Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the teg are you? Yeah, I'm still sick.
Speaker 1: I'm working on it. It's a process, but I don't
Speaker 1: want to leave you without an episode, and I also
Speaker 1: don't want to subject you to having to listen to
Speaker 1: me sound like this for any real length of time.
Speaker 1: So I thought I would bring you an episode from
Speaker 1: the show Forward Thinking that we did several years ago.
Speaker 1: And by we uh, the podcast was was hosted by myself,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum, whom you might know from Savor as well
Speaker 1: as lots of other stuff, and uh Joe McCormick, who
Speaker 1: you might know from Stuff to Blow your Mind and
Speaker 1: other stuff. So Lauren and Joe and I did episodes
Speaker 1: about futuristic stuff, not always technology, but often technology, and
Speaker 1: this particular episode is technology related. The title of the
Speaker 1: episode is your Body as a Computer Interface. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy Welcome to Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome
Speaker 1: to Forward Thinking, the podcast that looks at the future
Speaker 1: and says I sing the body electric. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vocal and I'm Joe McCormick, and uh, guys,
Speaker 1: this just didn't did did did? Did? Did? Did? Did? Did?
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's porky pick Lauren similar no, no, no
Speaker 1: breaking news. We got a tweet on Twitter from one
Speaker 1: Chris Newcomb who said, in case your listeners didn't know
Speaker 1: concrete ships, and he provided a link and and said, hey, kids,
Speaker 1: swing around this thing for fun. And the link is
Speaker 1: to a wiki entry for the S S. Palo Alto,
Speaker 1: which is a concrete tanker ship from World War World
Speaker 1: War One. Why are we bringing this up? Is it
Speaker 1: because in a recent episode we made jokes about concrete ships. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what we did. In our Building Materials episode,
Speaker 1: which came out a couple of weeks ago or so,
Speaker 1: we all had a really good lull about how concrete
Speaker 1: ships are completely ludicrous idea that no one would ever
Speaker 1: possibly put into use. I think specifically what happened was
Speaker 1: we were talking about what you should make out of concrete,
Speaker 1: and I said, obviously boats. Yeah, I had no idea
Speaker 1: that this was a real thing. In my defense, because
Speaker 1: I was the person who immediately struck that down. This
Speaker 1: ship was retired like in ninety nine and then it
Speaker 1: broke in half. So but there are totally ships that
Speaker 1: are made to this day with pharaoh cement, which is
Speaker 1: a type of concrete that's reinforced with mession rebar and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Uh so, so that happens. And I
Speaker 1: just wanted to wanted to update you guys important news updates. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for the info, Chris. I I feel much
Speaker 1: more educated than I was before. And I also now
Speaker 1: feel like I have a magic power to make unlikely
Speaker 1: seeming things real by laughing at them. So what if
Speaker 1: there was a boat made out of uranium? You know what.
Speaker 1: As as funny as that is, and as much as
Speaker 1: I would love to dwell on it, I I did.
Speaker 1: I did a little bit of research on a totally
Speaker 1: different topic. Uh yeah. Yeah. First of all, thanks again
Speaker 1: Chris for sending that message. And we we really love
Speaker 1: hearing from you guys, and it was awesome learning something
Speaker 1: that we thought was ridiculous. Uh. Today we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about something else that at times comes across as a
Speaker 1: little ridiculous, which is the idea of one is the
Speaker 1: future of the kind of the interface that we use
Speaker 1: between us and our technology. Specifically, what happens when we
Speaker 1: turn ourselves into that interface? Yes, but in your face
Speaker 1: is what happens. I guess that kind of is I
Speaker 1: wanted to do you guys have any like really good
Speaker 1: terrible interface stories? Well, I mean, just here, did you
Speaker 1: have a favorite terrible interface? To me, it's not so
Speaker 1: much a terrible interface as it was a frustrating process
Speaker 1: of learning how to use it. I'm left handed, and
Speaker 1: I'm old enough to remember personal computers before the mouse,
Speaker 1: and when the mouse came along, and then suddenly the
Speaker 1: mouse was absolutely required in order for you to be
Speaker 1: able to to navigate through software, it became very difficult
Speaker 1: for me. Like other folks were picking up on it
Speaker 1: very quickly, for me, it was more work because I
Speaker 1: didn't have that kind of fine tuned precision with my
Speaker 1: right hand the way I do with my left hand,
Speaker 1: and they didn't have left handed mice, and and by
Speaker 1: the time they did, I was so used to using
Speaker 1: my right hand for that I couldn't use a mouse
Speaker 1: left hand it. I mean, I it felt wrong and
Speaker 1: and nonintuitive because I had trained myself how to use
Speaker 1: it with my right hand. But for me, that interface
Speaker 1: initially at any rate, was not great. But that was
Speaker 1: again due to my own personal uh, left handedness, my
Speaker 1: sinister state of being. You know, I think you've probably
Speaker 1: had experiences with other maybe awkward interfaces. What about Google Glass? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Google Glass. Actually I was all right with Google Glass
Speaker 1: because I knew going into it what the interface was
Speaker 1: going to be like. But in general, actually Google is
Speaker 1: a great example. Just in general, Google, uh is a
Speaker 1: company that is clearly populated by engineers who have a
Speaker 1: very specific idea of how to solve a problem, which
Speaker 1: may or may not translate to any other human beings experience.
Speaker 1: And so when you use a Google product, you have
Speaker 1: to kind of learn how to think in the way
Speaker 1: the engineers were thinking when they designed it, and then
Speaker 1: it works. But initially it can be very difficult to
Speaker 1: kind of suss out what you're supposed to do or
Speaker 1: how you're supposed to get your technology to do the
Speaker 1: thing you wanted to do. Yeah, we'll show. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a learning curve to any kind of interface that
Speaker 1: you use to to to use technology. I'm still completely
Speaker 1: mystified by the N sixty four controller designed for someone
Speaker 1: with three hands. I just speak about it. It just
Speaker 1: makes me frustrated. It just makes me feel like I'm
Speaker 1: about to lose and get a turtle shell, right, or
Speaker 1: the old or the very old Microsoft Xbox Duke controller
Speaker 1: which was roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle like
Speaker 1: some of those, Or you'll think about some of the
Speaker 1: really frustrating interfaces that were meant to be groundbreaking, like
Speaker 1: the power glove. I mean, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: guys might be too young to appreciate what a terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible product that was. I never I never owned one.
Speaker 1: I don't think I even knew anyone who had. I
Speaker 1: played with one, and it was you would rapidly go
Speaker 1: from this looks so cool on me too, This is
Speaker 1: completely useless if I want to actually play a game. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of examples of interfaces out there
Speaker 1: that got in the way, and really what we're trying
Speaker 1: trying to talk about today is the attempt to get
Speaker 1: the interface out of the way to have a seamless
Speaker 1: interaction between us and the technology that we depend upon
Speaker 1: and want to use. Yeah, okay, so I guess we
Speaker 1: should do a quick bit of definition just in case
Speaker 1: you haven't been following us. So much so far you
Speaker 1: probably have. But just to be clear, what is an interface.
