Gadgetory

hello and welcome to another episode of CNF book club for this one Dan Ackerman and I sat down with Jaron Lanier a VR pioneer an author of last year's book dawn of the new everything which talks about his time in VR in the 80s and 90s and also a new book ten arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now which is about social media so we talked to him a little bit about both we're here at seeing a book club episode who knows what and today we're talking about a lot of things but with on a couple of different books Jaron Laney lennier Jaron yeah Geralyn Geralyn done do everything and your new book ten arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now which is a follow up so we want to talk about both we'll start with the most recent one and there are a lot of really really timely things that are popping up in this book that we've been dealing with for years and are coming to a head right now involving the worlds that we live in and feel like we can't escape and it could not be more timely in fact you were just telling us about how you made a last-minute change to the book which came out like in March about something it just happened yeah well you know this book was kind of an unplanned pregnancy it's the way I'd put it what happened was I had a big book Donathan ooh everything last year and whenever I would go and talk to the esteemed media they would say well okay all this VR stuff is good and fine but you're you you were one of the earliest critics of this whole manipulation advertising model for Internet companies and now it seems like it's gone dark with the election and everything what do you have to say for yourself now and I I realized that I hadn't really written about that for some years and I started coming up with things to say and I realized wow this could be a little book you know like my little collection of things I said to this so this was kind of driven by journalistic interest so I just put this thing together fast I gave it to the publisher said hey when you publish this as a mini book and then Cambridge analytical came out it was already at the printer and I'm like oh my god okay pull it pull it pull it I just need to add some more stuff and they're like you can't do that it's getting printed and I'm like what do you need all you do is you start the printer you stop the presses like they even said that in the 40s right stop yes yeah and they said okay but you can only use existing white space on the pages you can't change any pagination because otherwise you have to redo everything yeah so I just I just read it a few things so at least uh a little bit of the more current stuff from 2018 is at least acknowledged in there but the truth is this is a long-term problem it's been with us I've been writing almost the same stuff since the early nineties which is so insane and but what's really insane is that we're still somehow living with a stupid problem that's not in anybody's ultimate interest the problem being that right that we've adopted this business plan for consumer Internet companies where if you and I connect or you and I connect the way that's financed is some mysterious third party person behind the camera over there is paying to manipulate us and otherwise we can't do it and we've drop on that conversation where what the do based on it well what they do is they they eavesdrop on us and then they use algorithms to figure out what little stimulus to give us that will manipulate our behavior a way that they can then measure and it only changes slightly they can only affect this a little bit statistically and only some of us but a small statistical change to society if it's methodical and consistent it's just like compound interest it can build into a big change in society so it's made the whole world sort of darker and more paranoid it's reversed the course of increases in democracy around the world it's made social movements go dark it's it just sucks on every level and so that's the thing we have to change and that's what the book is about to manipulate people you know a tiny level when you spread out over a billion and a half Facebook users that's where that scale comes in and you're able to move mountains yeah so you know what the algorithms can do is they they can automatically just test and watch for what little tricks happen to work for people without really having any solid model of how the brain works or anything they're what we call AI is still really crude if we're honest but one thing that's really upsetting is the main application of AI is the manipulation of real people right now so there's something deeply twisted about the whole field for the moment but let's say just making something up there's an algorithm that discovers that around the time your rent comes to you every month if they show you ads and Reb you respond a little bit better because maybe you're nervous and red means that you there's no theory behind it there's no professor in a cubicle somewhere who said Oh red will mean the same it's just a mathematical correlation and then they manipulate you and your behavior changes a half a percent but overall in the population of millions of people who have who are correlated with you through your behaviors or what you've bought or who you know or whatever there's just like this little 1% change but then that's consistent over time and then as they get better and better at manipulating you when you're nervous all of a sudden when a collection when an election comes up or a collection they make you just a little more paranoid they can make you a little somebody can come along and and kind of basically distract you or make you cranky and and and so it's it's small changes distributed methodically and algorithmically that are screwing us up you know and and and it's a it's just making for a lot of kind of people with these kind of cranky addicted personalities like our president at the moment who's an addict and it's a it's creating this absurd situation where it's hard to talk about anything real yeah well you mentioned it like going back to how the internet was was conceived that that this is a problem from the get-go and that you know your belief in that if there have been more not just the way that links are constructed the way people's identity remains somewhat shadowy but the not having any ability of micropayments you mentioned a lot about it's a focus on some sort of financial way that we can either ones paying therefore were the customers first is the other way around yeah this was a kind of an interesting political development so the first people on the scene to think about how you'd make a digital network including notably Ted Nelson around 1960 looked at this and they said well here's what a network should be anytime two people do things there should be links in both directions there'd be no reason to copy things anymore