Gadgetory

good afternoon and welcome to farsighted CNET's show about what is just around the corner and beyond I'm your host Eric Mack and I'm joined in the studio's there in beautiful San Francisco at cnet by Jeff Sparkman the man dealing to a poker table full of ghosts and Stephen beach him behind the controls there's Cameron that one and so we're here today to talk about the year that was the year that's almost over oh he's 16 you know recently there's been a lot of ink and pixels declaring 2016 the year of humanity's discontent and it's tough to deny in the realm of geopolitics at least when we're talking about pre awful conflicts and places like Syria acts of terrorism worldwide the discontented casting votes for brexit and Donald Trump and others feeling high anxiety over their victories but look the world went on and so did some important work in the areas of science and innovation in fact if you sweep the ugly parts of 2016 under the rug and then check the place out I swear it's not too shabby what really makes 2016 in my view is the view it overlooks the future which believe it or not is much more bright and exciting than it appeared 12 months ago not everyone there the table believes agrees with me but today we're going to talk about some of the events of 2016 they will have a lasting and positive impact 5 10 even a hundred years into the future we'll also discuss a few other things that we're looking forward to in 2017 and in fact let's start right now with the one thing in 2016 that we're actually still looking forward to which is rogue one a Star Wars story but first let's say hey to the guys it's a ship of fools here with the men behind the controls how's it going to Stephen Jeff good good hola yeah we uh we actually had our to our to regular co-hosts are sick today so we hope you feel better Kelsey Ambani this a bummer that you're not here it isn't that what up the years and they're just saving up energy for for rogue one tonight and sorrow pretty sure that and we also want to say hey to everyone else who's watching on a live stream or YouTube we've got the chat rooms open it's a live stream / Cena / far-sighted and if you go to youtube / Cena you can find the farsighted link there if you want to get into the chat rooms also a tweet at me at Eric CMAC ericc ma ck I'll be monitoring that if you got any questions or comments and we'll try to get that in but so first let's start with a rogue one a few people at cnet have already seen it premieres tonight but our own rich trenholm over in London has actually already submitted his review do we have that to start the discussion I'm gonna roll it right now a long time ago in a galaxy far far away there was a movie called Star Wars what we didn't know until now is that around the back of Star Wars chest out of sight another movie was playing out that movie was robe one rebels on you shake the tree row 1 the first Star Wars spin-off takes us through a host of new worlds and introduces us to a bunch of new faces but it's intertwined with the saga we know as these previously unknown minor characters and bit part players do their bit against the evil empire stealing your plans to the dreaded Death Star and we all know how that turned out the ragtag band of new characters led by plucky Felicity Jones includes the hilarious alan tudyk as straight-talking droid k2s oh and affecting donnie yen as a warrior monk with a touch of the jedi about him together they take on Ben Mendelssohn's ambitious Imperial bureaucrat in a gritty dust Street tale that loudly takes place at street level somewhere around the corner from the original movies as rogue one rubs up against their new hope we do meet a few old faces some of which work better than others but it's pretty liberating to watch a blockbuster in which you know there's no sequels or franchises or civil wars to come and so you genuinely don't know which characters are going to make it but I despite knowing roughly how it's all going to turn out that are a lot of thrills to be had director Gareth Edwards dives into the classic Star Wars toy box for I puffing pulse pounding action that dials the plastic series up to 11 the climax is electrifying proving you don't need Skywalker's to tell a spectacular Star Wars story facing the dark side at street level rogue one is a force to be reckoned with cool all right so there you have it so i know i'm planning on going tomorrow night with my family for the first showing here in New Mexico what do you guys have planned you're going to go see it you're excited what's the vibe I'm definitely going to go see it but probably not this weekend is this plugin I'm just going to be too busy but I'm going to try to see in la actually when I'm down there next week so I'm excited but you know what a lot of people are doing is that they're rewatching a new hope before they go see rug one because there's a lot of information in a new hope that's that comes out in rogue one so they're kind of like prep you know they're like just getting a refresher on the night of hope on the first under well it's a third episode 3 right so I would recommend if you're going to watch rogue one this weekend maybe try watching a new hope and hopefully you get an original version not one that Luke is messed with right what about you gee I figured it you're gonna go see it a little to the east there uh yeah I'm gonna go see it tonight uh at ten are you excited don't I look excited yeah it is kind of this weird thing like you know a couple friends last night we're like well you know now that um the Disney's bought the franchise it's like we're gonna get hammered you know every year or even more often with like these new these new movies these new parts of the franchise and it's like the question if is that gonna dilute it and you know degrade the quality or is it awesome and i gotta say so far I think it's been pretty awesome episode 7 I was pretty impressed with and I'm I'm hearing so far you know really positive reviews of this one yeah same here I don't think it's the degraded