Speaker 1: It's a system that controls in putting output. It's the
Speaker 1: interaction between a human and a computer. And so this
Speaker 1: can be hardware or software. The hardware would be things
Speaker 1: like a screen where you see what's coming out of
Speaker 1: the computer you can know what the computer is doing
Speaker 1: for you. And hardware input like a mouse or keyboard. Uh.
Speaker 1: And sometimes you can combine input and output into a
Speaker 1: single device, for example a touchscreen. Classic example inputting output
Speaker 1: in the same object. But interfaces can also be software.
Speaker 1: So the classic example is the graphical user interface. Like
Speaker 1: when you go and use Microsoft Windows, you're interacting with
Speaker 1: memory in the computer through pictures. You know, you move
Speaker 1: files around into different folders. Really that's data coded to
Speaker 1: different locations in the memory, but there's a graphical representation
Speaker 1: of it for to make it easier for you. You're
Speaker 1: also executing programs that are represented as a some sort
Speaker 1: of graphic uh. You know. Of course, if you were
Speaker 1: using computers before goo ease became a big thing, then
Speaker 1: you were typing all those commands out and you had
Speaker 1: to remember what all the different commands were in order
Speaker 1: for you to do things like navigate to the right
Speaker 1: directory file directory to execute a file. But the the
Speaker 1: graphic user interface ends up simplifying that by creating this
Speaker 1: visually oriented approach to interfacing with the computer. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so if you look at the history of computing, it's
Speaker 1: clear that interfaces are always changing, but not necessarily at
Speaker 1: a constant rate, not like at the rate that processing
Speaker 1: power seems to steadily multiply over time. Right. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is another great example. We've talked about this when we
Speaker 1: mentioned Kurt's Wile and Kurt's Wild's look at things like
Speaker 1: Moore's law, and you start to try and uh and
Speaker 1: and draw conclusions about what the future is going to
Speaker 1: be like when by using Moore's law as your starting point.
Speaker 1: But that is really deceptive because, like you're saying, Joe,
Speaker 1: not everything and not everything progresses at that same speed, right, Well,
Speaker 1: and and that speed in particular is a little bit ut.
Speaker 1: What's the word self Oh, there's self fulfilling. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a self fulfilling prophecy, because no engineer wants to be
Speaker 1: in the generation that let Moore's law die, you know, Like, no,
Speaker 1: We've got to figure out another way to double the
Speaker 1: processing power of this computer within the next eight to
Speaker 1: twenty four months. Yeah, but but no one has figured
Speaker 1: out how to double the mouse. Right, Hey guys, I
Speaker 1: came up with it. I taped a mouse on top
Speaker 1: of another mouse. It's double mouse. Doesn't really work that way.
Speaker 1: So early computers didn't have a monitor or display. Right,
Speaker 1: You would get your output in some other format, Like
Speaker 1: it could be punch cards. You could get a series
Speaker 1: of punch cards. You've run your your program through. Your
Speaker 1: input was punch cards. Your output is a difference set
Speaker 1: of punch cards, and that's your compiled program. That kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Or you might get like a printer that
Speaker 1: prints along along uh strip of paper like it like
Speaker 1: tape essentially is what it ends up looking like. Actually,
Speaker 1: a friend of mine, Richard Garriott, he's known as he's
Speaker 1: a game designer. His first game that he ever designed
Speaker 1: printed on tape like that. So every move you made
Speaker 1: in his little dungeon based crawler, it would print out
Speaker 1: what that looked like. It was just a very simplified
Speaker 1: representation of a dungeon, and when you would make a move,
Speaker 1: it would have to print another sheet out to show
Speaker 1: you what had happened. The original idea of the interface
Speaker 1: of the universal touring machine was a strip of paper
Speaker 1: and which in which calculations would be done one at
Speaker 1: a time, printed on a long strip of paper. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So eventually we of all beyond that. We got monitors
Speaker 1: and displays. Uh, we got keyboards, which were much easier
Speaker 1: to use as an interface with a computer as opposed
Speaker 1: to just a collection of punch cards. Later on we
Speaker 1: got the mouse. UM. Xerox ended up Xerox's Park department
Speaker 1: figured out the mouse and the graphics user interface, although
Speaker 1: of course it was Apple that took great advantage of
Speaker 1: that with the McIntosh UM, and so that became like
Speaker 1: the standard interface for computers and the mouse and keyboard
Speaker 1: for a really long time. Was that was input? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you would you had some other like fringe
Speaker 1: input systems, things like light pens and stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but the enjoy besides the joystick, the general public really
Speaker 1: didn't interact dance revolution pad. Yeah. Now these days, we
Speaker 1: we've gotten to a point where we're seeing a real
Speaker 1: revolution interfaces revolution a regular right. It's weird that we
Speaker 1: think of that. We think of like keyboards and mice, mice, mouses,
Speaker 1: whichever it is. UM this is standard, the standard way
Speaker 1: to control input right now. Screens are still pretty much paramount,
Speaker 1: but i'd say that, you know, I bet the majority
Speaker 1: of our web traffic comes from touch screen devices, not
Speaker 1: mouse and keyboard driven devices. That's absolutely correct, and you
Speaker 1: can see it by looking at the metrics. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're getting tons of traffic through mobile, and mobile in
Speaker 1: general is using touch screens. Now, you could also use
Speaker 1: voice commands for a lot of that mobile stuff if
Speaker 1: you were so inclined, just your commands to say, okay, Google,
Speaker 1: how stuff works? Dot Com. I apologize. If you're listening
Speaker 1: to this on an Android device and you have the
Speaker 1: speaker active, oh, you could do GEST your control through
Speaker 1: an Xbox connect or something like that, and they're the
Speaker 1: leap controller for PCs. There are a lot of the
Speaker 1: examples of that. We'll talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: gest your controls in a bit. But but once you
Speaker 1: get into gest your control, you're entering a new kind
Speaker 1: of territory, aren't you, Because they're the issue is uh, well,
Speaker 1: think about it like this. You're you're using the body
Speaker 1: itself as part of an interface with a machine. So
Speaker 1: using the bodies an interface, it's an interesting kind of
Speaker 1: counterintuitive idea, since an interface is supposed to be the
Speaker 1: bridge between the computer and the power of the computer
Speaker 1: and you the user, what you're getting out of it.
Speaker 1: But if you think about it, we've been bridging this
Speaker 1: gap for so long with physical devices that are connected
Speaker 1: to the computer. Why not flip the script and build
Speaker 1: a bridge in a place that's physically connected to the user. Right,
Speaker 1: And we've seen some some examples of that as well.
