to check in and what our topic is and and has been such a cheerleader and a great thought partner and has had great instincts and has really, really supported us and I think we we are so looking forward to 2022. We have a bunch of great shows that we're going to produce and I look forward to collaborating with you and Kelly thank you for making this a real highlight for Alison and Using this tool to create a platform, we can have Imaginators, like the ones that are here tonight and the ones we've had all year. So I want to thank Pam, I think you've been in the audience and onstage in every single one of our shows. I think we're close to 60 shows now, all two hours on long form journalism. And you're a great thought leader. And and I'm sure you're using the knowledge to spread good. So thank you for being such a super supporter of imagination action to our last two questions, Dr. Rao in must, Joe, I'm not sure if I said that. Right. But do you guys have questions?
Yeah, yeah. And this is that I was kind of worried about the mental health aspect of it. Would all this Metaverse automation disease would affect attention span adversely?
Great, great question. And then to our last audience member, do you have a question?
Hello, um, yeah, this is math. J. Um, so I, I'm involved in making that a reality. Especially I'm interested in early stage prototyping. For the only reason that I noticed that a lot of women in particular, are very terrified of the the initial technical hump that they have to get over when they make their own experiences. So that's why I've kind of ended up in that space there. I think I'm just commenting on on Dr. Rouse question. I also have that question in my head about mental health. Because I, I do spend a lot of time in VR and I'm currently working in well, I'm actually for over Christmas, I've been developing some choreography for audio trip, which is interesting, but I did notice that when I went Christmas shopping, I was avoiding people in the street the way that I was avoiding barriers in the game. And this very, you know, made me think about our physical and our mental reaction when we learn about real world problems. Yeah, just the the physical versus the virtual embodiment question. And I suppose it's, it's a question about how do we how do we deal with the adverse effects that we might have when the virtual slips into the into the into the physical
grade to tour? Thank you for that question. Math, J. So tour Imaginators, maybe react a little bit to these great questions. I know we're gonna go we're probably gonna go a few minutes over the two hour mark. And looking forward to hearing Allison do a summary. And as I mentioned, in the new year, we're going to be doing a show with Arthur Ashe is double partner and we're going to be talking about growing Oregon's and we got a whole bunch of great shows. So tune in every Tuesday 630 Eastern Standard Time to imagination action on clubhouse. But yeah, Jasmine and Nicole, any reactions to those great questions?
Yes, oh, my goodness, such great. Just such great questions. I think that the the take home sort of in an order here is that there are as far as women building the metaverse, and we are it's super important that we have a wide diverse, you know, set of voices that are building the the content that we that we create or the spaces that we inhabit. If we want to Metaverse it's not all shooting, not that all, you know, not that all VR developers who are males who identify as male are, you know, into violent games, but there is a lot of, there's a lot of that kind of content we need. It's you know, we need its counterpart. And so that's why funding funding women lead teams is so important, you know, getting women inspiring women to fund inspiring women to invest inspiring women to you know, to, you know, get, you know, get more executive roles, so they can be the decision makers. That's a huge, huge thing. On the other side is like how do we get women into into XR and I found a rather nice way, especially if you are you know, if you haven't done a lot of technical stuff so far yet is that snap AR and to some extent Facebook art are this space, Facebook, Spark, Adobe arrow and tick tock, they all have these lenses, you know, these Facebook, these, these camera lenses, and they all have these really, really great Creator tools. The snap AR ecosystem, I've just been working in it a lot. And it's amazing in terms of the barrier to entry. It's you know, they have all of these templates, you can pull something together, create a lens, show your friends, you get rewarded for that and then they've got this great, very, very gradual, very gradual ramp in terms of the skills you would need to acquire. So you can literally go from zero code to actual you know, coding in JavaScript. By doing a series of lenses and snap, it's a much lower barrier to entry then platform like Unity or Unreal, although Unreal has the unreal game engine has a blueprint, which is a flowchart graph, kind of a way of programming. And so that those can be really can be really helpful. I think that the other the other topic that came up is on the, on this topic of early stage,
prototyping and mental health, let's do mental health. Definitely mental health has effect is affected, and it can be for the better and for the worse, right. Just like and just like anything, people play supernatural, which is Chris Milk, Jasmine mentioned earlier, is an exercise game audio trip is it was just mentioned as well. Another brilliant, also co founder is female there. Yes, these are great exercise games. And so these are building building skills as a creator, which you want to do is you want to think about take a moment and do a check of is you are we building an experience or a game that builds you know, pro social skills, you know, mental, mental, physical, emotional skills that are positive and helpful and useful to people? You know, Google plays with the doodle the graphic on their logo. So to inspire curiosity, which is the mental state, you need to be a researcher on the internet. What kinds of features can we do to make something to give our to give our people, the people because it's all the metaverse is about people, that's the most critical tech is like, the most essential thing about the metaverse is people. And if we design things so that they are empowered, that they do more, or they do what they want, or they have these experiences that are amazing, that that's where the focus should be not. Not the not creating, not creating operant conditioning and stimulus response reward lives with variable rewards, you know, not that not that not that other other stuff. And then I think that when we think about prototyping, and this ties into imagination, is that what's amazing about these experiences is that any other tool, almost any other tool, it's really the it's a pancake, you know, it's a piece of paper is flat, a laptop screen, for the most part is flat. If you're in the machine shop, and using foam core or an architecture using foam core, then you could build you know, in 3d For the most part, a lot of design is flat. And I can't tell you the most amazed it was just the most amazing experience in my life of having the napkin sketch of the of a cafe in Paris, with the Eiffel Tower illusion or whatever, maybe not appearing in the room, like a big leg of the Eiffel Tower appears maybe. And giving it to giving that flat sketch to Brandon Jones, who does who does the he's the artist that did the first the first background for me, and putting my head into it the first time it was like being able to step inside your own napkin sketch. And again, that's why I think this platform is going to build new mental capabilities for people. And it's going to create whole new disciplines of thought disciplines of you know, mental activity, if we do our job, right, and if that's the goal, and if that's the goal. I think that's the metaverse that I want to that I want to be in. Let me hand it over to Jasmine.
