Welcome to the podcast I'm Jamie McDonald lecturer at school of computing and with me is John na Brown also lecturer at the school of computing so today we were thinking of talking potentially about human computer interaction and specifically thinking about where it might go in the immediate future so from Context uh my background I've done a bit of work with VR in the past I've made VR experiences so I've got some experience at least in terms of creating virtual reality content and I've also designed interfaces for apps and websites and then John you've got a rich history so it's maybe worth for context oh okay well uh yeah for context um I've done a fair bit in that I've worked for some gaming companies um I've worked for a number of uh other companies I spent the last before coming here 6 months ago I spent the last 6 and a half years in Silicon valy Valley Consulting with uh companies nobody's ever heard of like Facebook and Google and uh Amazon um so uh I've spent a lot of time working on human computer interfaces of many different sorts um from augmented reality and virtual reality uh through to standard interfaces like uh various keyboards and mice or mouses as I prefer nice good well um so hopefully we might at least have something interesting to say on the topic uh hopefully yeah so I don't know where do we want to start so recently just as a talking initial talking point uh we're we're at at this time when we're speaking and releasing this podcast Apple have just really recently released their apple Vision which is a VR AR miix reality headset and they're calling their whole interface spatial spatial Computing um so they don't have any controllers it's all your hands and you're looking around the interface and then you pinch to select things which is uh fun and interesting but what I thought was interesting about that is looking at I mean I've not used one yet but all of their interfaces are two-dimensional Windows obviously because for many many decades now we've all been trained to interact with 2D Windows rather than three actual true three-dimensional interfaces there was a period there was a period where people were trying that right three-dimensional interfaces I remember in Jurassic Park specifically when the Velociraptors are about to come into the uh the room you see I can't remember the girl's name but she's sitting on the computer interface and the folder file structure is this three-dimensional file structure and she's going along this Horizon and I'm finding the right file to lock the doors or whatever and it seems to me there's that there that was a pathway that just kind of stopped at that time because if you're on a 2d screen I guess 2D interfaces are I mean there's a bit of depth because you can overlay windows but it's not truly a three-dimensional space that we're taking advantage of and I wondered if we're speculating on the future like I say it seems they've taken shortcuts right now because it makes sense to just have floating 2D Windows because we're all accustomed to that but I wonder in the future if there's are we missing out on a potential better interface with it being three-dimensional that's a great question question um it it's it's got a couple of points in it that I'd like to discuss so um are we missing out on things that could be better yes uh that's the entire history of technological development for any product that gets used by multiple people and tested and proven or disproven in the market um the the history of uh consumer products is full of examples uh you're probably coming up with your own right now of products that were beaten in the market by things that were inferior so um are we missing out on something yes is it something we should be missing out on maybe also yes uh the 3D interfaces and I I always think of uh the Iron Man uh films where there's so much of that in his engineering mode when he's we're show we're seeing that the great inventor Stark is is thinking deeply he's interacting in in three dimensions with the light around him um the problem with doing that is that we we have spatial models in our brain of the world around us and the amount of space things take and that's what enables us to do things like reach for a drink and not knock it over um to uh be able to interface with something without looking at it because it's familiar these three-dimensional models of the world around us interact under consciously with three-dimensional models of our own shape and so the map you have of your hand and where it is in space as you move it intersects with the model you have of or the map you have of the coffee cup you're currently using and unconsciously those two models have to overlap and work together for you to be able to reach out and pick up your drink when the model is incorrect in one way or another that's when you knock the drink over there there's also other reasons that people knock drinks over but that's one reason and the discomfort created by being uncertain is worse than the discomfort created by knocking it over because everybody makes mistakes but if you're constantly afraid of making mistakes you're uncomfortable I I think that's one problem with this kind of uh 3D interface of intangible light fixtures around us uh if they were tangible then you'd be able to knock against them and figure them out unconsciously right the same way you can reach over conscious take a look at the thing you're going to pick up and pick it up and examine it a bit consciously or unconsciously just by running your thumb and fingers over it you you gain an idea of the shape of it um but you can't do that with with 2D displays inside a visual screen so I guess what I'm saying is it won't be intuitive until people work to make some kind of training material that will make it intuitive but for Our Generation it's going to take practice for it to become intuitive yeah I guess it also depends on what the objective is and what we're talking about because for example if your objective is to make content in 3D or even just position things around in three-dimensional space um say you take your average Grandma into a room open up blender and ask them and have to teach them how to move a square from one point in space to another point in space you're going to have to tell them maybe even you have to use and keyboard depending on how familiar they are with a computer um but even that was a process of clicking on the Square then you've got three axes you got to move it along one dimension move it along another and then move it up or however such you might do it whereas if you stick a VR headset on them and just tell them this is grab and this is release right they can immediately grab it put it over there yes and no it and I don't want to be argumentative but they can immediately Gra grab it and put it over there if the visual cues that have been created to describe the 3D space intuitively to the user are are cues visual cues that they recognize so sometimes they are uh simple things like a grid work can work really well and saying this is a flat surface and here is a a flat surface that's parallel to it but on a different elevation don't use the word elevation don't use the word parallel just let them see it and interact with it and a lot of people will figure that out the um the thing is if their visual model is different than the predominant visual model of the people who designed and approved of that design then it's not going to work for them regardless of instruction yeah okay so I guess I missed a lot of context that I would have I've got this I've got this imaginary scenario in my head and I've not explained all of the context um yeah I would I would be imagining something where you stick the headset on and for the most part in your standard VR experiences now you can see your controllers as representations of hands and I'm imagining sure you give them some cue of like a table or whatever a surface over there and then once they stick the headset on they're seeing the full threedimensional space a cube there and a table there and you've told them this is grab with your hand and they can see where their hand is in space and so they' be able to do this and do that and then in blender I would be or whatever 3D software i' be Imagining the same thing it's just the different controls in order to doing keyboard is the controls yeah the the problem is as you've described it I think and you know just tell me if I'm wrong because I'm wrong all the time I I I expect that and knowing me as well as you do I hope you expect it now too um the problem is one of visualizing oneself at the controls and tasks like picking something up and putting them down we don't think of as requiring control they're unconscious taxs that we perfected when we were infants unless you've had a neurological injury and have had to regain control there's something you don't think about deliberately so I've I've even seen it where people put on the the VR headset or stand in the VR booth and then say whose hands are those right okay right because it's clearly not their hands they know what their hands look like right so you you have to do something to frame it fortunately the framing can all be or almost all be unconscious and that's what what will make it feel intu after they've done some unconscious framing if if they have um if you put somebody in that situation you're describing and then you say to them I'm I'm just busy here could you U just push that box a little further away uh yeah that one that box there if you could just push it maybe use your left hand yeah if you could just put and just give them a task to do like that and get them to do a few things like that while you're busy elsewhere then they'll unconsciously start defining for themselves what the environment is and how they can interact with it then it'll start to feel intuitive once they've done that enough right but um if if you assign them a deliberate task some people will get it right off some people won't get it right off and that'll be based largely on what they know and what they don't know about these kinds of environments okay yes I guess ultimately what I'm speculating here in the argument I'm making is that if you have someone from scratch who's experienced the world all their lives until a certain point in their life my my only speculation