because since the first Star Wars came out there's just been books and TV shows and all signs it's not like they kept this quiet at any point yeah yeah totally so I don't I don't see how you know having more Star Wars movies gonna be a negative effect on the franchise I think it's actually I'm pretty shocked that they got this one out this soon yeah because the other one just came out it was this year right the force awakens moves last year that was around the end of last year I see okay okay for some reason that was like still fresh to me like it happened this year but out the new Christmas tradition yeah yeah yeah Star Wars movie every peasant worry so so yeah I mean I don't think it's gonna hurt I think it's just gonna help people love to write about it and talk about it so we're here talking about it yeah I mean I've tried to avoid I mean other than seeing you know a trailer here and there I've tried not to really learn too much about it same here just so I can go in I don't I like I don't care about spoilers and stuff like that all that much um I just figured you know let's see how much of the movie I can actually see in the theater rather than beforehand just you know to see if I can do it and and I'm hoping that when force awakens came out there was a meme or wasn't a mean but it was like a mean message going around YouTube and other places which give away the plot I got that on Twitter last year I got it unlike a youtube comment yeah and I was trying to avoid it so thoroughly and I saw that and he's like stuck in my head and then when the movie was unfolding I was like oh that that hole was right Yes No yeah so let's just hope nothing like that happens for this film well now i'm waiting for like countdown to somebody doing it in the champ I know it'll look at the chat olga's anything I wouldn't blame people I like what rich had to say to about you know it'll be an interesting experience in this this is kind of like a side story you know we don't have the entire like linear episodes one through seven to where you gotta kind of okay well now we know what's going on here it actually is like almost like a fresh look at the star wars universe so it'll be interesting to be able to come at this the entire universe kind of with fresh eyes instead of trying to figure out like you know okay well where does that fit into the whole thing because I you know Game of Thrones in the walking dead have melted my brain enough trying to keep track of but yeah characters and other things totally nice to just be introduced toward a whole new set of characters that don't necessarily have to worry how much how they fit into everything even though there's a little of that yeah yeah and also um this one's more like I hear it's a little darker which is cool you know it's like more war mm-hmm it's a little heavier I guess compared to the other ones so I'm kind of looking forward to that like a grittier one and or droid carrying information who knows we don't know right let's review the theme there is a woman a powerful woman which is the Star Wars theme so that's cool you about alan tudyk is one of the droids right so that's cool as well yeah yeah totally but you know it but what we really need after 2016 is something a little darker right Jeff yeah cuz you know we haven't had enough darkness yeah so so for everyone who doesn't know I mean you've probably seen there's been tons of stuff around the internet over the last few weeks don't know what triggered it but that about how 2016 hasn't been maybe the the best year in recent memory and Jeff and I have been going back and forth a little bit on you know our feelings about 2016 and I certainly understand you know the cinnamon about how maybe it hasn't been the best but you know I'm determined to see this glass glass half full and maybe convinced Jeff and another I'm not really sure where you stand Stephen that it's that it's better than it then it appears and so to kick that off we're going to talk about some of the good parts of 2016 for the rest of the show and some stuff we're looking forward to in 2017 I if you want to talk about some of the worst parts you might find something on the internet about that elsewhere but let's start with uh with this this video that I've got there Stephen and this is a I'll set it up real quick this is just some audio of a conversation that I had a couple weeks ago with John Sculley who's the former CEO of apple and a pepsi before that and he's the guy who was ahead of Apple like in between the two Steve Jobs ringing yeah he's jeff daniels in the movie so in in like in this millennium he's basically bit doing like a bunch of investing into startups that are working on building a better future in a lot of ways in particularly in the healthcare field so we had a long talk recently and here's just one thing he had to say about where he thinks the future is going to take us pretty soon least in terms of health care I was talking to good friend of mine Jeffrey lane from DARPA and I said so kids who were born today now what can they reasonably expect their lifespan will be he said reasonably 125 years and then these are kids who are already born and so by 2050 you know they're going to be in there they're going to be just early middle aged know and they may be you know 50 55 years old maybe we won't even call that middle-aged then who knows and I think that the good news is that the possibility of regenerating organs being able to find ways in which blind people can see deaf people from here now all of those types of problems are going to be increasingly solvable so okay one of the things that's John's go again one of the things i want to point out is within weeks of he and i having that conversation a group of scientist at the Salk Institute that using the techniques techniques he's referring to they actually did they were able to edit genes to make a blind animals see again wow this is this is stuff that's happening right now and you know that the thing he said about this generation of kids being able to comfortably