Speaker 1: You could argue that VR headsets are are getting into
Speaker 1: that where you are are wearing the computer device and
Speaker 1: your physical motions are what allow you to experience that
Speaker 1: computer power in the way it was intended. Sure, or
Speaker 1: the aforementioned connect sensors, you're you're using your body to interact, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more of an episode about your
Speaker 1: body as a computer interface after these messages. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about not just ways where you are interacting
Speaker 1: in order to create input into a device, but also
Speaker 1: how you experience the output from that device, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So yeah, we should mention some basic ideas in what
Speaker 1: what what's on offer here in terms of the body
Speaker 1: is an interface, so the input is probably the more
Speaker 1: obvious one with input. Instead of pressing buttons on external device,
Speaker 1: moving a mouse or whatever, you might simply perform an
Speaker 1: independent action by and of your own body. So this
Speaker 1: could be gestures, movements, poking yourself, wiggling a part of
Speaker 1: your body, wiggling multiple parts of your body, other people's bodies. No, see,
Speaker 1: then it wouldn't be it wouldn't. That wouldn't quite meet
Speaker 1: the criteria. I think, well, it's still be a body interface,
Speaker 1: it just wouldn't be your body should have a dead body.
Speaker 1: I should have a Bernie device that reminds me of
Speaker 1: a movie that's coming out the go ahead. I think
Speaker 1: a complicated system of shrugs would be really good, right, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: so you never have to lose your cool while you're
Speaker 1: controlling your phone. I meant to. I meant to do
Speaker 1: the the please tell me more shrug, but it turned
Speaker 1: out just the shrug, or a combination of side eye
Speaker 1: and shrug. Anyway, the key ideas that you don't have
Speaker 1: to touch or manipulate anything except your own body. You've
Speaker 1: got it with you all the time. So there you go.
Speaker 1: And it's not this this idea isn't super weird to
Speaker 1: us because we're already familiar with stuff like the connect
Speaker 1: and gest your controls to some extent, then if they're
Speaker 1: not super awesome yet, but then you've also got output.
Speaker 1: So instead of having to look at a screen that's
Speaker 1: attached to an external device, which would cover the vast
Speaker 1: majority of output today, I'm having trouble even thinking of
Speaker 1: a standard device that has a very different way of
Speaker 1: doing it than this. Well, I mean there's a growing
Speaker 1: list of devices that now are using audio. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: things like Amazon's Echo, right, that that would be you're
Speaker 1: not Yeah, that's a good example, but but I get
Speaker 1: what you're saying. Yes, the vast majority, I would say,
Speaker 1: are are visually oriented. So yeah, instead of that, information
Speaker 1: about your computing task is made available directly to your body.
Speaker 1: The classic sci fi example of this would be this
Speaker 1: internal retina display. The screen is projected directly onto your retina.
Speaker 1: But I mean, that's a little crazy. We probably won't
Speaker 1: have anything like that for a long time. If ever.
Speaker 1: Now we have some other examples that we'll talk about
Speaker 1: when we get to a haptics because that's one of
Speaker 1: the other methods of getting feedback from a computer that
Speaker 1: can be meaningful. It's just not visual. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: would say the middle step between standard inputting output devices,
Speaker 1: standard interfaces and this your own body as an interface
Speaker 1: would be wearables because that's, uh, it's getting close to
Speaker 1: your own body, but it's not quite your own body yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be something that is unobtrusive where you might
Speaker 1: not even think about it consciously after a while after
Speaker 1: wearing it. Yeah, share like a like a fitbed or
Speaker 1: the pieces of jewelry that they're coming out with something
Speaker 1: like that. Absolutely, that was a great example, and fitbed
Speaker 1: is in fact a fantastic example because so much of
Speaker 1: that interface is invisible to you. That again it's the
Speaker 1: idea of removing that barrier. So a fitbit is going
Speaker 1: to be tracking your steps. You might have other wearables
Speaker 1: that are doing things like tracking your heart rate, uh,
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. Where the data is going to
Speaker 1: some form of cloud based solution or or potentially just
Speaker 1: being beamed to a local uh device like a smartphone
Speaker 1: or tablet. You're still usually dependent upon that other device
Speaker 1: in order to be able to consume the data in
Speaker 1: some way. It's presented to you in some way, so
Speaker 1: it's not like it's directly getting that data to you
Speaker 1: through the device itself. You're you might have a display
Speaker 1: on the device that gives you some of the basic information,
Speaker 1: but your body is not acting as the display, right,
Speaker 1: it's still the device. Um. It does allow us to
Speaker 1: have other means of interacting with our technology. Some wearables,
Speaker 1: you could argue, like the Nintendo Power Glove was a wearable,
Speaker 1: particularly good one. But it was a wearable. Uh. It
Speaker 1: was not not obtrusive, not you know, it was definitely
Speaker 1: you knew someone was wearing one. But it allowed well
Speaker 1: that was part of the point, right, You wanted to
Speaker 1: show off that you were playing with power Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And you had a glove to yea, and you looked
Speaker 1: a little bit like Michael Jackson in that air a
Speaker 1: little bit, yeah, which at the time was really important. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if we couldn't get the jacket, we could at
Speaker 1: least get the power glove. But the the you all
Speaker 1: remember the Nightmare on elm Street movie where Freddie wears
Speaker 1: a power glove. I remember seeing it, don't from my mind,
Speaker 1: I think it's okay, Oh god, I was so worried
Speaker 1: about myself for a second there. Okay, now everything's gonna
Speaker 1: be fine, you guys, it's late at six though I
Speaker 1: think that probably are on four. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: I get what you're saying. Um. Yeah, So, so one
Speaker 1: of the things I wanted to talk about this is
Speaker 1: kind of a this is looking ahead at wearables. So
Speaker 1: you could have wearables that are are something that you
Speaker 1: don't interface with directly at all. It could be you know,
Speaker 1: we've we've talked about the possibility of things like r
Speaker 1: F I D chips to have a profile. This is
Speaker 1: sort the sort of thing that Bill Gates was putting
Speaker 1: in his house where you would get a little r
Speaker 1: F I D D badge that would have a profile
Speaker 1: programmed into it that's personalized to you, and then your
Speaker 1: experience as you walk through his house would be to
Speaker 1: see the kind of art that you like, to hear,
Speaker 1: the kind of music you like. The lighting condition would
Speaker 1: be to your preference. Uh, it would be dependent upon
Speaker 1: that profile. We've since reached a point where we can
Speaker 1: get a little more advanced than that. You don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have to have a wearable anymore for that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But that was one implementation. Another, however, is this, uh,
Speaker 1: this this haptics feedback solution that I had been talking about,
Speaker 1: so being having to do with your sense of touch exactly.
Speaker 1: So we already are familiar with technology that has haptic feedback.