here what I'm arguing is it's probably easier for the stick the headset on and do that rather than train them out to use them as keyo yeah because the controls are more abstract yeah yeah so that's that's what I'm saying is maybe the potential for more intuitive coming closer to reality so closer to reality of like I understand I can move this over here and now that's in that space and that whole interaction was completely closer mapped closer to reality than a mous and keyboard I I agree with you the only thing that would interfere with that would be familiarity with an existing abstraction so for example um when you're steering A Car steering a car is one of those really complex things that nobody thinks about once they learn and once you've learned it you try to act like it wasn't at all complex to learn uh because you don't want to sound like it was hard for you to drive um but the wheels are turning in a particular plane and turning in that plane means they move along a perpendicular plane when you turn them you want to rotate them in a perpendicular plane again you want to rotate them around an axis that's perpendicular to their rotation and to the plane they're traveling across but the controller we use for doing that isn't aligned with any of those planes instead it's offset at an largely undetermined angle and the control of turning is unrelated geometrically or intuitively unrelated to the amount of rotation so in some cars you turn more and some cars you turn less none of it is actually turning in the direction really that you want the wheels to turn but we learned this complex abstraction and then pretend it was never there yeah um so when you take someone from learning from knowing how to drive a civilian car and put them in a light armored vehicle where the or heavy armored vehicle where the the steering is done entirely differently they're lost they have the Paradigm of holding their hands up to steer right they have the Paradigm of rotating a wheel but they don't know how to rotate it without spinning out right and um yeah I I I used to give the example of when cars were first introduced to the public there were uh what three major ways of steering them right one was like a ship's Rudder yeah one was the steering wheel and another one was two separate controls to go forward or or pause um I believe that the reason the steering wheel caught on was because it allowed people to hold their hands in a way that signified to them conceptually that they're drivers because that's where you hold the reins of a horse right yeah so the idea of putting your hand down below and steering like a Rudder I don't think the direction was any more confusing to anyone interes but it just didn't mean your hands were in front of you like someone who's driving a team that's interesting okay so I'm we're not even disagreeing anywhere at all here to bring it back to um interfaces this is where I'm wondering so we've all been well the most of us that use computers every day we're all now completely accustomed to this two-dimensional screen and a mouse to navigate all sorts of complex information and do all sorts of complex tasks how much are we restricted by that Legacy yes we're all trained with it and know how to use it now but it makes sense to always make interfaces that work with it because we have that Legacy and needs life's training to use a system then yeah that so this is the argument of how not how do we move people away from it but just literal speculation on what could a different system look like in the first place well around the time that uh Ivan Sutherland and his folks uh came up with the uh sketch pad sketch pad yeah they were trying to figure out how to have a screen that you could touch and um you could interact with directly without having to have another controller so around the time they were doing that other people were working on developing the first computer mouse uh do you know the story of the mouse uh vaguely yes yeah so the the folks who invented it and I should be able to recall the man who's always credited for it I can't right now and also the man who actually built it I should be able to recall both I can't right now either we can put it in the footnotes of the podcast with an apology I'll just put on the screen right now yeah or here I'll just do this and there you can dub it over and people won't think I'm so forgetful um please don't do that I think the the the bad lip I'll use a computer I'll use a AI voice generated so it sounds completely awkward excellent yes if you could make it sound like try cluer that would be best um sorry for the level jump um so this guy had been working um as I understand it in visualization of uh 2D representations of radar data and sonar data and his job had been to um create overlays of this data so that Pilots could fly through the mapped terrain of enemy territory uh based entire on conceptually stacking 2D scans um and he thought it would be a cool idea if folks could do the same thing um to navigate through data and so he talked about it and didn't want to use a joystick for for well there's there's apoc apocryphal reasons for it I don't know what the real one is but didn't want to use a joystick and so uh in talking with the technician and some other folks came up with this idea of taking a chunk of wood and hollowing out the bottom and putting in two perpendicular Wheels yeah seen that yeah so it's it's cool you see the little red light to let them know it's active and the wire coming out of the back and red light on one end wire coming out of the other is why it's called a mouse um it was a chunk of wood that was rubbed on a desk so saying that rubbing a chunk of wood on a desk is the best way to interact with a computer is is kind of silly and yet here we are yep Wireless still rubbing a chunk of something on a desk like with the steering wheel using an abstraction that moving this on this surface is going to move something on a different surface right oops there we go I can I can visualize that more easily than I can practice it right because like you say I'm familiar with visualizing that kind of movement um but it's a silly silly thing and the folks who were working on touchscreens had a much better idea in much the same way that you were saying being able to actually see your hands and move things as though you were moving things in real space is a better idea will we get away from the Mouse um I think eventually eventually there will be people born who have never used a mouse and go through their lives using computers without ever using a mouse the same way that there are now people who have been using computers all their lives and have never used a keyboard well there's the phrase um iPad kids and you see um kids who've grown up more with iPods just navigate interfaces like you can't believe


yeah absolutely I think a huge portion of why they look so fluent in that fluid or fluent I guess both work um if I hadn't pointed out my own mistake probably no one would have noticed it the reason they look so fluid and fluent um is because they're willing to make mistakes out it um my generation and the generation before it especially grew up knowing that if you touch an electronic device the wrong way you break it right so you can't make mistakes um teaching uh my parents both of whom became comfortable with computers especially my mother quite comfortable um teaching them to use a mouse and a a a keyboard and uh different computers over the years it was always a task to just let them feel comfortable that yeah the mouse can fall on the floor yep it ABS you press the wrong keys and something happens we can back track um that that was contrary to their idea of how complex or expensive Machinery works these kids have no concept of that they break things constantly and one of the reasons it works well on an iPad is because it's hard to actually do something that breaks things it's really easy to go aside on YouTube and end up watching something your parents do not want you to watch and nobody in their right mind would want you to watch and I mean literally in their right mind um but uh so that happens much more often than they breing break something yeah right uh but yeah that that fluency of touch screens and uh really multi-dimensional touch screens cuz they're layering things one on top of the other um that fluency is built into their brains from an early age yep yep I'm going to go uh bring it back to something I've thought about which is I'll even argue against my own case of um fluid interactions of there was there was you remember Minority Report is's doing all this great example going like all over like here doing this this and that and there another so there's a lot of physical motion involved here from doing that to that now if you see when you need high performance and high communication like you need the bit rate to be faster between the human and the computer you want to reduce that you don't you want more twitch rather than extending out right we have Formula 1 car drivers who yes in normal cars you got to turn the wheel a couple of times to lock Formula 1 drivers like this this is lock because for them every millisecond matters and so then even in VR sure we're we're making interfaces again well I guess that's why maybe why Apple were not going with controllers moving things around it's just literally your eyes that look around and then pinching so I mean I've not used it yet but I would imagine you can maybe if you're using your eyes you can really start navigating quite quickly you can there's a history of that that goes back quite ways for eye tracking used for navigation there was a project for a long time uh funded by the national research Council of Canada uh directed by a gentleman whose name I'm not going to repeat because I'm about to insult the project uh that had a small uh diode of some sort I forget if it was attached to the tip of your nose or to the chakra point between your eyebrows but it was one or the other and the idea was that uh as you looked around you would steer your your cursor around a a regular computer monitor which was absolutely hilarious until you were having a conversation with someone or thinking deeply or had to sneeze or yawn in which case while you were typing and doing that all of a sudden you're typing in the wrong