expect to live 125 I mean I'm kind of a techno optimist but that seems really optimistic to me but all three of us here were all fathers we all have kids and he's talking about our kids and so this is stuff that has really kind of began to come into its own gain some momentum in the last year so it's okay it's okay Jeff see i'll give it to you yeah sure okay i'm doing do we want to live to be a hundred twenty-five that's a question that yeah I mean I feel like I'd actually yeah that was a those another part of our conversation is so you know he went he went on to say and a lot of what he's talking about is using gene editing techniques and which called what's called precision medicine which is basically kind of combining big data and and health right and using kind of algorithmic techniques that run a lot of our life now to get a better sense of you know how our genes work and there's something called crisper cast 9 which is the weird scientific name for it but it's basically an enzyme that can be used to edit genes and that's what they used to be able to make the blind animals see again and so those are the kind of techniques he's talking about these are technologies that are really coming into their own right now and using that you know he was saying he expected cancer to be salt solved in 10 to 15 years and then once cancer falls that frees up a whole bunch of resources money resources sign scientists researchers to then attack other diseases like Alzheimer's dementia Parkinson's and that he saw these maladies just starting to fall like dominoes and that's where you have kids today then being able to live much longer to basically the lifespan of the human body which like a lot of people think the body could live to like 125 and then it just like that's really kind of the edge of it and so but a big part of the conversations okay well what do we do with all these people who are around living for everything yeah in terms of like that's a lot of people to manage and kind of a burden on the society so that's actually something he's working on I've got a profile of John Sculley that's coming out in the next week or two or we'll get into that a lot more but that's just you know these genetic techniques and what they can mean for health and for curing disease and for having a higher quality of life health wise you know that's just one of the things that really began to move forward in in 2016 something else that you know we've covered a lot on Cena is how much further we're going out into space but and that by suppose before we get into that we should answer your question which is do we want to live completely dogma 125 or not and I don't know yeah I I don't think I want to be that old because I'm gonna be frail and won't be able to do anything for myself and it's just gonna be uncomfortable so there's only so many books to read only you know so many shows to binge watch I mean unless like we all have like robotic you know Bionic bodies that can carry us around and do maybe like if my brain is still active like in a jar like that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles character you know maybe but it just doesn't seem like you have much quality of life if you're 125 years old you know and I'm saying that as somebody you know at my age and horribly out of shape so there is that I mean just like the thing that I was actually curious about with the the how they restored vision in mice I'm wondering if you were to restore vision to somebody who had not like ever seen before how does the brain know how to interpret the information that is now coming like would they that's true like you're restoring the vision but is is there like a way for that to be processed so they can really see or is it just going to be kind of just data that's going into the brain it's a good question right I mean I mean that becomes another question perhaps for technology to solve any and I mean you know like a lot of a lot of the people like um you know around Silicon Valley like everything's kind of an engineering problem right and and so you know there must be a way to use technology to you know like if you have somebody who like they've had their vision restore but for the first time and it's like kind of freaking out some of their the capabilities of their brain will probably there's a way to like put some sort of like a limiter or a transmitter into the brain that can then interpret that in a way that is safe and and keeps them sane so i guess it really comes down to you know do you have the faith in technology to actually solve all these things or is that like a bridge too far yeah it's yeah it's it's really it's it's really interesting to think about like all the problems that would need to be solved it's not just the one big problem there's all these ancillary problems that you'd have to account for as well yeah is it going to its grill affect my bart ride home because right now i can barely get on the part and like no boy standing all i had to stand like 45 minutes the other day all for like an hour ride there's just too many people on the planet right now if and not enough infrastructure to everybody's land longer that just means more jackass is going to be in front of me on the train exactly the problem exactly so fortunately if the planet i think we'd all agree or you're saying is is getting pretty crowded but fortunately there's people this year who made some pretty big announcements in terms of moving beyond this planet which you know i think a lot of people see as the next step and I know we're talking far out here but I mean something else that happened in 2016 several things happen actually to make kind of the Star Trek universe and even the star wars universe although that's a lot more focused on trade wars but the star trek universe I mean honestly it suddenly seems a little less far out after 2016 and I mean nobody signing up for Starfleet just yet but our understanding of the universe actually expanded quite a bit in 2016 and for the we had probably the biggest highest quality