Speaker 1: Here's one you're very likely to be familiar with. If
Speaker 1: you ever played a video game or the control roll
Speaker 1: or buzzes in your hand you do something, right, that's
Speaker 1: the old rumble pack, right. Those have been around for
Speaker 1: for a couple of generations of video game consoles and
Speaker 1: also for PC controllers, And generally speaking, you you want
Speaker 1: to have a controller that enhances the experience of playing
Speaker 1: a game, so it might be a great example would
Speaker 1: be a stealth based game where you're you're skulking around
Speaker 1: in the shadows and your controller might start to vibrate
Speaker 1: to indicate that perhaps you are visible or potentially visible
Speaker 1: to an enemy, so you need to get back into cover.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, vibration being being like your spidy sense going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah um. Or if you're if you're playing a horror
Speaker 1: game and your your life starts getting too low and
Speaker 1: you start feeling your heartbeat through the controller and that
Speaker 1: lets you know that you need to drink a health
Speaker 1: potion or you know, to spell whatever it is right,
Speaker 1: or unplug the game and going to the corner. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: if pyramid head is coming around the corner. You just
Speaker 1: want to like, I just I just need to go
Speaker 1: and read a happy book for a while. Uh. Or
Speaker 1: you know. Another one that everyone is probably familiar with
Speaker 1: are the vibrating motors in uh and and smartphones or
Speaker 1: cell phones, right, And that's a very simple Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They maybe they vibrate when you're doing an input, or
Speaker 1: they vibrate to alert you that a call is coming in.
Speaker 1: But that's that's the haptic feedback, very basic application of
Speaker 1: haptic feedback. I don't know if you've ever had the
Speaker 1: experience of getting so used to this that it's weird
Speaker 1: when it doesn't happen. I've had this experience with my
Speaker 1: phone where I don't even notice anymore that when I
Speaker 1: punch a key to like enter, you know, to enter
Speaker 1: a letter on a text message or something like that,
Speaker 1: the phone vibrates a little to register like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: got that, I got that letter. Uh. And if the
Speaker 1: it's on very low battery and you go into energy
Speaker 1: saver mode, it'll stop vibrating when you enter keys, and
Speaker 1: it feels very weird. You keep wondering like, wait, did
Speaker 1: that keep did that press? Did it take? In my
Speaker 1: old phone? I actually turned that off because the the
Speaker 1: it was reminding me of that episode of The I T.
Speaker 1: Crowd where they soup up Roy's vibrating motor in his
Speaker 1: cell phone, because every time I would type in a letter,
Speaker 1: it made a really loud, like eat noise, to the
Speaker 1: point where if I wanted to check something out and
Speaker 1: my wife wasn't napping, I would wake her up. So
Speaker 1: I finally turned it off. My current phone much more subtle,
Speaker 1: so I'm alright with it. I've never had a phone
Speaker 1: that did that. Although it did it did scare me
Speaker 1: every time I was I used to I used to
Speaker 1: have a fitbit that I would wear constantly, and whenever
Speaker 1: I went over ten thousand steps in the day, it
Speaker 1: would it would do this like buzz buzz buzz. Yeah,
Speaker 1: party times and You're thinking, I'm having a heart attack.
Speaker 1: Make what's going on? Sometimes sometimes the acclamation period takes
Speaker 1: a little longer for certain types of technology than others. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the things I wanted to talk about, and
Speaker 1: in fact, this was one of the stories that kind
Speaker 1: of prompted the this entire episode, was this research project
Speaker 1: some people at the University of Sussex with funding from
Speaker 1: a couple of different companies and organizations have developed something
Speaker 1: they call skin haptics, and this is a device that
Speaker 1: gives haptic feedback but does so without a moving, vibrating
Speaker 1: type of motor having direct contact with your skin. It
Speaker 1: actually does it through ultrasonic frequencies. Crazy, right, So I
Speaker 1: did a how Stuff Works Now piece on this How
Speaker 1: stuff Works Now for those who do not know. That's
Speaker 1: where we at how stuff works post stories that are
Speaker 1: happening right now, the kind of newsy type of stuff,
Speaker 1: and it tends to be science and technology focus, but
Speaker 1: not necessarily. We've done some other things that are outside
Speaker 1: of the realm of that, but I tend to focus
Speaker 1: on science and technology. A lot of them do since
Speaker 1: it's a since it's research that's just coming out right now,
Speaker 1: and so so a lot of that has to do
Speaker 1: with technology and science. Yeah. So this particular one, they're
Speaker 1: using ultrasonic waves that you have a little emitter that
Speaker 1: would go on the back of your hand. So you
Speaker 1: would put this emitter down and it would be facing
Speaker 1: down towards your palm, you know, through your hand, and
Speaker 1: it would admit ultrasonic frequencies. They would move through your
Speaker 1: hand through your very flesh and bones and concentrate on
Speaker 1: points on the other side so that it would feel
Speaker 1: as if something was making contact with the palm of
Speaker 1: your hand with like with like focal points on your Okay, okay, sure,
Speaker 1: so imagine that. Imagine that you have a screen projected
Speaker 1: on your hand and it's a number pad, and when
Speaker 1: you press, not only do you get the feeling of
Speaker 1: where your finger touches your hand, you then get a
Speaker 1: confirmation through this ultrasonic frequency saying yeah, yeah, you totally
Speaker 1: you totally touch the one that butt. Or you're playing
Speaker 1: let's say, you know, you're we're really looking in the
Speaker 1: future here. You're playing angry Birds on your hand and
Speaker 1: you pull your little your little bird back and you
Speaker 1: let go and the bird collides with a pig, and
Speaker 1: then your your hand vibrates right at the point where
Speaker 1: the bird and pig. I did that kind of stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: that's the idea behind it. Now, this is just the
Speaker 1: haptic feedback part, not the display. Your beautiful fire future
Speaker 1: definitely still includes angry I don't I can't imagine a
Speaker 1: future without it, and I don't want to. Uh, but
Speaker 1: I was thinking that this this same technology could be
Speaker 1: used for stuff where you don't have a display element
Speaker 1: at all. So imagine, if you will, a a bicycle
Speaker 1: or a car that has sensors on it that can
Speaker 1: detect potential obstacles, dangerous collisions, that kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: you're you're using this device and it alerts you by
Speaker 1: creating pressure on your hand through this mirror, and perhaps
Speaker 1: is even telling you almost radar like where that threat
Speaker 1: could be coming from, so that you have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to react and avoid it. In other words, you have
Speaker 1: spidy sense. You could even do this on a personal
Speaker 1: level if you don't mind wearing a super dorky helmet
Speaker 1: that's got sensors all over it. Mean, I can't really
Speaker 1: think of any implementation where you would be able to
Speaker 1: have sensors mounted in such a way that you didn't
Speaker 1: look completely weird, as long as it's modeled after visually
Speaker 1: modeled after the calendar that Rick Moranna swears and Ghostbusters, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know the as the the was he was he
Speaker 1: the key master, was he the gate keeper? He was
Speaker 1: the key key master. Yeah, he's Vince Claro, key master
Speaker 1: of Gozer. Right. Yeah, So, uh, if you for that
Speaker 1: important research, if you want to tell him about the Twinkie.