window right um so this thing that was supposed to be extremely intuitive instead required constant concentration in ways that the designer hadn't conceived and I think that's what happens with um with these kinds of sight based uh uh um steering controls that and not just with those with any other kind of steering control what you have to remember is that a lot of really great ideas about Computing come from Labs where a group of young wealthy white men coming from a privileged background work together and sometimes there's some racial mixing there if you'll pardon my using a truly disgusting phrase sometimes there's people of different economic backgrounds there but that's even more rare uh occasionally one of these Labs will have a woman or three working in them and all of that is getting better representation across genders across uh across cultural backgrounds and uh skin pigmentation is all getting better in those environments but the limited range of mental models at play means that they tend to and the filtration system of when how complaints get dealt with in an organization that's largely ego-driven those two things conspire to create products that look really cool and are really really hard for most people to use so I would argue for instance that that Minority Report style pull out the drawer filter through open up a file put the contents over here that kind of stuff is a better interaction than the tiny movements of the hands it's a better interaction because it requires you to be more deliberate about what you're doing and the ey tracking I'm going to look over here and I'm going to look over there that eye tracking is exactly the opposite have you ever heard of a cade right so then you know secades are these really really small eye movements that happen all the time so I mean I I've not used it but I would imagine they've got the error correct for they didn't they wouldn't have gotten past the first experiments or at least not past the second so how are they correcting for that are they correcting for that by averaging out are they correcting for that by separating the data into two groups of data I On Target I off Target what what algorithmic process have they conceived of that would say this is when an eye is under conscious control and this is when it isn't because I'll bet that they're not accounting for all of the times eyes aren't under conscious control yeah from what I've heard again I've not used it so I'm wildly talking speculating we might get one in the future but our budgets are we don't have them right you know maybe we'll get one um any sponsors please do uh send Jamie seven or eight of these kits please we appreciate it but from what I've heard of people using it um at to start it can take a bit of getting used to because you don't realize how often at least with our current machines and systems that you are actually looking away from what you're doing but your hands are still typing or doing something and but then I've heard people like after a few hours you you get used to it and you start navigating pretty well so I I can't speak to anything more than that I guess it all comes back to what your objective is because for the example that I used with a Formula 1 driver you want the stream of communication to be as quick as possible video games are a good example as well so in Esports you know controllers came along we had mousing keyboards and then we had the controller come along Hands-On a device pressing buttons and that's evolved throughout the years to the point now where if you pick up an Xbox or PS5 controller they're really really nice solid nice feel to hold and it's just they've like they used to be the case where hurt for even after a few minutes holding holding like a NZ controller or something like that but now they're ergonomically it's like the evolution wise of just a shape being formed to the point where it's really really comfortable now good good research and good implementation and lots of iteration absolutely so comfortably lying back on a chair and a casual couch yeah sure if you're sitting along playing on a controller meanwhile in Esports it's always still mouse and keyboard because for first person shooters specifically Mouse is still the best interaction for looking around the screen where you're in control of where you're looking it still turns out the mouse is the way to go WD specifically that that controller layout and you don't I don't would hesitate to say but I'm pretty sure um there aren't major Esports players who are using a a controller and the reason for that is accuracy as well people are way more accurate with a mouse and keyboard rather than that's so this is actually another interesting fact when um Microsoft released the Xbox first time Sony beforehand on the PlayStation 2 had figured out dual analog sticks so rotate using your getting your thumb rotation for rotating things around but they would hadn't really figured out first-person controller with dual analog sticks yet it was Halo specifically the first Halo game where they figured it out they cracked it which is strafe with one uh stick so that means you push forward you go forward strafe left straight back and then the other to rotate and look right and then that's now completely default for all first person games you'll play in in a video G Halo was the first they figured it out for that you had golden eye on the N64 which was like really awkward to control you have to like go around like this you'd have to like stop and then aim and all this but then Halo they figured it out but then even still all that why meanwhile all that was happening I forget Doom was a little bit different but then I don't know I I don't know which was the first game to fully map out FPS the way that we have them out in in video games on PC but it's pretty much the go to what I'm saying here I guess my argument here is that it's still when speed matters and accurate fast communication turns out mous and keyboard is still very good so and I think it's also because they they'll turn their DPS on the mouse kind of high or low they all have their different options but it's you're wanting to minimize movements as much as possible I remember when there were I saw a prototype of a keyboard from I don't know it's like the 60s or 70s where he's got his hand on a just on a device and he's like pre doing combinations of buttons for different letters uh and I guess the argument was if just through twitch you can in theory get faster but obviously to learn that is sign significantly harder so yeah I guess ultimately the point here is that I guess the point is that there's there's a balance to be had between speed but training potentially right yeah there's the the thing about um bringing in Esports or bringing in Formula 1 Racers is that these are people who are performing a high concentration task where ideally they're teetering between being in flow and being fully focused so being in flow in a way that they're completely distracted from reality and being fully focused on the reality around them and they they have to be a an interesting balance of both a state of flow that most people uh don't realize until you've become an expert at something um and that could be anything that could be slicing a banana for your cereal that could be skiing downhill um people are experts at different things but the level of expertise and focus there is unusual and the ability to transition into it is unusual I I think happens through practice but um there is a reason why the advances in steering wheel control that you were describing for Formula 1 drivers haven't translated to the real world you know car companies would love to be able to say we use the same steering system as right they'd love that but the reason it hasn't translated is because the demands are entirely different you do not want a super responsive steering wheel for a long time that was flipping over minivans the fact that the steering wheel was too responsive for uh the equilibrium of the vehicle given that they had a a higher than usual truck style Body sitting on top of a lower than usual car style chassis um this made the things likely to flip over especially at speed if the front wheel turned right um so that kind of real world Danger um can come into play with things as simple as the controls of the computer if you use a regular computer uh keyboard and mouse um every day uh say for schoolwork whether you're preparing it or answering it um it's very possible that you'll get carpal tunnel syndrome it's very possible especially if you're unfortunate enough to follow the specific ergonomic guidelines that are always given for both with tools um you're you're running a great risk when you're driving a Formula 1 car you're not at risk of that you're using the tools in a very controlled way and very deliberately and the time that you're not behind the wheel you're training to be behind the wheel you're training your mind your reflexes your body to be prepared for being behind the wheel um it's the same thing with Esports to I hope a lesser degree maybe now with the financial backing involved it's the same kind of thing but folks who play Esports spend their downtime training like mad to be the best possible player learning the games learning the moves learning their options but also physically conditioning themselves to be able to hold a controller right Which is vastly less uncomfortable than it used to be but is still uncomfortable whether it's the the new ergonomically shaped Mouse and if the sarcasm didn't come through there I I hope you can pick it up now uh the ergonomically shaped mouse and keyboard or whether it's the other controllers that they're using um they still have to physically condition themselves for the extreme use of it so it's quite different from the player who's sitting on the couch that kind of physical and mental preparation means that you could change the the interface to a huge degree and the people who are motivated to do that will just add that to their preparation routine right so you could come up with a game if it was challenging enough and if there were degrees of challenge that increased incrementally at the right rate you could get people to transfer over to controllers that were completely ridiculous by our standards just incredibly complex you could