sorry about that what's that sorry I just screwed up the body I think keep going keep going okay yeah I can't hear the audio from the the clips there ok but yeah so we had you know we discovered Proxima be this year which is an exoplanet that's around Proxima Centauri which is the closest star to earth so this is literally like the closest planet beyond our solar system that could it could exist there's no other stars closer than this one and on top of everything there's a chance that it could be habitable it is in the habitable zone where liquid water should be possible so I mean this happened over the summer and there's already plans to try to send some really tiny ships there you know they would actually just be like a postage shan't the postage stamp-sized ship that would go like a fifth the speed of light to take really close up pictures of it see how habitable it could really be so that happened in 2016 and then also speaking of getting to a place where humans might actually be able to get to in our lifetime there's a guy you may have heard of his name's Elon Musk who's really serious about going to Mars dead serious he's dead serious about it and you've probably got some of the video of this you know he wants to send a million people to Mars by the end of this century pretty pretty darn ambitious but he came out in September with a detailed plan for it how to get a million people there we'll see if that moves forward but it sure looks like there's going to least be some humans landing on Mars within the next 10 to 20 years for sure so you know we're moving towards reducing the overcrowding problem that you guys are seeing and just one more thing in terms of space travel and this is probably the craziest thing of all but in 2016 we also saw something called the electromagnetic drive or the atom drive and this is something that nASA has been working on we've been hearing about it for a couple years but it's kind of been this thing you hear on like spaceflight forums and it was like kind of a sketchy story for a while yeah well this year in 2016 the M drive past peer review and is headed towards actually being tested in space and just to give you some context of what the M drive is a lot of people think it could lay the foundation so in other words a first baby step towards a warp drive like the actual warp drive from Star Trek so and again this thing maybe they'll test it and it won't pass the test and it could still be a fantasy because it basically technically defies the laws of physics like an impossible drive yeah yeah but hey so a lot either way whether it pans out or not a lot of progress made towards getting past or solving our little overpopulation problem so so so promising stuff there so if we do live to 125 you know then maybe we'll actually have a place to go by then yeah that's you guys be signing up to go to Mars at age 10 one you know I would I mean if they if they prove that it's there's a safe way to get there I'm going to survive and I could get there and come back I don't want to stay there but if they can prove prove and show that there's a safe way to get there I will I would love I want to just take one of those Jeff Bezos Blue Origin ships just go to the edge of space and come back I mean why not like that be a blast you know other piggybacking off your space talk we also had this first SpaceX rocket land itself in the ocean on the eye on the water drone which I have a cool video of and also there's a company called arcs packs who builds those hoverboards their actual like electromagnetic hoverboards not like the cheesy ones that you see with the kids riding on with the wheels but they have been working with NASA to build a tractor beam so that's another thing that they press release this year that we didn't really discuss a whole lot but they've working with NASA to build a tractor beam that would that would literally send a signal to like a satellite or some some object in space and and grab it and be able to pull it in or push things out that's another thing to look at arcs packs they are there in what do you call it oh here's the here's actually a headline I believe they're in their ribs ya los gatos oh whoa Scott it's okay yeah so they are working on a tractor beam so I mean all these things that we see in you know in sci-fi movies are actually happening because yeah I mean art dictates life you know like an artist comes up with an idea let's make this tractor beam let's make space time travel well scientists see that stuff when they say let's try to make that for real then and 2016 seems like the year that a lot of these scientists came up with actual concepts that can do these sort of things you know so it's 2016 was pretty awesome for space travel well and I'm glad you pointed out what blue origin and SpaceX are doing because you know we hear we've been hearing about like this kind of like futuristic stuff i mean frankly since before we were born right like the Jetsons have been around for decades and decades and you're always talking about it's really futuristic stuff and it never quite seems to come to pass because frankly we can't get our own stuff together on the planet Earth yeah but but that but SpaceX and blue really interesting because what you have there is those are people between musk and visas that are actually now building a business model for going to space so like when you see people who are actually managing to make this stuff practical and profitable then it's like okay this isn't just you know a pipe dream in a research lab somewhere this is the people are building a business off of this and this is actually moving forward so that's you know just landing a rocket I know it's really cool I mean I've just watch this footage I mean it's like it's incredible just to watch this thing the little arms come down I mean they tried this how many times did they try this before they nailed it like the fourth or fifth time they got it yeah it was it was quite a few times we watched these things explode and then finally in April they