cuz that'd be a big waste of energy and everything because you could hose link back to the original people could get world he's not only on putting something up but on how they reused you could have like mashups of mashups of mashups and the whole chain could be understood and people could share revenues from it if it was monetized so there has to be like a two-way links a payment system and everybody should get memory to store their stuff and they should have an identity that's theirs that's secure that was the first idea and what happened was around so for those who think Al Gore inventing the Internet is a joke it's actually kind of true like I was there and he didn't he's not an engineer it's not like he invented packet-switching or any of the things that make the internet work but there all these people who were gonna do separate Nets that we're really gonna talk to each other because people were strictly Dennis there now and he said well hey we'll throw some government money at you to bribe you and they kind of started to interoperate so that was actually a real accomplishment that was no small thing we'll see if it lasts at this point it's it's sort of being undone in my view but let's leave that aside so but during that time there was such an intense wave of how would I put this there was like this there was a super faith in making everything free and open the way well this was before the Wikipedia of course but but there was a the free software movement was really going with Richard Stallman and all that and there was a analogous ideas music should be free culture should be free and this very strong feeling led to this idea that the internet shouldn't dictate anything except the most basic raw possible capability it should be the most minimalist design possible and then we'll leave it to private enterprise to fill in all those other pieces like identity and Commerce and all that stuff and if hundred that is that because of network effects it's a network after all what we did is we created this pave the way for these giant monopolies right so of course there was going to be one giant thing like a Facebook and of course there was going to be a giant thing like a Google and we kinda knew that was happening but somehow I thought oh well whatever they will survive somehow and then we also had this idea that since nobody should have to pay for things the only viable business plan for all that stuff would be advertising but then advertising which really was kind of nice at first like the earliest Google was kind of kid in terms of the ads but because of Moore's law and people just getting better at algorithms and customers getting savvy or and other actors who are maybe not so nice figuring out more and more about how to game the system what started off as advertising morphed into this massive behavior modification system and that's how we ended up with where we are so one way out of it is to in my it is to change the business plan you could try to re-enter the re-engineer the internet so that more the basic functions are just part of it and they're taken away from these companies I know there's a lot of different ways you could fix it but we have to fix it well would anybody get on board doing that that's the problem getting people off what they're on now the apps are interesting because it's advertising traditionally it's gotten I both come from a print in broadcasting background it's literally broadcasting you put your ad out and hopefully a few million people will see it at the same time you know same ad and maybe they'll buy a shoe and maybe they won't whereas online advertising has become the most ultimate type of narrowcasting almost to the individual and and that's why it's so different it's kind of like fly-fishing at this point yeah but ya know it's worse than fit cause like it's it's more like it's not even fishing it's just like sticking you enough in a skinner box it's like this continuous will observe you and will keep on changing the stimulus until we learn how to modify your body amazing yeah yeah I I don't mind dad I think advertising has been a part of modernizing I I don't think we'd have the benefits of technological progress without advertising not that I love all ads sometimes they're certainly annoying but um none on SEMA I'm sure they're all very pleasant ads and and beneficial to the user but but but advertising is not the problem it's behavior modification this is continuous observation of people to keep on finding the way to manipulate them that used to be really rare that was like something that only happened if you were in a in a cult or you know a psych experiment or something to do that universally is new territory and the results so far not encouraging well do you think what I kept thinking about two rings reading the book well your euro mention like in one example lease with with cable television like you know where you would think that advertising wouldn't continue but then people were paying and there was still advertising like my worry is that if people did if you introduce a new economic system would that behavioral modification might still remain as a layer in terms of like it and intertwine in something well yeah I mean this hope is that there are a few different philosophies of competing right now about how to fix this okay so one of them is regulation so the idea is that you'd say you if somebody says don't use my data to mean if you like me you can't use their data so the EU is experimenting without there's this gdpr thing the very first day of the GDP our people lodged complaints against Google and Facebook saying you know under GDP our if I tell you I want to access your site but you can't use my data to affect what the site shows me you can't just refuse me you have to do that and so that's going to litigate now and we'll see where it goes another another idea is to just nationalize the thing totally so it becomes like the public library system and the government runs it in the US there's such a strong strain of libertarian thinking that that might sound a porn to people maybe it should on the other hand I have to say the Public Library System has been one of the most beautiful and beneficial inventions of the whole history of mankind in my view so I don't think it necessarily has to be a terrible thing the only country experimenting with that right now that I know of is Papua New Guinea where they're talking about shutting off and starting about starting their own version I don't know how that would go I honestly know very little about Papua New Guinea I know a bit about their music that's about it and then the another alternative which is the one that I've been most associated with that I've been exploring is to romana ties the idea of networking and so so you'd pay to use it and then you'd get paid if you contribute a lot and it would create this whole