get people to go back to the complexity of those two manual joysticks when they weren't properly aligned conceptually um just by giving them enough reward in gameplay right to make it worth their learning how to do that um and and and folks do that people add different options controls to to games all the time well if you want to be impressed by absolute ludicrous control systems and people completely mastering games a game Zelda breath of the wild and for the most part people play that game and they go through it the way it's meant to be played but there's this whole culture of speedrunners who figure out how to break the game in more and more and more interesting ways that require absolute Mastery of the physics and mechanics in the game and you see them like there's simple things like um there's these things called bomb jumps where they like have to float down and they have to like quickly drop a bomb and then quickly switch through a menu and quickly like and you see them just fly through it you don't know what happened but they've they've pressed about 10 different buttons and then boom the game breaks and they fly off into a different direction so yeah get that that leads into what you're saying there there I and it's interesting that people kept doing that it's it's fun to see which games will end up having speeduns because there's still that it adds whole other postgame element to games people love where they there's that challenge challenge challenge in competition where they're trying to just break break break break and get faster and faster and faster and faster super super interesting to see how they how they figure all these these communities of figuring out different ways how they break things and um try to get the speed of completing the game down and down and down but that adds to your argument there of as long as there's a reason to keep engaged people will completely figure out these advanced communication methods with ultimately a computer and they're just figuring out ways within that context how to communicate as fast as they can as possible to get what they want and there are some people who will sit down and practice that for a very long time that's lovely that's a great example thanks for telling me about something I didn't know I love it when that happens yeah I mean it's it's it's equivalent of someone you know mastering guitar and getting a massively cool fast Rift and whatnot but then they're doing it with video games and it's that kind of equivalent it's like um Eddie Van Halen being able to do Distortion effects on his guitar without a distortion pedal yeah right he just had that kind of Mastery of the machine um or so he says anyway I don't know I never held his guitar but I've heard him say that yeah unless it was a deep fake so that leads to I guess okay so then the ultimate ideal future that people are trying to get to at some point God knows how it will get there or if it's it's probably possible I don't see any reason why the laws of physics would deny it how do we reduce barriers more and more and more between the human and the computor the digital world we had that whole phase in the '90s well I mean obviously we have iand souland getting very the basics of VR and also just generic human Community interaction then we have the the exciting wave in the 90s of virtual reality specifically um but the technology not quite being there yet but influenced culture a lot about that time and you have the Matrix you even have children's throws like Digimon of people going into digital worlds and all that and then it kind of Ls out and now we're kind of back again with people thinking about actually getting in there getting into the the digital world ver toas and ultimately most sci-fi options of getting there are no interface it's just some bit of sci-fi magic that just gets your Consciousness into that digital space the Dr into the back of your head put the helmet on yeah something magical will happen yeah yeah there's a reason for that right the reason that it has to be a magical step in our fiction is because we don't have clear scientific steps to do it we know that the brain is ridiculously complicated and so trying to go through the brain or through the nervous system has to be magic um according to Clark's Law right um the better question in my mind contrary to popular belief which I think you described really well the better question I think is how can we make it possible for people to physically interact with the virtual ual World um like I was saying before using eye tracking is fine until somebody blinks or whoever was designing the algorithm didn't realize how eyes actually work which has been a huge part of my career dealing with issues that come up from the uh come out of the fact that a whole bunch of people approve something without considering how humans actually function I didn't mention in the introduction my background in in uh biomechanics and ergonomics but that's a big part of how I got here um to be considered an expert in the field of how people in machines interact I understand a little bit about the body and I understand a little bit about the mind um and I ask these kinds of questions so for me it's very important that I not have telekinesis if I had telekinesis I would break things constantly you'd also lose a lot of friends very quickly if everyone could hear what you're think actually thinking about tathy oh sorry T yeah telekinesis and specifically moving things with your mind exactly yeah so yeah telepathy I I would never admit that I have it yeah no I mean never um yeah that's fine I mean yes I don't know what you're thinking Jamie um so the problem with telekinesis is that you would have to focus all the time on doing nothing right um I think it was Theodore sturgeon who wrote the story uh man of St woman of Kleenex and uh it was about the ridiculous assumption that Superman and Lois Lane could have a a love life uh and for reasons I won't go into here the title is leading you in that direction one thing that that raised for me as a kid reading that story was Superman would have to worry all the time about keeping his feet on the ground not floating above it and not sinking through it his body would be so dense and so strong that he would break every single thing he touches he could as easily walk through a wall as bounce off of it more easily because bouncing off of it in a way that looks real we all know who work in 3D that's hard as hell to fake right so Superman has to live in a world where he's constantly worrying about that kind of stuff and I'd love to see a comic or a movie that deals with that there's definitely a few that have done that have gone Along Stories with yeah Superheroes having ridiculous strength tragically right destroying everyone around him but always in a really shallow way what I want to to see dealt with like for a little while there was a writer called Kurt uh no an artist called Kurt Swan an anchor called Murphy Anderson and a writer called Elliot s Magan who were producing some cool Superman stories where they they said yeah in the 60s they introduced his super thinking and his Super Brain what if he really had that what if everything he was doing was part of a huge long-term plan cuz he's that smart I'd like to see something that deals with the physical aspects that way he would have to be concentrating all the time what I think happens when we create too many direct neurological links to the system or the illusion of direct neurological links to the system is that we create an environment in which you have to concentrate like Superman if you can reach over intuitively and pick up the cup and put it on the different flat surface that's brilliant but if you have to be thinking all the time deliberately where is my hand now what is it touching now I can't feel it touching anything is it touching something now then having anything interact with your hand just by touch becomes extremely dangerous as you're moving through this environment if you're stationary you can limit it in test and trials and demos you can limit it reach over here pick this up move it over there touch this window and drag it over here so it's no longer in the periphery of your attention surprise uh fans being off to the side does not mean it's in the periphery of your attention bring it into the center of your attention focus on it here deal with it here and put it back all of those things take some learning and some training but doing that while you walk down the street is going to get people killed to this day people using their phones should we wait for that sound to go away we'll just let it we'll let it ring okay there we go somebody's uncertain unfortunately this recording room is right next to a to with a um hair hand dryer right on the wall one of those great Dyson hair hand dryers literally on the wall behind me on the recording stre yeah it's one of those things we could get fixed I guess if if the sponsors throw enough money at us um and by sponsors I mean all of you out there who want to throw money at us except our students our students don't get to throw money at us everyone else or rather to jam um right so um I got so into the idea of dice and hair dryers hand dryers I'm thinking of the Dynamics of that and I got lost yeah so we're talking about um if you had too much control over the system and you didn't have there wasn't enough deliberate checks then you could start yeah and not just deliberate checks but imagine if anything you brushed against became active right you would have to be really careful when you walk around um that would take so much extra concentration that you would be putting everyone including yourself in danger by being out in the real world um I I walk with crutches these days and every day I have to call out to people who are walking right at me on a narrow sidewalk looking at their phone yeah and we've had phones for a long time often these are students who are doing this who grew up with phones who've never been without one and still they don't seem to understand that you cannot focus your attention on it while you're walking down the street you really won't like the videos of people walking around with these Apple Vision OSS is on I absolutely won't I've been seeing people when I when I I lived in Silicon Valley I saw people