Speaker 1: So if you want the if you want the key
Speaker 1: Master look and you don't mind it and you want
Speaker 1: to have spiky sense, then we could probably work something
Speaker 1: up once the University of Sussex guys get this completely
Speaker 1: ready to go, like ready for prime time. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's a really cool idea again of using that touch
Speaker 1: feedback where the body itself becomes the the method for
Speaker 1: you to uh to experience this technology, and you've stripped
Speaker 1: away anything else, like you don't have a screen or
Speaker 1: anything that you're dependent upon. You're just feeling this. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's no way to to leave the device behind
Speaker 1: because it's attached to you. Yeah. Now we could go
Speaker 1: the next step, which is where our largest organ, the skin,
Speaker 1: becomes an interactive surface, something that you use to interface
Speaker 1: with technology like the touch screen on your phone. And
Speaker 1: so today, if you want to read or send a
Speaker 1: text message, you'll usually hold your phone in your hand
Speaker 1: and read the text off the screen or type on
Speaker 1: the screen by pressing letter buttons with your fingers. I've
Speaker 1: actually slowly started to move to voice to text, but
Speaker 1: that obviously only works in special situations where you know
Speaker 1: it's really annoying when you keep doing that in meetings,
Speaker 1: I don't. Yeah, I can't do that anymore in in
Speaker 1: meetings or generally in public. But like if I'm on
Speaker 1: my own, if I'm walking my dog and I need
Speaker 1: to sten a quick text to my wife, I often
Speaker 1: will use voice to text um, and then people just
Speaker 1: think that I'm married to my dog, which because they
Speaker 1: really because because of the messages. Hey honey, do you
Speaker 1: mind picking something up on your way home? And I
Speaker 1: don't think that dog is gonna be at all cooperative.
Speaker 1: It's great when you hear people saying I love you,
Speaker 1: babe to a lamp post. Look, don't judge. Okay, you
Speaker 1: don't know their love. I saw the brave little toaster,
Speaker 1: and that lamp was adorable at any rate. Yeah. So so,
Speaker 1: so we've got a device in the way here. Before
Speaker 1: we can get to Jonathan's uh perfect Angry Bird's future,
Speaker 1: we need to take away that screen, that physical device.
Speaker 1: So imagine that same experience sitting there with your phone
Speaker 1: in your hand, type in a text message on it
Speaker 1: or reading a text message off of it, but without
Speaker 1: the phone there. And there's where you get this concept.
Speaker 1: One implementation I saw of this was a thing. It
Speaker 1: was from the Hasso plotn Er Institute called the Imaginary Phone,
Speaker 1: which was a project by Sean Gustafson, Christian Holtz and
Speaker 1: Patrick Bodish and Imaginary Phone. It sounds great on one
Speaker 1: hand because it's like an April fool's Prankly you give
Speaker 1: somebody a gift, it's oh, it's your new iPhone. It's
Speaker 1: an imaginary phone. You we think you're yeah. But so
Speaker 1: the last I heard of this project was some media
Speaker 1: coverage in two thousand eleven. I don't I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's still in the works, but the idea at
Speaker 1: least is interesting enough that you could continue it to
Speaker 1: be adapted with new hardware. And here's the basic way
Speaker 1: it works. And you wear a depth sensitive camera on
Speaker 1: your chest um, and then you hold out your hand
Speaker 1: in front of you, palm side up, and then you
Speaker 1: interact with your own hand the same way you'd interact
Speaker 1: with the phone screen. You know, you press parts of it,
Speaker 1: and the camera tracks your movements and sends them to
Speaker 1: your phone or other device as input commands. So different
Speaker 1: place is on your hand correspond to different inputs on
Speaker 1: a phone screen. To swipe across your fingers will swipe
Speaker 1: the screen. You can dial numbers by pressing different parts
Speaker 1: of your palm um. And that's interesting in terms of input,
Speaker 1: but obviously if you're just looking at your hand, that
Speaker 1: sounds like a kind of annoying thing to learn to do. Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a really hard time typing texts out when
Speaker 1: I can see the letters on the screen, So I'm
Speaker 1: picturing that that wouldn't go very well for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so what about the You basically need a corresponding display. Uh.
Speaker 1: The appeal of the touch screen is that you you
Speaker 1: can see what you're interacting with and perform your interactions
Speaker 1: in the same place. And that that brings us to
Speaker 1: this idea of projected displays on skin, which inherently isn't
Speaker 1: there's no real problem with that except that it just
Speaker 1: requires some good, non invasive, comfortable design and some good engineering.
Speaker 1: I guess we've got more to say about using your
Speaker 1: body as a computer interface after this. So one project
Speaker 1: I came across that was trying to do something like
Speaker 1: this was the Secret Bracelet Projects Secret c I c
Speaker 1: R E tn't. Maybe you're supposed to keep it secret,
Speaker 1: keep it safe. Anyway, there was some coverage of this
Speaker 1: project back and the idea is it's a bracelet. It
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a jawbone up, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a bracelet that has a low angle projector on it
Speaker 1: that projects a display onto the surface of your forearms.
Speaker 1: So you wear it on your wrist and it projects
Speaker 1: at a low angle up onto your skin on your arm.
Speaker 1: And if you go watch the the original video promo
Speaker 1: for the project, you will see animations that are I
Speaker 1: mean obviously that they are animations, because it was before
Speaker 1: the thing was made, just trying to say, here's the
Speaker 1: concept type of thing, probably just a concept, here's the concept.
Speaker 1: And you could see that people were mad that it
Speaker 1: was it was making it look like these displays would
Speaker 1: be incredibly sharp and beautiful looking. Um, and that's probably
Speaker 1: not going to be the case, especially early on, and
Speaker 1: they might have been optimistic. But now there are prototypes.
Speaker 1: I've seen videos of them being used, and the image
Speaker 1: quality in the real world it might not be amazing,
Speaker 1: but also it's not too bad. And that also might
Speaker 1: not be that big of a deal, because what if
Speaker 1: you're not really planning on watching movies on your arm,
Speaker 1: but what if you just wanted to be able to
Speaker 1: use your arm to send a text message or something
Speaker 1: without having to mess with a device, get a device
Speaker 1: out of your pocket and deal with it. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting idea. It's one of those where a
Speaker 1: lot of the ones we're talking about now you still
Speaker 1: have to pair it with right. So then the question
Speaker 1: is is the benefit of whatever this body interface is
Speaker 1: that benefit greater than the frustration you might have of
Speaker 1: just taking your phone out and doing these things. One
Speaker 1: of the things I was first thinking about when you're
Speaker 1: talking about typing stuff on your palm with the earlier
Speaker 1: implementation was well, what if you wanted to make a
Speaker 1: phone call, you would still have to get your phone out.