expanded economy where the data would be just paid for instead of free and what I know a lot of people have questions and have doubts about it and I since we haven't tried it much it's hard for me to say a lot about it there are a couple of experiments that have been good though it used to be that people thought in the future there won't be Studios like this instead everything will be created like the Wikipedia by volunteers who are unpaid we actually got an experiment we have an empirical contest between people trying to do that of whom there were a lot and then people like Netflix and HBO trying to use the internet to create direct billing relationship with individual customers the direct billing thing created this thing we call peak TV it just worked better people are enthused about it whether you like what's on Netflix or HBO or whatever is I can't say that's up to you but most people seem to like this stuff and it seems to be this really a big deal that's been a success so that like if we could do that to social media so we get peak social media you'd pay for it somehow either monthly fee or as you go through micro payments or however it works but I think you also should be paid and I can get into that in a second I think that's really important but you just make it part of the economy instead of this weird non-economic manipulation Lazaro economy like make it just normal you buy and sell stuff you want well that was the other interesting thing it was fascinating the way you talked about AI throughout right your book and throughout your books skepticism about it is a you know sort of a religion or and also that the thing which I had never really thought about till I think I read your take on it how much these different algorithms are based on human knowledge and expertise that at the mission the translating that this is based on people who are doing translating work the the works of art that are building these algorithms that see men like computer art but to degree to which ramana ties in what seems to be the work of the system that's really coming from someone else yeah so you know there's this kind of weird thing going on so there's a lot of people from the tech community not pardon me I saw clear maestro there's a lot of people who are warning that we're gonna have this massive wave of unemployment because of AI and these are not anti tech Luddite weirdos these are people from Silicon Valley and what they'll say about it is well we'll have this economy of people being very human being loving the loving-kindness economy it's called sometimes they'll be nurses and stuff and everybody will live off this basic income or they'll get welfare basically because they're not needed anymore and to me this is just moronic I just kept because here's the thing AI runs on data we get data in that's the training set the machine learning algorithm works with the training set and then it then it does something that's a kind of a derivative of it that's the paradigm occasionally you can have a I work with small training so but there's always a training so it works with data the data comes from people because there's not any aliens or angels around here to give it data so what you're telling what you're telling us is that the data which comes from people will be used to make the people obsolete except that the data came from the people so they aren't obsolete because they're still needed and and so like the usual retort to this idea that AI will people put people out of work as well it's never happened before they always said that people you put out of work by cars they'd be put out of work by this and by that and of course that's true every time somebody said we're gonna have a wave of unemployment because of new technology they've been proven wrong because it turned out people were need new ways and the new jobs were better than the old jobs and everybody was happy the only difference this time is we're pretending that the new way that people will be needed is actually not like we're just we're pretending we're saying we'll steal for them instead of paying from you know the only difference this time is we don't want to pay the people for the new way they'll be needed and I mean it's like criminal it's stupid so every time somebody says oh basic income or loving-kindness economy you know saying they'll just pay the people for their data it's like a better more dignified solution then you'll motivate people to make better data and they can take pride in the quality of their data everything about it is more humane and more sensible everything will work better because the data will be better and by the way all the people who say oh we're gonna have basic income or this loving kind of thing they're never saying oh and raise my taxes to prepare for it I want to start paying more taxes to start paying everybody because I'm gonna put them out of work nobody ever says that the underlying thing is I have a right to steal from everybody you don't you don't have that right pay them for their damn data the methodology is you get someone to train the replacement version of themselves who doesn't need a lunch break and of course the first people are going to replace are the nurses that that sort of high investment you know low margin job well they're already replacing their truck drivers my favorite story about this kind of stuff is they talk about coal jobs coming back and the first thing that happens is they start replacing the coal truck drivers with with robots with self-driving coal trucks yeah well the it's every type of AR has a slightly different profile so for self-driving vehicles there might actually be less in terms of data payments to people because it's more about just gathering Road data but for something like nurses I think there's going to be a lot of data taken from people on an ongoing basis and this gets we can really get into the weeds with this because a lot of people who really just don't like it they just really want to be able to steal everybody else's data though there's a zillion objections and it can get very complicated but fundamentally it is theft I mean if we want AI to be anything other than theft we have to give up the theft part do you think you think is her voice assistant go that there I mean is that is that part of the fantasy of AI or do you think that's basically gonna hit a wall or you know because that's basically all anyone's talking about now in terms of you know like the thing the big companies do voice yeah I mean if like they're pushing that more and more right right um we're gonna have artificial assistance bilking each other with fake blockchain cryptocurrency schemes that's the future Google assists in call that the dentist to make you place an entire them to each other ever name their child again yeah it's now forbidden name it was increasing yeah even in these sort of like