wearing different VR systems all the time um when I was at a a company I will not name though it rhymes with Facebook um I was involved in some testing of VR systems and uh you know really smart people doing really cool testing of products that absolutely should not come without a warning better yet they should come with some kind of metal sticking out of them about 8 ft in all directions that prevents them from getting through doors when they're wearing yeah so at least I I will say at least mea every time because it's annoying basically every time you set these things up you got to go through like a five minute safety demonstration um and because they really don't want to be sued yeah the they did have it with the quest one and two but for some reason it's not as much with the three but if you walked out of your play Space it would just turn black um but they turned that off now you can just walk around with it um but you can't really you still can't really interact with anything when you do that it'll still give you the vision but there's your window will you got to actively make an effort for it to come back Vision Pro I believe is less restrictive and it will just let you wander around anywhere until about well until just a few years ago there was a period of about a decade when according to the World Health Organization the number one cause of fatalities um uh other than natural fatalities the cause of uh of induced fatalities um amongst people aged 16 to 25 around the world was distracted driving caused by smartphones right um there's a couple of recent studies that have come out that have shown an absolutely horribly powerful correlation between the releasee of smartphones and the increase in self harm and suicides among young people the hardware and the software and the way that they combine with the human brain is killing people all the time and the companies involved know that and should take responsibility if they do or if they don't that's up to them and their their lawyers and their corporate whatevers but every individual who uses this technology ology should be aware of it at this point it it's like using chat GPT on an assignment I say to my students I don't care if you use it but if the quality is poor you're responsible for poor quality I also say to them the school of computing cares follow their guidelines the university rgu cares follow their guidelines but I don't think the quality is going to help them and I I think it is going to hurt them until they develop Mastery of the tool yeah right and very few of them are are interested in developing Mastery when they're using it to cheat on assignments no yeah that is you always just have a range of people who will take shortcuts anyway yeah so the same thing is happening cognitively with the use of the phone everyone knows when you're driving a car your phone should be turned off it should be in a different unavailable space everybody knows that and if you ask them they know that if they if you ask them if it's safer or not if they have it stuck under the seat that they can't reach they know that but if it rings while they're driving they look if it makes that pinging sound that says it's time to scroll all the brain chemicals get released telling you scroll scroll scroll look now scroll scroll and you do it because the part of your brain that is addicted to that the part of your brain that reacts to that without thinking reacts faster than the conscious warnings that you shouldn't do it this is how brains are built this is how humans function we operate on at least two different layers of depth uh the the Nobel Prize when wers Conan and tersi um say that it's too thinking fast and slow in the famous book um I believe it's three and that it's probably actually three that reflect five but you'd have to read my upcoming papers to understand that fundamentally the conscious part of your brain that understands math and safety warnings and things like that isn't in control of your body at almost any time at all and the people who are building interfaces for us to use treat it as though that part of your body that part of your brain is always in control until they accept that's not the case they'll be building products that will kill us by accident yes and that actually gives me a great argument to I I have a hunch and it's be more of a hunch for me in general that you have AR and VR and for me I've always thought VR is were we should pay attention to because in virtual reality of of course being you're completely in a virtual space and you should be fixed and you're interacting with that virtual space augmented reality the argument is oh no you should have the digital world with you the whole time whenever you walk around and do things right and now you've given me the solid argument that that's probably that is a bad idea because the real world is dangerous the real world if you're paying attention to some digital thing you can you people are we have we have weak meat bodies that can


easily be injured or Worse whereas if you're in a stuck space in virtual reality yeah sure there's still all the problems that of social media and all those potential problems but at least physically you know unless you're banging your hand on the wall you're you're going to be physically safe um so that's giving me a good argument of why I'm why I'm sticking to VR why I'm arguing VR is a direction not reality I'm glad to hear that personally I like both I I I believe in both I encourage both but for very specific things so I love the idea of augmented reality being something that helps me look things up when I need them yeah the idea that I could walk down the street and be reminded oh you know that person or oh you wanted to stop at that shop hey it's 3:00 don't forget it's 3 o'cl and here's a reminder of why that's important those kinds of things appearing before me that's great it's a design that matters exactly if they appear in the right way if they appear in a way that's in line with what Mark Weiser called calm technology right so if they inform me without intruding if they give me the option of paying attention to them when I'm ready to not when they want me to and of turning them off completely if I'm disinterested or recognizing when you shouldn't have attention at all the system smart enough to know you're driving a car it's not even going to ever give you anything absolutely absolutely or if you're um walking down a street it it should give you nothing except the little bit of a signal that says there's information here if you want to stop and think about it right and that's the key that's the way I talk about it when I'm teaching this to my students here is it should give you the option of accessing information it shouldn't throw information at you in current computer systems not not only do the computers constantly throw things at you because of a a faulty initial concept of what a recommender system is Right recommender system has become a controller system instead not only do we do that but with the increasing commercialization of the people using the products right not of the products but of the people using the products now you're getting ads and you're getting information you don't want intruding on your augmented reality so for example the augmented real reality I use the most is Google Maps I know it's not a fancy VR headset for sure but I I use it very often to check distances on things I I know for a fact if I'm measuring the distance in walking from one place to another I take the time that Google Maps gives me and I multiply it between two and four times and then I've got an accurate sense of timing because I'm not a 22-year-old recent college graduate in for me I actually I multiply by 7.75 nice you run a lot no I just walk fast nice yeah well we'll see how it is when you get to 60 and walk on crutches um the the the key point is and I I think you've Illustrated it nicely or we have together is that the information is there but we have to modify it both in our own ways in order for it to be useful people who take it as fact are making a mistake they're misunderstanding the use case it's like people who use Google to look up an answer when you're talking with them right and they say oh I can look that up and they get an answer from Google but is it right or is it just what Google is telling you because what Google tells you is almost always not right and we've we've discussed that before with students and and uh and together uh without students it it's the assumption that technology serves you is a false assumption the assumption that technology is designed to help you is a false assumption and it's dangerous to make those assumptions the um the fact that we can see this in something as unobtrusive as Google Maps that only lies to you when you ask it to tell you the truth uh means that it's going to be much more dangerous when people are wearing a headset 24 hours a day and walking out in the world and driving their cars or flying their jetpacks while wearing it unless we fundamentally change the precepts by which these things are designed yeah I think we have to go back to Mark weiser's calm technology I think we have to go to Baker and housing's peripheral interaction to better understand that or my own uh area of anthropology based Computing those things will help designers and engineers and corporate Executives maybe pull back the reins a little bit those steering wheel oriented reins a little bit and slow down some of the things that they can do to keep them in line with the things that people can use safely yeah to be fair I think at least there's some recogn of that in larger um companies um for example I mean Apple and Google Now their notification systems are getting much better and that I say better than they were so they they they will CL cluster things they recognize every notification isn't important and you're you're it's much easier to set up profiles now that don't interrupt you in specific use cases it's very easy to change them but the default is still bad yeah right and it doesn't have to be my paper about how to make popups unobtrusive was published 10 years ago and it's got strong evidence in it um uh my paper about sound alerts um published even earlier um showing actual brain activity that backs up what I said and there's other papers