did it motions were awesome too and the gym yeah and then Jeff Bezos I remember like ridiculed them like oh welcome to the club you finally landed a spaceship right now look I love the millionaire space rocket trolling yeah it's a good part of 21st century life from his cave layer you know like I real on musk even joked about building his own secret lair and some volcano somewhere you know after he landed the SpaceX ship so I mean this is real this is real life stuff now and like it this year all got glossed over a lot by you know war and terrorism and Donald Trump and all that stuff so so it's cool that we're like re reliving all this all these neat things that happen you know yeah we're making space great again yes well what do you think Sparkman you headed to Mars anytime soon you're gonna sign up for that one oh sure I mean you know as long as I've got you know a spare weekend or two yeah I've always wanted to like experience weightlessness just like for like a long period of time you no longer than like the hill on a roller coaster um those parabolic airplanes yeah I mean it just it it's always intrigued me I'm wondering like who is would that feel weird being weightless the entire time you're going there you know yeah yeah because I remember there was like an old uh like were a wonderful world of Disney thing before we had actually like gone to space talking about the effects of you know weightlessness and they refer to it as like your stomach is like bracing for an impact that never actually comes cuz you feel like you're falling and that always intrigued me and I'm like I'd kind of make it hard to concentrate on doing a lot of things just kind of like being all floaty and stuff yeah which is the scientific term for it floating you know and we should be realistic I mean there's a lot of stuff to figure out and a lot of challenges to solve before anyone's actually gonna live on Mars I mean you know the radiation dose you get from there is is insane now there's a lot of people been working in NASA for a long time to think Elon Musk is just totally crazy and that he really can't pull it off because there's these huge challenges to solve and that's to say nothing of the fact that like if you had a kid on Mars because the gravity is different there if you had a kid on Mars never raised on Mars like they could never come to visit the grandparents on earth oh yeah because like their spine would be crushed by the gravity here so you know there's these challenges to figure out but you know like our ancestors came to the US against like ridiculous odds have lived in like horrible conditions and I'm even today immigrants you know you know spend time like walking across the desert so I mean you know there's there's there's a no challenges to be figured out but there's always seems to be the drive to to move somewhere because it's just getting too damn crowded on well yeah I mean there's a lot of other things that we haven't taken into account like spreading disease like we can easily spread disease to Mars and vice versa that's more of the world that's like the basic that's how that that movie ended you know so there's so many so many things to think about and it's not going to happen overnight but if I Elon Musk is in charge is going to happen pretty soon it won't be boring if he's in charge ya know to say nothing else yeah um you know in speaking of other companies that are actually kind of trying to make a business out of the future I swear guys I think the plank bars are finally coming in in 2016 you know leave it to one of the unicorns to finally bring us flying cars uber revealed a plan this year for okay wait for it for commuting so this will solve your Barbara Barr problem as well for commuting via self-flying ride-sharing vertical takeoff and landing vehicles that's a funny way of saying flying ubers so they've got a plan where we could possibly see this rolling out frankly depending on the regulatory hurdles we could see this rolling out in in 10 years or so and these are literally they're kind of like a cross between a plane and a helicopter no they take off like a helicopter and then they can fly like a plane basically with the vTOLs they're called and sober wants to have basically ride-sharing flying ubers that would take off from kind of points around the city and then they could fly out to the suburbs for your commute and then eventually also making them basically drones so they would have pilots at first and then eventually be basically ride-sharing drones that take you around your commute that's how antenna lying to me what's that that sounds terrifying to me just said terrible yeah it'll be less expensive than owning a car I mean this is what over is saying so I mean what do you think we've been waiting for flying cars made since the Jetsons it or even longer maybe my great-grandmother was waiting for a flying car to I don't know do you think this is just bluster do you think we could actually be flying around for our commute in 10 years I don't think in 10 years I mean I let's put it this way I would be surprised if that happened in 10 years I mean I'm all for it I mean flying cars and public transit that does not smell like this that would be great I just don't see that happening in 10 years yeah 10 years seems pretty pretty fast yes pretty fast but you know what go for a little bit take away the flying part because in 2016 we saw just regular self-driving cars they want to fly self-driving cars where before 2015 we were really only talking about self-driving cars as kind of this crazy Google side project which now they've they've outsourced there they've spun that off but in the meantime it seems like in 2016 like everyone jumped on the self-driving car bandwagon whether it was uber and uber also I mean it got cars driving around Pittsburgh right now there's there's some right down the street some right down that you know what yeah okay seen it actually broke this I feel like see that broke the story because we went to our Christmas party last Thursday night and