conversational element of these well I really want to emphasize I have no objection to a voice interface any more than I have objection to any other kind of interface I think let's make our machines beautiful and usable the problem is not the voice interface the problem is not using personal data to make a voice interface the problem is stealing the data in order to manipulate the people using the voice interface so I was really you know what I thought of when when Amazon had its four successful year getting people to buy it smart speakers as gifts it reminded me of 2001 a Space Odyssey because this was one of the cautionary tales about how computers could go wrong and it has this round thing that just sits there and watches even talks to you so it ends up being a murder and they have to shut it down I'm thinking like after that after this fundamental warning from decades earlier people still bought howls right when they had a chance and it makes you worry about like whether whether cautionary tales about technology or even work but I we certainly have to keep trying I think most people who grew up with all the cool you know cyberpunk books now that we're also cautionary tales are using those as inspiration for having built the the new wave of VR worlds and so it's sort of the same thing even like a you know a modern ready player one there's caution in that or it's definitely caution in Neuromancer or snow crash but people always talk about those as works that inspire them to create something that's like the metaphor about the fourth time you recreate the dinosaur DNA you think it right by now that it's not a good idea I'm sure in these places it's when you bring up Neuromancer because I used to know Bill Gibson and I just I just saw him again in Vancouver actually and in the old days I used to is complaining I'm like Oh bill you're making VR seem so negative and if you just talk about the positive thing I'll be like this magic spell that'll make people use it well instead of becoming creepy in humans he would you know let me know that that was a stupid way to talk about writing which is correct he was keep scary but it's funny like I was worried that he was being too dark and the truth is maybe he wasn't mean or another we I worked on this thing called Minority Report yeah and you know we tried to we it was I think a reasonably articulate warning about how things could go wrong and I'm trying to predict and run society would would go amok and useless useless so I personally prefer good yeah right they say let's make something like mitre yeah for it that would be great you know it's what but the Minority Report I actually made working versions of those gadgets like the the very first face finder was this algorithm of my friends and I sold it to Google but that was the thing where somebody somebody's trying to escape the police but they're put into these ads along the way so the police can see him that was I made that that was like a that was the scene idea and actually implemented it and way way back then it was the very first time it could be done but the I guess this book is an experiment like okay we tried warning you which I'm talking about in advance a lot of people did when I say we I mean a lot of the computer science community going back to the beginning this is not like a new revelation that these things gonna be problems we've been a lot of us have been talking about it for a really long time so now it's happening and so there's an old line from in in the in the world of sales that you tell somebody what they're gonna see before they see it you tell them and there's what they're seeing while they're seeing it then you tell them what they just saw and then maybe they'll get a little bit of it all right so I think it might have maybe it applies to these political and tech warnings too we told you what you were gonna see book is I'm telling it to you while you're seeing it and then next year somebody can write one that that's what just last year yeah still that time yes somebody gets it you know I I still really optimistic and if I was and I wouldn't even been doing all this stuff but it's you know people people are very vulnerable to being duped and hypnotized and manipulated and that's that's what's going on and it's very hard to come to them rationally and say okay you're being duped and tricked and manipulated snap out of it it doesn't you know it's like hard to find an angle in well hmm addictions are hard I mean I related to a lot of those feelings reading the book but it's like anything you're doing that's bad that you say well if you could recognize that it's an addiction but being getting getting off of it as a whole other thing and then you still find there's a tremendous challenge there or ideally everybody says oh I wasn't you know I didn't buy those shoes even though so the answer this time I dodged it and so clearly doesn't work on me right well all right a positive spin that's possible as he could say in those olden days when there was less technology and most children didn't make it to adulthood and people live to 30 and died and that was normal and a lot of people were hungry a lot at the time and plague swept through all the time and all that stuff which was that long ago at all there was just last century even earlier this entry with it or I mean early 20th and and certainly 19th and you can say that in those days the immediate problems people faced weren't mind games between them as often as they are today and the reason mind games between us have come to the fore as our biggest problems is because we can afford for them to that we're comfortable and the basics are covered enough but unfortunately that's only true like in the short term I guess the scenario that worries me the most is that we're making ourselves so crazy through this new society we've created a mutual manipulation that we can't face the real objective problems like climate change like we're we've blinded ourselves to the survival substantial issues we have to face up to and that's ultimately if we didn't face any real problems like I guess I wouldn't really care that much like okay go you know whatever you know do whatever you want as long as you don't bother people too much but unfortunately that's not the world we're in we're in a world where we actually do have to get it together and we can't give up on the idea of truth we can't divide ourselves into mutual hate groups we can't do any of that stuff I know there's you and I wanted to talk about VR as well there's so many things to talk about but um in in the VR landscape there is a bridge I think here where you know I think about the current generation of VR hardware and I was wondering what you think you mentioned I mean the tube the two biggest behavior modification company empires now being Facebook and Google clearly being neither of them were involved right