that do the same gomic for instance and others have written about the fact that there is neurological data there is neurophysiological data and there's sociological data that backs all this stuff up the fact that the companies are 10 years behind the curve in introducing a modum of customization I think is still them working in the wrong direction it's not that they should make it easier to stop these things from killing you they should make it so that they can't kill you and give you a little bit of leeway about how much they can interrupt you yeah and that's where oh that that can go into a whole other conversation and discussion about where government should probably step him because it's you're probably going to make less money if you can't interrupt anybody whenever you want but then that's another pathway I've got something just else I want to throw at you i' just like to say one thing in line with it government maybe but the corporations that are employing people who are using this software I think have a duty to do something about it as well not to avoid lawsuits from the people or something as logical as that especially from an American perspective we know for a fact that workplace interruptions are costing the vast majority of worker time with white collar workers the average office worker according to wellestablished studies from more than a decade ago the average office worker works less than an hour of productive work a day because of interruptions from email and phone um if you make your emails less interruptive by turning off popups entirely yeah M mine are all I have everything set to pull no but you had to do that yeah if you were an employee of mine I would say are all of those turned off right if I were an employee of yours I'd say hey boss I turned off all of the stuff that interrupts me during working hours right just to let you know why on Earth isn't every company that's using Microsoft products demanding that instead they're just giving up employee hours and the vast majority seven out of eight employee hours are wasted because of interruptions from software and hardware and wetwear anyway sorry go an economic reason to do as well not just safety so this is another thought this is where I I think this will come and people are already almost there so when you have Snapchat and Instagram and all these different tools people will record videos of themselves to other people and there are very sophisticated AI algorithms that will make you look better or into anything you want the way I see this going it's going to be the other way around soon is maybe in the next decade or so where oh you don't like how your spicee looks don't worry you can change their filter on your headset what on Earth is that going to do to humans where if you're walking around you can just have a complete let's say a disn ification of almost living in a Pixar world it's still reality and maps to reality pretty well but everyone looks perfect or or whatever you want your world to be boom that's your world there are people in the world who wear small cameras on their shoes so they can film up People's Clothing there are people in the world who hide cameras in public restrooms or private restrooms or shower rooms so they can film people when they're uh unknowingly exposing themselves to this these people are jackasses they are criminals they are horrible by almost every measure of human decency across almost every culture that's ever existed and they still do that I think that what you're talking about is just going to expand our definition of what is indecent if you believe it's appropriate to talk with someone while seeing someone else in their place then you're a jackass if you want to show someone else in your own place that's a different kind of problem but if you're deliberately ignoring who and what someone is in order to make them fit your non-scripted idea of what someone should be that's that's horrible that's just horrible yeah I I don't I don't disagree I'm just speculating of where because it's possible it is it's definitely possible won't take much to get there um from what we've already got if you're willing to use the technology that currently exists and exert a few 100 hours of programming time I think you could probably break it yourself yeah and I just don't think you should no and then I guess a system which you could imagine though at least is then yeah okay your own avatars you change your own however everyone else is going to perceive you now we do that anyway in video games a lot and people enjoy that a lot and that I don't know I I would need to look into the literature of how good or bad it is for people but I know from at least anecdotal evidence that a lot of people enjoy that they like to go into different way and be something completely different I think it's fantastic therapeutically if you'll let me put on my psychologist hat for a minute it's fantastic therapeutically for people to be able to go and have exciting interactions with other people like exciting uh heart rate increasing interactions with other people um in a different Persona I think it's fantastic you can be someone else you can do things that don't come back on you in your day-to-day life um and yet you can revisit the best of them with your colleagues once you're done or your friends or by yourself thinking back on the great gameplay moments that this other you this Persona did that's wonderful uh everybody should experience that I I used to play D and D as a kid and it's the same thing yeah it's it's it's the best thing in the world to be able to step out of yourself and do that I think any therapist would agree with that which means I'm probably wrong and there will be therapists who see this little video clip and say oh what an idiot um yes yes I am um that doesn't mean that I think that those personas should replace you in day-to-day life I'm very happy to play a game with thar the level 17 Barbarian uh by my side I absolutely do not want to be sitting in a restaurant trying to enjoy or dervs with my date when thar the Barbarian walks in right thar has to learn when to be be barbaric and when not to be yeah yeah yeah the real world is probably shouldn't let go over the real world yet um or mix the two complet again that's that's where mixed reality and augmented reality is like there should be clear confines of what we do with it that's something I don't think people are seriously talking about and keeping the digital digital world specifically separate from the real world in specific well defined ways and I think I think characterization is is one there yeah because we don't we don't let actors well I mean this is where you have some actors that like to go method and then it's a little bit weird for everyone else can be work great in the context of their shooting a film and they're going to be a better actor for the film but if they continue that for the rest of their lives then it's a little bit odd and then you become that person whatever but sure we don't we probably don't want a world where everyone's I do we I don't know but then yeah we if if the character that they are portraying and that they get lost in is a philanthropist who loves everyone on Earth more than themselves and cares for others and does acts of kindness at every extent yes please I'd like to see seven or eight billion of us try that but if there are other motivations involved that will supersede their other otherwise um acceptable behavior then no uh Dave Chappelle tells the story about wanting to meet Jim Carrey and being so excited because he just loves the guy the guy's such a great comedian big fan when they were introduced to each other when the meeting finally happened Carrie was doing method acting uh for the the Roland the man of the Moon um and he was Andy Kaufman he wasn't Jim Carrey right Chappelle describes it brilliantly and uh this is a lovely case for augmented reality please go and watch the video of him describing that it's quite funny and sad at the same time um the point is what you're saying is backed up by many other people even the occasional celebrity yeah yeah right indulging in the character too much and then but then I guess at least of it's say visual augmentation we do that anyway as humans we walk and we even change personas anyway quite a lot as well you're a different person when you talk to your spouse as opposed to your children as opposed to your um when I'm a lectur I'm a different Persona like we have different personas that we slip into depending on the context but I sure there might be a Nar there's always a story through thread of who you are but I can be a very different person in different contexts sometimes in the stories Shiva is a nurturer and sometimes Shiva is the destroyer of worlds and it depends on the mantle that Shiva is wearing and it's the same for all of us um I forget who it was and that's embarrassing too but we are multitudes right we are many many people at once that's part of being a person but that doesn't mean that you should stop being the other ones while you're being one when you are being a dad to your children a loving caring dad to your children you should still be the man who is a passionate lover of your spouse right you should still be the man who is a a a grateful caretaker for elderly grandparents and a considerate and in ENT uh lecturer for your students don't let those overlap control them yourself but I think you would be better at all of them or rather you would be better at each of them if to some degree you keep all of them in mind for sure I mean yeah I wouldn't disagree with that at all and I think that's how we all live our lives anyway but my hope my point being is that we we can modulate and fluctuate a little bit and one my other point I was getting to is at least visually we do change our appearance for different context scenarios we have clothes since we augment clothed for various different reasons um you go to a funeral you're a specific attire to fit into a a whole meaningful thought practice behind it sometimes it's completely functional but a lot of it is also communication to other human beings 100% that's that's why we uh adjust our appearance dayto day or at least it should be why there's lot of other reasons uh we do it for virtue signaling we do it for uh signaling membership