Yeah, there's a lot to unpack I can try to start with. So if someone's looking to get into the technology and the tools like Nicole gave a very, very gave a very comprehensive overview of like, why to choose certain tools over the others, I think, I think I don't know, it was about a month ago, I made an infographic about the AR VR stack. And I would I mean, I made that because amazing.
Check it out. It's amazing. Check it out. Oh, God, I forgot that about your intro. It's amazing.
Yeah, thank you so much, Nicole, I made that graphic. Because what I found is that the limitation to the technology, again, the lack of the scarcity of content is definitely contingent upon the lack of education. So you don't get you know, spatial reasoning curricula within universities or at the K through 12 level. They test analytical verbal written knowledge. So spatial skills. I mean, what well, you know, part of its genetic, innate, whatever the other part of it is, also has to be learned. And I think that that's something to note is that I think maybe curricula will adapt. And it will have to if we're going to be in the metaverse, and then I think another thing to mention is, so I had mentioned Chris had mentioned something that Nicole said, Maybe I wasn't being like descriptive or clear enough, but like the avatar dream, meaning that you don't necessarily present as you are in the real world. You could even like present as non anthropomorphic So nonhuman, you know, to prevent harassment like that is what the avatar dream was about. Maybe I didn't elucidate that clearly. But that, but that's what it's about. Because, like I said, a lot of times people of marginalized identities use virtual worlds to provide opportunity that they would not have in the physical world to forge a stronger sense of their own identity. And I really also resonated with what, what the two women at the end said, because I do think there we, we always refer to the physical world and distinction to the virtual world, you know, despite like the fact that we use the term IRL. And so like, Yeah, we like, we can argue that on many levels, the impact of you know, activity and relationships that take place within this Metaverse within this virtual world is no more or less real than those that are occurring in the physical world. And I think that that's something that we can't have a passive disregard for that significance. And because I mean, speaking of mental health, I mean, because the thing is the use of anything, an avatar, or whatever, as a mediator, it does have a significant effect on how the self is experienced. And so irrespective of whether the user feels they are being the same person, they are in the physical world, and you see that on social media, that the negative effects of you see that in the negative effects of social media, and that was definitely something I wanted to touch on. And then in terms of just mental health at a neurobiological level, I mean, there's some some of the best studies I've seen are about, you know, virtual reality to fix certain degenerative eye conditions, virtual reality, as a as a use to expand neuroplasticity. So the thing is, there is even to improve attention. There is an ongoing project at the Media Lab with Patti and and she brought in us, you know, a woman from Germany. So again, a women led project about using, you know, head mounted augmented reality head mounted displays, to actually to basically like in this world, that's inundated with a bunch of devices, a bunch of distractions to use augmented reality, as a way to focus. So I do think that like, that's something to note is that as much as it could be seen as a distraction or a method of escapism, there are a lot of ongoing projects to where it's using it for the exact opposite. So that was in response to Dr. Rao's question.
Great. You said Media Lab and Patty. That's MIT Media Lab and Patti Mays. I'm sure many on this show will know those two, but just wanted to qualify those. I am so proud of the show. I think you two are important leaders for this next chapter of whatever the metaverse is, whatever the AR VR ecosystem is going to become, it's going to become. I'm optimistic, but it's going to need leaders like the two of you, and I'm glad we had a platform to have more people here what's on your mind.