right so I mean how do you you kind of talk about that in dominate of everything to some degree but I mean how does that feel right now well there's a little bit of a comedy in it because Google and Facebook are the only two of the five tech giants that really are dependent on this mass behavior modification business plan and they're addicted to their own business plan so that they can't diversify their own profit centers but they can diversify their call center so they just do that compulsively so Google will say well we'll make a company for balloons and we'll make a company to solve death and we'll make a company from I don't know just all these endless things right and yes it's it's all a desperate way to try to find some way to diversify their profit centers and in the way the VR investments of these two companies are serving perhaps as a symbolic way of them letting their investors know we really are trying to diversify if they really want to diversify they have to give up their addiction to this stupid business model and then they'll serve their investors better so that's one thing to say another thing to say is well then we get into the details there's there's the guy who founded oculus himself got addicted to the very stuff we've been talking about and turned himself into a megachurch oh yeah yeah I hope he can grow out of it I there are a lot of wonderful really great brilliant people at both oculus and the various Google Places I was tell a story out of school maybe I will I say you know I I do my research with Microsoft but I'm friends with everybody and I'm not promoting Microsoft anything but I was I I was having a meal with a certain very high up Google figure and they said to me you know you keep on introducing our VR people to each other but we're we're trying to keep them separate so they'll compete with each other and but they find out about each other through you could you stop that like like this ridiculous anyway so I don't know right Google is funny it's like this giant archipelago of these competing groups and this this my main problem with Google these days is their idea about controllers because so they've been kind of behind this idea that you have this little three degree of freedom one button thing and to me the greatest joy in VR isn't so much being in a world but transforming yourself becoming a weird avatar and having your own interaction your own sensory motor loop be the canvas in which you learn about things so you don't look at triangles you become a triangle if you're gonna do a geometry lesson you don't look at oh I don't know you don't look at a lightning storm you could become a lightning storm I've never tried that but there's but I mean that's really where VR comes into its own and that's where it's distinct from other things and so you should want more and more of your body being measured instead of less and less and that's see yeah I really wish that they hadn't done that I it's gonna take us like a decade or two going argument where we both used all the you know current jet headsets weighed going way back to when oculus was a pair of ski goggles though with a cell phone screen shoved inside and Scott feels like things like oculus go and the Google stuff you tell me you're gonna get out exactly what Scott is more supportive of the new disconnected phone systems they don't tell what your tape which I think once you try a six to get a real full thing there's no going back even though you feel like you're hooked up to a sort of monster hmm well I like where it's going with mobile but I I it's not fully there yet untethered I think it's such a step backwards in so many ways yeah okay so yeah if I may point out a gentleman yeah the first proof of concept that you could do an untethered system that was totally self-sufficient where the complete tracker was Holland's right right so I love that and yeah but but the other thing the hololens was the first device intended to be a see-through mixed reality general-purpose device let's say and and obviously if you're gonna add stuff to the world you need to be able to move around in the world where the stuff is so having a cord is ridiculous so it actually must be untethered there's not a choice otherwise it just makes no sense I think if you're gonna be in I guess what these days I to distinguish these things as we come more more awkward I say classical occlusive virtual reality sounds like too many syllables but anyway if it's one of these old-fashioned things or it's like alright so I having the cable might not be as bad although there are still safety issues and people should at least model where the cable is and their software it's not that hard to keep track of where there's somebody's draft themselves around it or something I mean it seems that ya know that's something every software developer should like really think about but I mean of course it's also nice to have them cordless but in a way having them cordless might make them more of a safety hazard like you have to really you have to think about the whole system and they use scenarios and make sure you're thinking about the safety and the comfort of the person but one thing I want to say is at the moment where you've gotten to the point of a 6-degree geekiest this show the our guy you know a lot of my viewers of the show right now but I'm worried like somebody tuned in and they're just in their book in books they're like these are like was like taking nonsense and I these are like those horrible people from across campus who made all the money stop murders right I want to assure you that Don of the new everything contains sensitive literary passages that are at least reasonably well-written with real character development and dialogue really ok very not bad for the guy all right so you get to the point where there's a headset that has a six degree of freedom tracker that's inside out it at that point you're sensing the environment well enough that you're just a hop skip and a jump from being able to sense a lot of the body and certainly in your hands and so for God's sakes if you're gonna do a cordless headset don't do one of these stupid little three degree of freedom things dude at least get the people's hands I mean it's really worth that extra bit of effort and I'm a little mystified that anyone go to the trouble of an inside out track or without also grabbing the hands so just like I don't know what they're thinking well my favorite experiences which made me think of what you're saying in the book and what we're not addressing now and kind of bring it down to the human level too I guess well you talk a lot about haptics and that's like the missing part of what you do with your hands now but then also it was interesting so much of why you cut a virtual reality was about people that without a consensual world between people that it's then it's just an