we're walking the the venue where our Christmas party was just a couple blocks away we're all walking there we walked by a big garage and inside this garage was like 30 self-driving cars like clearly all marked uber all shiny polished beautiful and was like what is going on there and then out front there was like 20 30 like young guys all like vaping and like smoking cigarettes and we're like something is going on and we started asking I'm like what is going on here and they're like this is a secret like uber garage you know and we happen to be with Dara who writes all uber stuff for cnet next morning they go there they stake it out they took some pictures we broke the story I think I pretty sure seen that broke the store I can't come from or deny that the DMV of California says hey uber you can't do this you know how permits Hoover's like whatever we're going to do it then California shuts them down this all happened within the last since last thursday or friday i think is one we broke the story but yeah there's there are self-driving cars driving around san francisco right now and my I almost wanted to bring my kids to San Francisco just to take them on a ride like just like almost like a Disneyland ride you know like it's the be the first time I ever written in the self-driving car I was feeling like I wanted to bring my kids to have that experience with me they're like four and two years old you know I know that's risky but at the same time this 2016 there's cars driving around the city by themselves so I think we're on the right track but the flying drones that is another that is a whole other can of worms man I don't know about that it's like adding it extra dimension I mean you're you're basically confined it like sorta I mean you're obviously it's three dimensions but mostly too you know yeah you're going this way you're going that way yeah with flying you're going up and just just think about the traffic control yeah you know the air traffic control says can you keep people in a lane yes you know like well if they're over there autonomous that's one thing but like if you get some you know person yeah you're gonna have you're gonna have a person in a Cessna who's not yeah just getting a rolling it outside it's like well screw this I don't want to wait yeah maybe they you know a lot of Cessna airplanes don't have all this sophisticated technology that's going to be tracking other aircraft like it's all visual you know like this visual flying and then there's a just flying using just your instruments you know there's a different VFR and ifr i think it is called so you have to spot these things and little tiny drones flying around with people in them that just that seems you can't even fly over the city actually yeah in a regular airplane and a Cessna you have to fly north of the golden the left tower of the Golden Gate Bridge oh don't even work in the city like you this if it was something that would have to be like almost like rural areas you know like you can't have drones flying and picking people up in a major city it just doesn't seem like it's going to be possible although didn't Amazon's start delivering packages in the UK this week yeah I saw that and that looked it looked like a big advertisement to me like oh we delivered our first package sure they did they probably did but they also like produced it and had a camera follow it and then interviewed the guy who made the order and it was like all this like big produced produced commercial and the fur they actually announced that they're going to do that three years ago so took him three years to get to this point where they're like delivering like I think they delivered like a fire TV stick which is a very small thing and like some books or something but it just all still seems like a big publicity stunt to me at this point I don't think it's like I don't know I just I still skeptical when the drone drops off your stuff are you supposed to tip it like the pizza guy he'll know all this stuff that we need to find out yeah you know too I'm not tipping a drone is the tip is not stealing the drone oh yeah yes it's it uh-huh but you know I think I think once again I think it's a heel on musk and Tesla that's kind of rolling this out in a way that makes sense which is you know they actually they sold our first and then they basically just sent a software update over the air that added some self driving capabilities to the the Tesla models and so that's kind of that's the way the kind of makes sense to introduce it like okay well we're gonna we're going to add this like through baby steps and so now your car has self driving capabilities I mean basically it's souped-up cruise control while on the highway although those cars are like fully self driving you can when you're on private property you can summon them and they like drive themselves from the parking garage to pick you up at the front door so you know that's probably the way that this becomes part of the society is like slowly being introduced piece by piece and maybe those and maybe those self-driving goobers to who knows but there is one one other dimension of transit that move forward this year and that's and again it's another you on musk joint he seems to be involved in a lot of these and that's the Hyperloop which you guys remember the Hyperloop right it's kind of this crazy like a supersonic monorail thing that you I must kind of threw a white paper out on as almost a throw ex he didn't have time to do it like three years ago and then suddenly this year they some different startups started to move forward and I'm actually tested the technology in Nevada this year so that also that's another possible solution to your Bart problem Steven yes I mean it might still smell like piss but at least we'll be moving 608 yeah which would at least be a good reason for it to smell like piss because you're going so fast you're a little worried totally here's a pit here's of video the Hyperloop actually and they tested in Vegas this year right yeah this is ubers of summer