Speaker 1: And then I thought, wait, no, you're making a rookie mistake, Jonathan.
Speaker 1: No one uses their phones to make phone calls anymore.
Speaker 1: So I don't even know why that crossed my mind,
Speaker 1: because I'm a dinosaur, is really what I'm getting at.
Speaker 1: But another I haven't had a good Jobathan Age joke
Speaker 1: in a really long time. Well, we haven't. We haven't
Speaker 1: ever had a good Jonathan Age. I think I think
Speaker 1: Jonathan made some get off my lawn jokes just last week. Okay,
Speaker 1: to be fair. I also talked about acid rain in
Speaker 1: the episode we recorded immediately before this, and talked about
Speaker 1: growing up the eighties and being afraid of communists, so, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, was a product of the time. Um So,
Speaker 1: one of the other things I want to talk about
Speaker 1: about bodies and interfaces doesn't have to do with displays.
Speaker 1: We talked about the haptic feedback, We talked about visual feedback.
Speaker 1: What about audible feedback? Using your body to make sounds
Speaker 1: and not in like a middle school kind of way
Speaker 1: where you're you're showing your friends how hilarious you are
Speaker 1: by utilizing your body to make various fart noises. That's
Speaker 1: not what I'm talking about, sure, and I mean and
Speaker 1: I mean we're we're making sounds with our bodies right
Speaker 1: this very much. But what if we could it's a
Speaker 1: relatively easy system. What if we could make that that
Speaker 1: whole process more convoluted and creepy like instead of instead
Speaker 1: of just talking to you like a human being, I
Speaker 1: you and I would still have to be in the
Speaker 1: same space for this to work, But then we make
Speaker 1: it super creepy. And by creepy, I mean creepy. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll explain what I'm talking about, and you tell me
Speaker 1: if I'm off base calling this creepy. The system I'm
Speaker 1: talking about is called Insian denshion um and this was
Speaker 1: a a concept out of Disney research actually, and it
Speaker 1: is all about turning your body into a transmitter um
Speaker 1: and it's pretty well key. So think of one person
Speaker 1: being the transmitter. This would be someone who's like the speaker,
Speaker 1: as in the person speaking, not not a speaker in
Speaker 1: the electronics sense, and the other, yeah, the other person
Speaker 1: is the receiver or the listener, and together you end
Speaker 1: up creating a speaker in the sense of electronics. So
Speaker 1: the transmitter person speaks into a microphone, and presumably they're
Speaker 1: saying something quiet enough so that the other person isn't
Speaker 1: hearing it, so they might be whispering something like a
Speaker 1: like a I want to go to lunch today, and
Speaker 1: you whisper it into your microphone. The microphone transmits that
Speaker 1: that sound wave. It actually transforms it into a high frequency,
Speaker 1: low power electrical signal which your body can carry because
Speaker 1: our bodies actually can conduct electricity. So then yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: too well in some cases, which is you know, that's
Speaker 1: you've got to be real careful around electricity. But one
Speaker 1: of the many reasons you should be. But let's say,
Speaker 1: all right, you've got this microphone, you've just whispered something
Speaker 1: into it. It's now transmitting a low power, high frequency
Speaker 1: electrical signal through your body. You then walk up to
Speaker 1: the person who is the receiver, and then you just
Speaker 1: casually reach out and put your finger on that person's ear.
Speaker 1: This is the part where I think it's kind of creepy.
Speaker 1: And then the connection that you make with that other
Speaker 1: person connection, that's what allows this area to suddenly become
Speaker 1: like a speaker, and the person whose ear you're touching
Speaker 1: will be able to hear the thing you've whispered into
Speaker 1: the microphone. Uh So, it's also interesting in that you
Speaker 1: can extend this by having multiple people involved. It's almost
Speaker 1: like playing a game of telephone that you could whisper
Speaker 1: something into the microphone, put your hand on someone's shoulder,
Speaker 1: they put their hand on the next person's shoulder, and
Speaker 1: the next person, and then that person puts their finger
Speaker 1: to the recipient's ear. They would hear what you had
Speaker 1: originally whispered into the microphone. I don't know that there
Speaker 1: is any practical application of this technology. It's just another
Speaker 1: weird way of turning the body into an actual interface.
Speaker 1: You know, I do try to keep an open mind,
Speaker 1: but but burn all this with fire. I don't really
Speaker 1: like it when people touch my ears. Yeah, I I like.
Speaker 1: I like listening to a s MR videos in which
Speaker 1: there is an ear massage element going on. But the
Speaker 1: actual thought of someone physically coming up and touching my
Speaker 1: ears squeegs me out a little. I feel like that's
Speaker 1: a violation of personal space that I'm not ready to
Speaker 1: deal with casually. That's something that should be left up
Speaker 1: to U two con alright with exactly this is CLF
Speaker 1: of five. I mean I could I could see it
Speaker 1: being used in uh, in some other way of transmitting information. Um, well,
Speaker 1: it could be an interesting way of being able to
Speaker 1: transmit information quietly, but you still have to speak in
Speaker 1: to the microphone the first time. Well, I mean, if
Speaker 1: it wasn't using if it wasn't using sound waves, if
Speaker 1: if something, if if you could hook yourself up to
Speaker 1: some kind of device that would read that not uh,
Speaker 1: not literally out loud in your ear, but that would
Speaker 1: that would read the information and be able to I
Speaker 1: don't know, uh, yeah, I don't know. You couldn't because
Speaker 1: you couldn't do it to yourself because you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: creating a full connection. You have to be touching somebody else.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I mean some something like like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's my business card handshape. I could see some game
Speaker 1: elements in there too, But again it's a little little
Speaker 1: wacky and little weird, but it was an interesting way
Speaker 1: of looking at turning the body into an interface if
Speaker 1: you wanted to go the next step, Like let's say
Speaker 1: we've gotten past the wearable stage. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people are imagining the body as interface with embedded technology,
Speaker 1: stuff that would be incorporated into us if you're really
Speaker 1: desirous of surgery. Yeah. Uh And according to Repo the
Speaker 1: Genetic Opera, there is totally a group that's in there. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this would be where you would actually have
Speaker 1: some sort of technology is embedded in you. And obviously,
Speaker 1: at this point we're talking pure speculation. There's not examples
Speaker 1: of this beyond stuff that bio hackers are doing, and
Speaker 1: even in that case, they tend to be incredibly primitive
Speaker 1: applications of technology. Uh. And it may be that we
Speaker 1: won't see this kind of stuff for quite some time.