experience and there are so few of those I mean one I tried it and they most people can't try this I get a Tribeca they had this one with a theater piece of live artists where I wore you know it was like a hand scanning leap motion it was called Jack part one and there were live actors and we were yeah so his face yeah it was one of the most exciting things because you don't get that that often we'll see I just think it was kind of thumbing its nose at traditional entertainment economics an interesting way because the big problem with VR venues has always been the proportion of workers you have to pay versus person paying ticket so as I described in the book in the way back in the 80s they tried to build our venue with Steven Spielberg normal for Minority Report you know and it was very very hard to do because you have not only expensive the equipment of the day these days the equipment is cheap but you have to pay people like the question is like in a movie theater you have maybe four or five people working and you can have like a hundreds of people in there so the ratio is favorable so in this case there were like five or six people working just for one person to have an experience it's just like great and so every people who didn't see it there's like somebody around with the fan to blow the window and yeah and somebody stopping down the floor to give you some haptics but there's like this whole performance it's a whole like personal person is amazing so the person gets a personalized improvised experience but it's economically yeah the least viable thing ever specially I'm like yeah it's like it's it's a conceptual art piece about anti economics and which is great I'm glad they did it that it's like not gonna happen a lot you know there are some people doing I think interesting multi-person virtual world design right now I mentioned a couple on the sort of more articulate small numbers of people at a time Chris milks work is getting really interested it's great and there's so many people this is okay can I can I rant about something else yeah yeah so let's say right let's say you find yourself helping a friend who's non-technical get their VR set up at home to work right some of us have found ourselves to this position we always say you need a VR caddy yeah okay so you install this thing and then they're like don't hit that button because that'll send you to the steam store oh no don't hit that button cuz that'll send you to the Windows house oh don't hit that button because that'll send you to the well here's the thing once you get into the multi person the the the large numbers of multi people worlds there's like seven or eight of them competing now and by the time you're in there there's like eight object buttons to get to different clubs levels and so basically the the chances of anybody not objecting themselves you know become so oh no I'm out of it I said okay which house on a mountain well they all look the same okay do you see a city in the background no alright then do you I mean it's it's like really fun to find it so it's so ridiculous so there has to simpie realist once to grab your checked button to send you back to their hub it's really making the user experience like harder and harder and it's it's my bizarre and absurd so but for the moment there's going to be this giant like hub warfare people trying to and yeah and the thing is look without without let me just say they all suck so that way I can be really fair to everybody yeah there's no hub that's worth it right now alright none of them are that great so we've got to figure out some way out of this it's just like this ridiculous problem but um they're all kind of striving for it now like I don't play with oculus venues they're all trying to like people together yeah so there's there's a bunch of them and I have like the real fondness for a lot of them we have women we got one at Microsoft that started outside that we acquired called the alt space really sweet pea a really lovely fill row so I worked on I worked with him on Second Life years ago and he has high fidelity now and he's really I mean they're just really devoted people and I just did a thing with sign space and they're super devoted people like they're all these people doing these wonderful there's a bunch of them you know and I don't know what we can do about that because what if network effects really come into play you know somebody will get will grab this thing obviously Facebook would like it most of all Google would love it but anyway I kind of hope it'll be one of the little Indies he gets it somehow but then they'll get all sucky after that so my favorite hub experience is the inception hub are going to the Microsoft cliff house and then going into the steam bridge app from there you have to click on my steam is up on the wall my cliff house I got to go in there and then get to my Steam games through there cliff house yeah well for my for my Windows headset I looked but you know it's it's not the fault of any one of the companies it's just like this in giant this is exactly this is what packet-switching was like before Al Gore came along this was this was before the internet there was like all these different things and there were like these awkward bridges and so and if we wait steam could almost do it because their your Linux and Windows and Mac and oculus and v and other VR platforms except they can't stop letting people making school shoot-'em-up games on their platform hmm yeah well there's there's a number of platforms within platforms on Steam in fact it's almost impossible it's really your don't even get warnings like you think you're downloading a single game you've actually entered somebody's platform who wants a new ID for you and everything and it happens all the time actually that that brings up a kind of interesting speculation whether there could be a new Al Gore like figure who comes along and says to the VR all right we're gonna throw some government money at you fix this or make this interoperable this is stupid hey this is how Trump could cement his legacy the only yeah turn throw throw a bunch of money and all those other people would say okay interoperate you bones like fix this because it Gore succeeded at it why not [Laughter] well the art doesn't even need to be like you just think about other things as they got leave it doesn't even need evolve a headset like it I think that was only thing your book was bringing up a lot of times and terms that whole spectrum that VR is encapsulated so many different things from large-scale to small and then the ha and then the Kinect is basically a type of a VR experience in some ways I think I think about VR right now everybody thinks about the headset yeah and to some degree expanding the definition of what it means to be making this type of thing loosening up a little bit getting people listen what's