yeah yeah kind of a proof of concept i think that that track is i think only like a quarter mile long or something but it just shows how a would conceivably work he was going traveling like 400 500 miles hours that what it wasn't I don't I don't remember I don't think I think it only got up to a fraction of the speed that it is designed to go because like I said they only had like a quarter mile and he was a half-mile I remember exactly they didn't have the brakes yet yeah I had to crash into some sand yeah but yeah they're actually building a real test track in Texas I believe oh right and there's all these teams getting together and they're collaborating they're actually working with the arcs packs people too who are working on the hover board and the tractor beam the arcs packs people are showing off their technology for the Hyperloop so it'll kind of like hover through the tunnel and that's going to be something we're going to see you next year too so looking for the name Hyperloop though does anybody else kind of like imagine a roller coaster with like a loop on the track or is it just yeah yeah I mean I know it's not but every time I hear and I'm like oh there's no I always picture that movie running man with Arnold Schwarzenegger where he's like in that like a toboggan thing I know like what's a ride a ride at Disneyland the Matterhorn at her horn yeah I was like riding that he's like people are in it getting killed and stuff you know that's what I always envisioned when I see that but uh so yeah so you know there should be different ways to to get around moving forward in 2017 and beyond but you know other kinds of automation also began to move forward in 2016 I mean you know frankly uh you know we worry a lot about the emergence of Skynet you know kind of the evil robot system from from terminator but I mean frankly skin is probably already here you know this year we fellow some technologies john sculley when i talk to me talked a lot about a block chain which is it was what was used to make to underlie the technology of Bitcoin but now it's being used to basically kind of hardened and make the internet of things more secure I mean frankly it is Skynet it's like friendly Skynet well that's why they get jets friendly at first Yeah right um so you know you know I think this you know the Internet of Things this year we saw implants they're like the size like not even your fingernail I mean they're literally like the size of a piece of dust that they're in their sensors that can be implanted in your body and they have a wireless signal so at this at this point like everything is in the Internet of Things your liver could be and other things and it's sending you know data to your doctor directly that's awesome well after a night of the heavy drinking you know like liver she fix yourself okay all right I feel better you get a message you are dead from alcohol poisoning you're like no it will text the funeral home yeah a dream just haven't ready just in case don't have clip be ready to help you you look like you're ready to die of alcohol poisoning do you need you're so salty hey but um so like kind of but like the the logical conclusion of all this kind of combination of everything being connected and everything kind of being a part of the Internet of Things is moving to the point where we can combine something like block chain which is basically kind of like a brain for the internet of things right a communication system a nervous system and combine that with some technology that move forward this year something called atomic nano cars that they work on at Rice University so this is basically these are basically machines that are the size of an atom and they can be moved around and can be used to do stuff and this is a really basic level right now this isn't at at a consumer level at all but basically I mean if you think 3d printers are cool just wait until this stuff comes of age we're talking the combination of robotics and nanotechnology that basically if you take it to its logical extension could give us the replicator from Star Trek so you know it's it's some really exciting stuff this is really far out but the you know the building blocks of this kind of technology that has been like in our sci-fi dreams forever like it's there so this is kind of terrifying to me because I mean an atom is like a little machine in itself Ryan I mean it's like a block with and have protons and neutrons so we're like we're going to build something that's going to destroy us cool I mean it's running right that's a you know I mean you know technologies tools right and tools can be used for horrible things oh yeah I guarantee this is going to be used for prank videos like as soon as it hits like the show as soon as some normal person could get their hands on it there's somebody's going to stick it in there but make it launched or something because that's what you do with technology yeah exactly launch it out your mouth you're worried about all this technology bring about the apocalypse but you need to think of the viral videos that will they belong with the apartment the fun pakka lips okay of it it's coming see it's everything's going to help but if you sell it the right way yeah it's all marketing the fun pakka lips it's all marketing yep and so you know but before we get out of here that the final thing the final technology that we saw continue to move forward in 2016 it's the thing that kind of ties us all together and that's artificial intelligence and we started the year with google had not an AI that beat the human champion at the at the game of go that's right I have no idea how go works but i think it's similar to like chess or othello or something like that yeah yeah and so yeah it'd be too human for the first time although then by the end of the year a human did get it back and beat it um way to go here we had a big year i think for artificial intelligence that kind of ended in an uncertain way for me with westworld if anyone's watching west oh the know that that makes you think