in certain uh Moes or or Societies or subcultures um if you're wearing Doc Martin uh lace high lace up boots that used to mean something 40 years ago it means something different now but in both cases there is strong meaning attached to it right so to to Riff on this point and thinking about modulation of visuals to personify whatever you want with whatever meaning you want turns out when you put people conscious human beings in a complete virtual space where they can do whatever the hell they want you end up with VR chat and if you ever go into VR chat it is hyper stimulus crazy ridiculous anemy figures mostly all over the place or people just completely embodying a fictional character of some sort you'll see superheroes or video game characters wandering around but a lot of the interesting stuff is actually people completely creating custom things and it's you know hyper stimulus a lot of it is hyper stimulus it's like taking human forms exaggerating them in any ways you can I I assume you can probably imagine and Super Hyper colorful skin glowing and flowing and all the super interesting weird things and that it's interesting that that space is a still a human consciousness but in a Detachment from physical restraints of clothes and whatnot and they can just live literally become whatever um I think you were talking was was it you there were mentioning that you had a a colleague who was doing some sort of artistic um thing in VR and they were trying to be CL for decades yeah yeah if if you're talking about the thing I think you're talking about that was uh my uh my old friend Liz solo who's a punk uh in Newland who created a virtual environment a couple of decades ago and uh it's been populated by artists ever since doing incredible wonderful communicative things I haven't been there in a very long time but the last time I was there one of the issues she was dealing with really masterfully was policing so that it didn't become a place where people were made uncomfortable in ways that she was uncomfortable with right she wanted people artists specifically to push boundaries but that doesn't mean yeah right being horrible it just means pushing boundaries um this is one of my concerns about these things uh social behavior has declined and it's it's easy for folks to lose sight of that or to make it a soapbox issue but social interactions have become less polite over the last couple of decades uh people have become more confrontational especially in the northern half of the world and especially in the western half of the northern half of the world people are um are they in person though or is more in our digital spaces in person it's happened and that's my concern we could see decades ago that this was happening in uh the web that anonymity gave people permission to be less concerned about the social constraints of interaction and some folks went full-fledged horrible on it and others didn't lately there's talk that the social media algorithms feeding you what they think you want so you'll spend more time scrolling of Crea further extreme versions of that right it's just uh inter overlapping wave patterns right of course it's going to create extreme distinction that's just math um so it's entirely predictable for the companies that have caused it but the effect of that on social behavior IRL has been a decrease in Social mores and spikes of extremist Behavior more than before so um I don't have the data to prove that this is true in terms of people attacking others but I believe that it's true so I believe the data is there I do have the data to prove not my own other people's data to prove that people harming themselves has increased sure there's a caveat to that um narrative now um that it's because people are getting siloed and that's getting pushing towards extremism there's um I don't know who's looked into this specifically I learned it from a kro KAG video however you been that on YouTube um the argument more now is it's actually not the case we're actually exposed to more opinions than ever but the human reaction is to do categorization of us and them so because you're exposed to more and more and more different types of people you're like they're not me they're not me they're not me they're not me so then you actually end up trying to find who are you more and you otherize the other people cuz you're exposed to them more and you don't have a relationship with them or anything um so the example that they give is at least in small towns and communities you all sure someone might be a little bit different to you but you all have a narrative like oh but we are this family A Name Behind or we are this tribe or we are this so you always have a a narrative thread and then even in as we grew in Civilization and your networks are bigger and you have larger times it's like well we have the football team oh well I'm from here I'm from here I have that but then we're in the digital space it's just lots of varing different and there's no there's these there's these narrative tools that we have like nationality race culture blah blah blah to to to help categorize Us and Them and the argument now is that it's actually and it's actually trackable you you are exposed to more opinions I I agree from that perspective exactly with what you're saying the problem is that that's not the perspective I was speaking from sure so uh if you take a look at people who uh grew up in a small town 200 years ago the odds are they would only meet one or two people in their lives who weren't from that small town so um increased communication increased potential for communication even before the internet age exponentially increased their exposure to different ideas and different people absolutely and this continues in the internet age the fact that you you can uh accidentally or intentionally watch a newscast in French with English subtitles gives you the chance of seeing the same world news you already watched from a completely different perspective that kind of thing is absolutely true you are aware that there are political parties you disagree with and social parties that you disagree with and occasionally a house party you disagree with you're aware that these things are going on but the medium through which you perceive them does most of that filtering for you so if you're on Facebook and you're being exposed to a thousand ideas almost all of them are being exposed to you by people who are already on your short list of contacts who are communicating with you about how terrible this is and how other these groups are already so in in human social Consciousness there's a limit to how many people you can think of as as number yeah someone's name number yeah so the there there's a limit to how many people you can think of as being part of your network right and the folks within that number and it's a much smaller number that you actively consider not that you can conceptualize of but that you actually consider dayto day oh well Fred told me the other day and you know that can mean something very weak or that can mean something very strong and for the the people who are really followers of what Fred has to say it stops being Fred's told me something the other day and it starts being something that you know innately those people are doing all of that filtering for you and if you spend any time in the kind of communities you're describing or in any other online community you'll see that there is a tendency for people to go towards the most generic basic fundamental splits as quickly as possible that othering is pre-filtration that's already done so I I would say that the the argument you're making is true from one perspective but I think in Practical terms in the internet the the opposite is true I think most of us are exposed to a whole lot of stuff filtered by a very small number of


ideas this is my concern with all of the technology we've been talking about when the possibility of what augmented reality could be is filtered through the commercial concerns of a few billionaires when the possibility of what virtual reality could be is focus is through the monoculture of a Silicon Valley based company um or Beijing or t or or Taiwan or or Shanghai based company when it's and it's also it's not just the companies it's also the business models they employ right right but the business model is huge the cultural cues and standards of the people working in that business if they don't have a diverse crowd around them to challenge them on that successfully right then you end up with these very narrow focuses like the uh the the sexist uh hiring AI at Amazon like the uh racist uh facial recognition software almost everywhere um these racial biases these cultural biases these genderist biases these class biases all of these things are being built into software unwittingly because the teams building them are unwittingly focused in that way what we have to do is we have to inverse if you will or invert the kind of algorithms that are causing this extremism by trying to only feed you stuff you're already going to agree with and instead make it when you go on social media you only see stuff that you disagree with I mean and I worry I worry there actually is that um yeah but not through the filter of the people who are telling you why you should disagree no I'm no um I again from at least firsthand experience if I if I scroll through my Facebook I will quite often be just showing while things are like whatever um that is how they be you don't often go to Facebook right this is why so the algorithm is still trying to figure out which stream to start deflecting you along so the stuff that you like is going to tell it focus more on this extreme area but it has to feed you Extremes in order to feed you into an extreme yeah it just has to feed you a variet it depend this is interes cuz I I still use it because I have to every now and then because I promote a lot of things through and it's very useful for promotion of local community stuff it's actually still it's actually the best tool right now to do that I wouldn't tell anyone to not use Facebook except all of you don't use Facebook it's it's actually to be fair it is literally the best tool for online local communities at the moment um I mean physically local yeah it's great I've known lots of people use it that way since