locked into that well I mean I'm really open-minded about myself about it myself I like whatever works the headset does have a kind of an iconic appeal cuz like the thing I kind of like the headset in almost the opposite way than most people do like the usual tech industry approaches let's make it as small as possible so it looks like glasses and I feel like it's a that doesn't work because then other people just feel like you're being sneaky why this person is looking at me with instrumented glasses what do they think they're superior to me what are they to but it would advantage are they trying to get for themselves I don't think it works no effect fly solo I'm getting Valli glass all well we've seen we've seen two experiments so far which is Google's glass and then snaps spectacles and both of them came to about the same point now that doesn't mean that the third one won't work but I I tend to think three's a pattern so we only have two so far that have been significant so let's see if somebody can fix it on the third time but if the third one also fails that's treated as a pattern how about that but anyway um I prefer to go in the other extreme I want to say I have this big thing on my head I am proud of it it's like my Samurai helmet I think it's great and I want to make I want to protect on the outside like one of the things a prototype I feel it's not economical to sell it yet but it has a multi-view display so from the outside depending on the angle you're looking you'd see my avatar making expression so it becomes a dynamic mask an expressive dynamic mask so it's for the benefit of other people in the room not for me but I think that that's like you should advertise like I am gonna make the biggest most elaborate most amazing thing and I'm gonna stick it on my head thank for out of it and I think that that's the way to go and I like these little sleek things III don't I don't buy it I think emotionally it's completely misguided that doesn't mean I'm going to talk anybody into this soon but that's that's why I'm like that's why I'm for you do you think that means like smart glasses in the whole world of like walking in a mixed reality world in your everyday life is that like something that's problematic or do you think that's like something is it related to that like every day is a session so to me yeah like let's say you had a sort of a fairly large visor so you have some air space you can talk normally everybody can see that you're in so there's there's there's a fundamental question of honesty and disclosure there's no there's no sense in which you're faking and they can see what avatar you are in the event you're in avatar within mixed reality and they can maybe they can see reflections of what you're seeing so that it's not entirely private I'm you have to think what the power relations between people people are social creatures who are very very sensitive to that so if you have something on your head that from your perspective is giving you some advantage and it's private from else's perspective it's this power play that's sneaky and I think like the question is do you really want that does giving that impression actually achieve anything for you and I think the answer's no I think it's stupid I don't think there's any reason to do that I don't think it's there might be some specialized situations where you want it heads-up displays can be great for surgeons or whatever but when social interactions I think it's stupid the reason to do it is for beauty and to have new things to share so why not share like don't don't have sneaky things have it be really open really upfront really honest and then you can do new virtual sports together a dancer to make music together in the space between your whatever it is but it's on honest mutual terms of equality and and trust fine you do all that I'll get his wave cheaters of monsters running at you one at a time well the 20 years you know I'm kind of optimistic about things like i but i think the only way to be an optimist is to sort of be pessimistic tactically and then you can be optimistic strategically so you have to be kind of a critic in the short term and really push and push and criticize and criticize and then things actually get better so overall I think we can we are really can turn into a beautiful thing but in the near term you know we have to be critical about it you know yes it's like you mentioned that and I think I think was the newest book about like it were wrong Dan we're all seeing different private worlds and are accused to one another become meaningless which makes me think about we were mentioning there about like not being sneaky yet between data and VR and worlds like building a bridge to communication versus you know I think that the challenge now is you're getting to a point where it's it seems like the RNA are pushing more towards everybody having their own experience versus a communal yeah yeah well you can have your own experience but it shouldn't be hidden from other people so in other words yeah if there I lik let's just say hypothetically there's some weird flying lion angel thing that's like hovering and does whatever maybe nobody else is interested in that maybe it's just for you maybe it's of it but other people should see that you have it so they can understand you see there's a difference between private and hidden right so I I don't know I mean like my shirt is private I don't really want you touching my shirt right now without you know said in friendship all right but but it's not hidden like I is it's just it's or you shouldn't drink my drink or whatever you know like you can have private things that aren't hidden and and I think this this hidden thing comes from the history of computer science where we needed to have protected areas of memories of programs wouldn't crash so easily we need to have security and secure directories and our file systems and all that kind of stuff and so now we're trying to apply it to society it's stupid as a way to think about people though I concern the concern this brings up to me is do we get to the point where for all having an AR experience all the time that we customize is that the ultimate subjectivity of truth now Mimi we may watch a certain news channel because it tells us the news you want to see and you're watching a different news channel you get something different what if we're all seeing what we want to see just in the world does that drive is Friday well as I say in the book VR potentially could be the creepiest technology of all time so if you blank out people I don't want to see walking down spectra nation I see is exactly that's a great danger yeah and we're lucky we have a chance to try to fix this stuff in the era of smart phones and smart speakers before we get to VR or some kind of direct brain thing or whatever there whatever there might be the current devices