Speaker 1: For lots of reasons. Now, we do have examples of
Speaker 1: embeddable technology biotechnology generally speaking, though they are designed to
Speaker 1: address a problem. Like let's say that someone wishes to
Speaker 1: they have a visual impairment that they want to overcome,
Speaker 1: that there might be technology they use in order to
Speaker 1: supplement their eyesight or their hearing with like cochlear implants,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Now we've got examples of that,
Speaker 1: while we don't really have our examples of attempts to
Speaker 1: enhance already quote quote normal or within the norm kind
Speaker 1: of of human capabilities. And I hate using that phrase,
Speaker 1: but that's the way it tends to be frame. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: and medically speaking, there is there is, there is an
Speaker 1: average or normal, and it's and it's not meant to
Speaker 1: but absolutely yeah. And and the and of course that
Speaker 1: the problem there is is that any responsible medical person
Speaker 1: isn't going to recommend I mean, I mean, surgery is
Speaker 1: always dangerous. Getting an implant of any kind is always
Speaker 1: going to carry an element of of You could get
Speaker 1: an infection and can go terribly wrong, like an your
Speaker 1: body could could reject whatever it was that was implanted. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it could scrip your immune system for that reason, lots
Speaker 1: of things like that. So therefore, and we talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about this in our Hacking Your Body episode
Speaker 1: back when. Yeah, and there are other things obviously that
Speaker 1: you have to keep in mind, things like the technology's
Speaker 1: battery life. How do you recharge a battery? What is it?
Speaker 1: Is it drawing power from the person in some way?
Speaker 1: How can you create something that you make sure that
Speaker 1: it'll it'll work within the body and not break down
Speaker 1: or otherwise end up falling apart within a certain amount
Speaker 1: of time because the body, I don't know, if you know,
Speaker 1: this not the most hospitable environment for technology. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's there's there's that rest thing that we were talking
Speaker 1: about oxidizing. Yeah, yeah, that's a that's an issue, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, bad guacamole in the bloodstream. That's not something
Speaker 1: we want to mess around with, right, And there are
Speaker 1: there are lots of researchers who are working on ways
Speaker 1: to to get that to be better. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: specifically for things like like a like a heart monitors
Speaker 1: and and and whatever. But but it may be quite
Speaker 1: some time even if we get to a point where
Speaker 1: the technology is reliable, where it's safe, where where the
Speaker 1: the potential for complications is as low as we can
Speaker 1: possibly make it, there's still going to be a barrier
Speaker 1: there where the medical profession in general may see it
Speaker 1: an ethical issue of do I do I do this?
Speaker 1: Uh cosmetic It would essentially be akin to cosmetic surgery,
Speaker 1: but possibly with far greater UH ethical concerns than your
Speaker 1: average cosmetic surgery. Is it ethical for me to perform this?
Speaker 1: Am I going to risk my my livelihood if I
Speaker 1: were to do this? And then you might eventually get
Speaker 1: to a point where socially it's more accepted, but there's
Speaker 1: probably gonna be a lag between when people are actively
Speaker 1: advocating to get this done to themselves and when it
Speaker 1: becomes socially acceptable in general. And and that period is
Speaker 1: going to be interesting to watch and find out, like
Speaker 1: how it'll it'll almost help determine how long it takes
Speaker 1: to adopt that as uh a perfectly standard kind to practice. UM,
Speaker 1: then there comes a question of hals versus have nots.
Speaker 1: There are other conversations that happened further down that line
Speaker 1: which fall more into that singularity conversation we've had multiple
Speaker 1: times in this show. Now, the cool thing I think
Speaker 1: is that you could argue a lot of the technologies
Speaker 1: we're seeing right now are negating the need for surgery
Speaker 1: in the first place, and it's largely through things like
Speaker 1: machine learning, artificial intelligence, predictive technologies, very simple sensors working
Speaker 1: on very complicated algorithms to respond to our needs in
Speaker 1: a way where we we become unaware that our environments
Speaker 1: are adjusting to us without our direct command. So a
Speaker 1: very simple example of this would be something like a
Speaker 1: Nest thermostat or some other smart thermostat, where it starts
Speaker 1: to learn quote unquote what you like, what your preferences
Speaker 1: are that maybe you like it pretty chilly at night,
Speaker 1: but you like to wake up to a nice, warm,
Speaker 1: toasty house, or or it's recognizing when you are home
Speaker 1: versus when you are not home, and thus adjust the
Speaker 1: temperature so that you are being uh, you're conserving energy
Speaker 1: whenever you're not in the house, and you're not just
Speaker 1: wasting electricity. Although that that is still through through the
Speaker 1: pairing of a device. Yeah, it's pair well, it's pairing
Speaker 1: a device through a WiFi network. You don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: to have it paired to uh, like a smartphone or anything.
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing is it is detecting when you
Speaker 1: are there. It's detecting what you want, and it's responding
Speaker 1: without you having to make a direct command, although there's
Speaker 1: an acclamation period at the beginning where you are making
Speaker 1: those commands. Otherwise it doesn't know. It's not like the
Speaker 1: thermostat takes a look and like, uh, this bald guy,
Speaker 1: he's gonna want its seventy degrees. I'm just gonna go ahead,
Speaker 1: and no, I gotta tell it that I wanted seventy
Speaker 1: degrees first. So I think what you're saying is we're
Speaker 1: all going to get thermostats implanted in our bodies so
Speaker 1: we can be seventy degrees on the inside. That is
Speaker 1: not what I was suggesting, But it always is interesting
Speaker 1: to get an insight into your thought process. Show Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so but my point you think how much energy you'd
Speaker 1: say if you didn't have to make the whole house
Speaker 1: seventy degree just your own body. And my point being
Speaker 1: that we are seeing some technologies come into play where
Speaker 1: our bodies are in a way becoming an interface. But
Speaker 1: it's through it's not through a conscious effort for us
Speaker 1: to control that technology. The technology is responding to us.
Speaker 1: And if we see that increase. In other ways, it
Speaker 1: may turn out that the more invasive approach becomes moot.
Speaker 1: We don't need it because we're able to compensate with
Speaker 1: other technologies that are able to do these things through
Speaker 1: machine learning. We got a bit more show to go.
Speaker 1: But uh, before we get to that, let's take one
Speaker 1: last break. Well when yeah, when you speak of the
Speaker 1: ways our the ways technology is adapting and learning from
Speaker 1: us without our knowledge, I mean I wonder about you know,
Speaker 1: is Facebook going to get to the point where it
Speaker 1: uses the camera on my computer to look at my
Speaker 1: face and see what disgusts me and show me more
Speaker 1: of that because I'm more likely to click on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there are certainly privacy concerns with this this
Speaker 1: particular approach, and and we've already whether whether or not
Speaker 1: it's a privacy concern. Let's say I authorize them to
Speaker 1: do it. I mean, either way that they're responding to
Speaker 1: your unconscious cues that you give with your face and
Speaker 1: your eyes and everything like that. Yeah, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: that's something that I'm sure there are people looking into.