I worked there I don't use it at all no but um then you have different tools that we're going into social media but you have something like uh for me X whatever formerly known as Twitter uh it's completely wild chaos now I going it only takes two posts to go like I'm out here for me it's just ridiculous Instagram works for me I I like it it it's probably because the algorithms figured me out it shows me a lot of cool art of really cool digital artists and that's the majority of what I see same whatever their and it does seem to me that all I don't want to be giving too much credit to meta but it does seem to me they actually look they're there's still a million faults with them but it does seem to me at least they obviously care a bit more than Elon Musk well don't forget the cont the conditions under which they acquired that product right they were supposed to maintain it as it was and treat the uh the membership the same way that they were being treated before with oculus as well yeah and they've violated both of those contracts um so um again i' I'd love it if meta were to clean up its act ethically I'd love that I think it would be good for the world but um interestingly I've um I don't expect a quick side tangent of meta they they have a some of the best designers in the world for sure the problem when you're on Facebook is the design is made to show you adverts and because the design is that it can be frustrating and clunky and horrible they have a developer platform where it's like workplace developer platform that I saw for the first time recently and where they don't have incentive of ads it's just a really nice system um and it's like oh this is what I remember when Facebook used to be that before the ads came in it's like all they were actually caring about was making interface and not trying to shove ads down your face every single second yeah I I also have fond memories of being able to communicate with friends and family uh who I hadn't seen across space in time I think that's that's wonderful and I agree that the intrusive advertising hidden as other things and subliminal lied as much as possible is an evil um but that's not the worst of it the worst of it is the unethical way they've treated people that has caused children to self harm that has caused adults to self harm that has uh popularized uh brutalist behavior in so many different ways made visible horrible behavior in so many different ways and I've heard the arguments that they can't police all of it but if you had a yard full of dogs and a small percentage of them were were biting everyone who went by your house the police wouldn't say nice job trying to control those dogs they'd say if you can't control the 1% that's being violent then we're going to take away all of them and that's what I think has to happen if if not explicitly then in some other way these companies have to be held accountable for the worst behavior they are facilitating the same way that you or I would be held accountable for the worst behavior we are facilitating and I love the fact that we've gone all the way around to social media but I just want to say that's the result of talking about HCI human computer interaction isn't just the design of interfaces it's all of the interaction we do with and through computerized technology absolutely and we're talking about potential interactions with whole Virtual Worlds I mean when I'm talking about VR we're really only talking about a a three-dimensional representation of our world but we're already doing that anyway it's just World inverted commas is just a social social network it's still a world of sorts it's still a place with humans communicating within it and the interfaces are slabs in our pockets um and if you don't mind me saying something that I've become rather known for saying uh I think it's time now to drag it out our bodies are the interface with which we deal with the computerized technology our bodies are the interface with which we deal with the world the sensory information you get from the world around you is in transmission almost no different from the sensory information you get from a device so I don't think that uh I don't think that there's a big difference between virtual reality and reality in terms of the processing that goes on in order to accept it I'm I'm behind you on that um yeah I all of this for us right now is a simulation of a completely underlying reality that we really have no grasp of um there are wavelengths of light flying through here that we can't perceive there are fields of energy that we can't even comprehend just magnetism I have no sense of magnetism in my body for example you do it's just very small yeah yeah it's true um so in that sense all of this is what we do anyway and then sure whole everything that we have words or I have a word for this but it's that word is a concept in itself and all of social media is exact same as a concept of streams of data that come in so yeah completely completely agree to with you there um so yeah good good good for me at least to conceptualize there in my mind um because it's sometimes easy to think that it's its own different place but yeah sure it's almost just as real as everything else but there is an easy way to turn it on off you just turn your phone off true in terms of that Network yes in terms of the other networks we use and that we become accustomed to it's much harder you turn your phone off you still have a plan of when you're going to turn it back on I I know very very few people in the world uh and I know quite a few people but I know very very few who turned off their phone without the plan to turn it on uh on a regular basis or at all yeah I only know a couple of people who have had smartphones used them every day and then decided I will never use a smartphone again um I know almost no one who's entirely removed from the internet I know very few people who are entirely removed from social media um these are things we could turn off but we don't in the same way that all of us could give up eating meat and help save the planet that way um because it would be great for carbon emissions um but we don't don't all of us could eat only local food and it would be great for carbon emissions but we don't um there's a whole lot of things we could do we could all become more considerate of the most needy in our communities right but we don't The Logical things we should do in order to live better lives are not the things we do because the conscious thinking thoughtful reading math using part of our brain is not the part that's in charge of our bodies y the um the term I like best to describe all that as our evolutionary baggage nice nice I call it the Proto prmium living in our head yeah and I agree that bit of evolutionary baggage is well it it's like the tail wagging the dog it's the it's the baggage pulling the person along with it so I mean well I'm going to try and wrap it up in a bow excellent as for the future of human computer interaction interface us our conscious brains interfacing with these whole new platforms and systems that we're developing who knows it's going to be a well well West it's going to change us as much as we change it hopefully we can be cognizant of how it's changing us and course correct when it's going down the wrong Pathways and design better system so that when we if one day we're fully in there and a completely new Digital World of sorts that is as real and interesting as this one or more real and interesting we're doing it for the betterment of conscious experience and having less suffering overall now that's okay let me not go down a pathway of just stick in your headset on inject dopam meity you now we're going into Brave New World avoiding Brave New World in the best way possible um we're we're still looking after the planet and everything else I guess if I could I think we haven't disagreed much and so I'm going to disagree with you at the end here now um to me the future of VR and AR isn't interacting consciously to me the future is interacting unconsciously when these systems are designed to support us unconsciously in ways that we can then consciously decide to use or not use right so not making us part of their unconscious structure but making them part of our unconscious structure then they will be tools that can be used by all of Humanity but not until then because we live in the real world like you were saying and like you said the real world is dangerous so anything that's making demands of our conscious attention is going to get us killed yes I wouldn't disagree with that for some reason I'm I tried so hard to disagree with you for some reason that thought though I'm drawn to think of um no yil Harris who put a spin on wheat and saying that wheat cultivated us um we do if you looked at from an abstract level of space you'd be like these apes are doing a lot to help this version of grass grow all over its Planet yeah yeah there's a great cartoon from the 1950s that did the same thing yeah with cars yep Y and then so this this whole digital world that we're creating and now things that start talking back to us are we are we their tools anyway that we that's could be a whole other um we we'll we'll leave that to be continued excellent I think we've uh We've hit on a bunch of cool things that could come up later and I hope we have a chance to do it for sure for sure if you've been here for this long thank you thank you very much for listening we really appreciate it um we were going to do this either way me and John sit there and talk like this either way we thought we might as well record it if you found it interesting please let us know um because we'd like to hear that and if there's any ways you think we can improve it also please let us know we um we had another one before which didn't record but um the summary of that one was it feedback is good so if you have any feedback please please do let us know yeah please even if you didn't enjoy this that's also iterative feedback and we'd like that um as uh as the Austrian psychologist Victor Frankle said uh you can't control what happens to you in the real world but you can control how you respond to it so if if you want to give us some feedback that we can respond to we can choose to listen to it or


not okay thank you thank you very much goodbye bye bye