a little bit about where we're going with AI and i can't even I can't even tell you where we're gonna go with artificial intelligence because no it's kind of a matter of the imagination but beyond that it's a matter of what would an artificial intelligence would an artificial imagination come up with and we don't even know um oh we they have they have something tough like that right didn't like they have a cool a christmas song as they have yeah yeah yeahs design that occurs not a great song kerala but you know and then google also has like this dream thing that like oh the deep dream where ya deep dream looks for patterns takes stuff from the internet and it builds like nightmares yes not everyone's it's basically nightmare fuel everyone's communication on the internet so we kind of have that stuff how could that possibly know it's like and then also was it this year that Microsoft put that Oh robot on Twitter that game completely races right away yeah didn't work out as great as it could oh but you know young steps learning that's how you learn things yeah you learn from so ABS that go wrong we're putting all that stuff out in the world and seeing what happens and it just turns into a monster really cool well 2016 even saw an artificial intelligence that is actually capable of predicting the future they showed it videos and it had to guess what happened next in the videos and apparently it got pretty good at it oh wow so yeah by this point next year we won't even have to do a year in review or the year looking forward to 2018 we're just gonna have an AI do it for oh yeah totally I can't that's gonna revolutionize my job that's gonna like type in we gonna make a video about this and then in like come back to my desk and the videos produced I love that there you go I mean we're going to work we're all gonna be in self-driving ride-sharing flying ubers on the way to vacation this time next year i'm pretty sure it's all just gonna be worked out are you guys talking to your house yet are you talking to your house Eric Jeff like talking to the house like I talked to Alexa you do have Alexa cool i just got Alexa too and uh so I'm talking to my house I just talked to my apartment there's there's no actual appliances that that will respond but you know it gets lonely in that apartment so it's good practice we can see um hey Alexa say hi to Steven Alexa state say hi to Steven hello it looks yeah when I first got it I immediately tried to play jeopardy and like a kick I'm terrible apparently I don't know anything you know and I got every answer wrong my wife is like I'll really impressive great but yeah I mean we're there like I'm tuck I'm telling it to turn off turn on the lights play music set alarms for my kids to go to bed so we're there my kids are talking to it my kids for years old he's like Alexa turn off the lights I'm like wow so that's where we are now man you know it is so bad we actually have two of them um I've got it nice I've got the heck oh here and then yeah my kid has the tap one you can carry around you gotta press a button but yeah we're we're fully embracing the fun pakka lips and back Ozil well I'm so maybe to wrap up the show I've talked an awful lot I think about what i thought it was good about 2016 what I'm looking forward to in 2017 and beyond what are you guys looking forward to coming up next year for Jeff I oh I know I have something I'm looking forward to I'm looking forward to the spider-man movie that's coming out next year oh that's right because I saw the trailer for it and it looked fun and spider-mans even got his little creepy ass little web wings that they drew for like I think like 12 issues at the beginning and then stopped for like 20 years it's really interesting to see those yeah it looks it looks fun I wasn't into the last spider-man the guy who played spider-man oh yeah you know I just I don't know it wasn't like interested but this one looks like fun you know you didn't like Tobey Maguire's fight he says no I i love it i love the Tobey Maguire but the guy the actor after him yeah I guess and he's Garfield yeah cuz he he wasn't even American you know that's a problem for me now she can make spider-man great again yep yeah but this guy is like a more of an unknown kind of actor which makes for a better superhero movie in my opinion I hear ya what do I used even what are you looking forward to for next year uh I'm looking forward to self-driving everything you know I would like self-driving I would like my car to be a self-driving cars I make trips to tahoe every once in a while and just you know drives to LA or whatever I would love to just be able to sit back and watch a movie or something oh heck during that trip you know looking forward to a I improving i'm looking forward to alexa improving so i can ask her more questions and get just more information and have her do more things you know so that's that's really it artificial intelligence is a huge thing now I talk to my phone I talk to Siri I want Syria to be better talk to Syria talk to Alexa and you know that's what I'm looking forward to you know in addition to artificial intelligence of proving I'd like to see real intelligence improve yes but not but not sure which one's going to happen first but yeah I mean hoping look Eric that was optimistic you happy I was optimistic I am a ray of sunshine dammit 2016 sucks for me if Jeff isn't happy to fix now um well I hope it was at least a decent 2016 for everyone out there and that you can find some silver linings maybe you think this was a great year maybe you think the world is going to be made great again in the coming months and I certainly hope so and I think I think that's it for far aside for the final one of 2016 happy holidays to everyone around the world and we really want to see Kelsey and Bonnie feel better a big shout out to our editor Leslie Katz investor family and to everyone in the cnet family as well happy holidays and we will see you in 2017 for Steven Beecham and Jeff Sparkman I'm Eric Mack this has been far sighted you