are pretty created and this is the time when we should work out these power relationships and how a society can work with them I I mean the the theme of dawn of the new everything is more or less this dual nature of technology that it can do all these wonderful creative sweet things then it can also be so degrading and so manipulative and so dark and so dangerous and this those things are equally true and and this question of what makes something go one way or the other way is is the deepest question of our times as the technological species we have to learn how we bring out the best of ourselves in our tech as we get more and more powerful and I was saying before you know I used to think it was all about rhetoric that's why I was bugging William Gibson to make Neuromancer more positive which is one of the more silly things I've ever done in my life but it was young but but the I've come to think that what really makes the most difference is economics and in economic incentives that ultimately they seem to drive things more than rules and laws and traditions and rhetoric and all this stuff and so if we have economic incentives that reward people more more for things that are non-creepy than for things that are you know then maybe we'll have a less creepy world and right now by definition the only thing that's rewarded is the creepy stuff you know that that's it's just a bizarre thing like you look at the money that a company like Google makes and almost all of it is from somebody being convinced that they paid money in order to change somebody else's behavior in a way that the person wasn't fully aware of but they got some kind of advantage where they're able to sneakily get at people it's a bizarre bizarre bizarre system and it can't scale I mean you might think it's big but it's not as big as it could be if we'd like to direct brain links and we're like a civilization that's just based on people trying to trick each other it's no civilization at all you know information awareness yeah I still worried that people are gonna keep doing it that's my that's my biggest yeah that's my ongoing as we neared worst cause I want to make a quick point that combines VR and social media yeah thank you yeah late was it no I guess it was earlier this year I wrote a story on scene it's just about some of my concerns and feedback about the current generation of VR just this is not the generation of hardware that's gonna manage great but basically even though I'm a big fan and I like this and I like that I got a lot of vert rollick responses which I fully expected but my favorite was from someone pretending to be you on Twitter who sent me a nasty note with you and your picture and a link to your website and their Twitter bio so there you go I was trolled by your by your fake Twitter doppelganger yeah so this is a kind of interesting problem so I there's a bunch of fake Me's including one called real jaron lanier there's a bunch of fake means on Facebook there's a bunch of fake means on reddit and whatever and the problem is that the companies don't let you complain about them unless you join and I don't want to join any of these things I think there's terrible schemes I really don't want to join Twitter that was their question I like people you know do you know I hear about these stories from people like you okay sometimes my students will tell me all these funny things my daughter checks them out - she's 11 and she said one of she told me that one of the jaron lanier Simon I forget which service there might have might have been when I'm Instagram or something is giving people relationship and breakup advice okay I was like okay I got knocked by Karen and real Palmer Luckey on Twitter like I've accomplished something yeah yeah you know yeah well I'm not sure how real Palmer Luckey spell lightly but that's another story we should check in on him in ten years and see where he's gotten - yes but yeah so I asked her if the advice was any good and she said not really and I kind of trust her on that so I end to think that probably it's not worth listening to any of the fake jaron lanier is out on social media it's interesting like a certain major media organization wanted to do something on Facebook live and I mentioned to them that there could be fake Me's that they you know that would participate and their lawyer looked into and they decided they couldn't do it on their missus and so it's a it's what it's an example of how creepy things are that like it's not just I this is part of what I feel like this whole business plan which I call the bummer business plan down Labette yeah behaviors of users modified and made available for rent or something like that I one of the problems with it is it becomes like a protection racket but it's an existential one like you pay us or nobody will be able to hear you or know you and that's a kind of an ugly business model but that is kind of what's happening so it's like now either join facebook or we'll try you out with fake versions of yourself and you know it's it's not ethical it's a it's Kafkaesque in and bizarre and ugly and but you're given no option or gone on Facebook do you really exist that's the next book well I mean the way you kill things these days is with denial of service attack so if somebody wanted to kill my website which is not good enough for anybody to give a about oh pardon my language today you can alright anyway we're looking at red if you've listened this long you can add the laughs yeah okay but anyway if somebody wanted to kill my website instead of hacking if they do denial of service right they get their botnet to to bombard it and but the same things happening culturally like if somebody want if somebody wants to kill speech now they just create a whole bunch of bots that are similar but different and create this storm of garbage and then they disrupt the speech and that's approximately was what was done to say Hillary Clinton's campaign and and I got to say I this isn't a partisan thing I think I think we could just as easily have had the first social media attic president coming from the left and I think would be just as bad I don't think it's a left-right thing if you want to feel you can read ten arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now but if you want to feel better you can read on of the new every that's right yeah we you know a lot of your life and and it's something that VR it's about our today and if you go back and forth between them you can give yourself positive and negative stimuli in order to control your own Skinner box by your behavior thank you so much thanks a lot for watching and thanks a lot for Jared for being on if you liked what you saw please subscribe on YouTube or if you want to listen to it as a podcast subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast from thanks a lot I'm Scotts time we'll see you soon