Speaker 1: I mean, but one the next thing we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about where our micro expressions micro expressions being these
Speaker 1: these very tiny gestures you can make sometimes unconsciously, and
Speaker 1: how people are hoping to turn those micro expressions into
Speaker 1: a way to interface with technology, largely because I think
Speaker 1: most of us don't want to have to make big
Speaker 1: gestures on our bodies in order to control technology. Would
Speaker 1: be better to do very subtle things. Yeah, there has
Speaker 1: to be some kind of happy medium between having to
Speaker 1: make flag symaphore motions that you're connect and uh and
Speaker 1: having a brain implant. That's that's directly reading please now, chicken, dance,
Speaker 1: d answer this phone call right right. Yeah. There's so
Speaker 1: many great comedy sketches that could be a result of
Speaker 1: this conversation. But there was a piece that was written
Speaker 1: in Fast Code Design. Uh Andy Goodman and Marco Reghetto
Speaker 1: wrote there that that design company Feord Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh and we'll come back to that towards the
Speaker 1: end of it too. But it's they were arguing that
Speaker 1: the motions we make with body interfaces should be minimalistic,
Speaker 1: end that there's already precedent for this when you are
Speaker 1: moving a mouse. This is one of those problems that
Speaker 1: I had when I was learning how to use a
Speaker 1: mouse with my right hand. Uh, the small motions you
Speaker 1: make are translated into larger motions among on screen. Right,
Speaker 1: So when you when you move the cursor on your screen,
Speaker 1: you don't have to move the mouse the same distance
Speaker 1: on your desk as what you're seeing on your screen.
Speaker 1: At least you shouldn't. Right. If you are, there's a problem,
Speaker 1: you need to change some settings. But generally speaking, like
Speaker 1: you might move your mouse over an inch, but you
Speaker 1: are moving the equivalent of like five inches on the screen. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, do you do you remember when the Nintendo
Speaker 1: we came out and how long it took people not
Speaker 1: that long to figure out that all these games that
Speaker 1: were supposedly about like doing big motions and getting exercise,
Speaker 1: you could actually just sit right there on the couch
Speaker 1: and kind of flick the controller to accomplish the same thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a specific flick of the wrist. There was
Speaker 1: a game in Arcade. Game It was a boxing game
Speaker 1: where the controllers were like two big boxing gloves, and
Speaker 1: it could detect when it had motion sensors cameras essentially
Speaker 1: mounted on the top of a frame looking down, so
Speaker 1: we could tell when you were ducking or moving left
Speaker 1: or right. And then the controllers actually had most most
Speaker 1: accelerometers in them to tell when you were punching, but
Speaker 1: turned out that if you just stood there and just
Speaker 1: bang the gloves together, it counted it as a punch,
Speaker 1: so you wouldn't get tired very quickly, and you could
Speaker 1: just yeah, you could wipe out like the first five
Speaker 1: or six guys on that on that yeah, just doing that.
Speaker 1: I did not learn that until after I had actually
Speaker 1: hurt my back playing an arcade game, and that's the
Speaker 1: first time I ever felt old. Um. Alright, so anecdote. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've gotten to the point where I just
Speaker 1: have to I have to own it, right, I just
Speaker 1: got to own it. So they thought the writers of
Speaker 1: this piece thought that those minimalistic kind of movements that
Speaker 1: you would see with a mouse should be the same
Speaker 1: sort of things you would see with a body interface,
Speaker 1: so that you could do very subtle things to control
Speaker 1: your devices, as opposed to doing things like swiping up
Speaker 1: and down your forearm in order for you to just
Speaker 1: say the volume of music being played on your device,
Speaker 1: or the lights in your home dimming or getting brighter.
Speaker 1: I think God. One of the examples they did is
Speaker 1: about like putting your thumb on one of your your
Speaker 1: tongue on one of your teeth. I have a quote,
Speaker 1: so don't jump ahead. Yes, I apologize so specifically in
Speaker 1: the section said the description can get a little creepy.
Speaker 1: So this is this is a paragraph that Joe was
Speaker 1: just referring to in this piece. It says, Uh, think
Speaker 1: about this scenario. You see someone at a party you like.
Speaker 1: His social profile is immediately projected onto your retina. Great
Speaker 1: a match. By staring at him for two seconds, you
Speaker 1: trigger a pairing protocol. He knows you want to pair
Speaker 1: because you are now glowing slightly red in his retina screen.
Speaker 1: Then you slide your tongue over to your left incisor
Speaker 1: and press gently. This makes his left incisor tingle slightly.
Speaker 1: He responds by touching it. The pairing protocol is completed.
Speaker 1: Is horrifying. Yeah, the next piece I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about this is describing a party hook up in terms
Speaker 1: of like the stuff you would do too. I don't know,
Speaker 1: initiate trading in a massive I think what they were
Speaker 1: looking at was they were like, you know, Tinder is great,
Speaker 1: but not nearly creepy enough in your body. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: we don't touch our teeth at all during tinder, right,
Speaker 1: and we need to we need to we need to
Speaker 1: really get some tongue to tooth action. Yeah, because otherwise
Speaker 1: how will he know that you're interested in him? So No,
Speaker 1: I'm confused about the part where it says his his
Speaker 1: incisors starts to tingle. He responds by touching it. Does
Speaker 1: that mean with his tongue or with another part of
Speaker 1: his or with someone else's tongue? Who's to say? The
Speaker 1: world is full of amazing possibilities. It's funny that you read.
Speaker 1: I read this exact same piece and I did not
Speaker 1: decide to include any of it because I found it
Speaker 1: off putting. Well, the reason specifically I decided to keep
Speaker 1: to to include it was because to kind of conclude
Speaker 1: this conversation, there are people who are saying, do we
Speaker 1: even want our bodies to be a technological interface in
Speaker 1: the first place? Right? There was there's a really good
Speaker 1: piece written more or less to actually in response to
Speaker 1: to that piece, Yes, Technology Review, Right, that by John
Speaker 1: Pavlis who wrote his piece was titled your body does
Speaker 1: not want to be an interface, which pretty much tells
Speaker 1: you what the argument is going to be. It's a
Speaker 1: very well written piece, and it's it's very interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: And he first argues that turning bodily experiences or motions
Speaker 1: into a command issued to technology would make it feel
Speaker 1: unnatural and alien, which is the opposite of the intention. Right.
Speaker 1: The intent is to remove that barrier between you and
Speaker 1: technology so that a natural motion gets interpreted as a
Speaker 1: command and the technology response. But he says, if you're
Speaker 1: doing this quote unquote natural motion in order to issue
Speaker 1: a command, you're not really being natural by definition, because
Speaker 1: you are you are issuing a command to technology, something
Speaker 1: that is not a natural thing for us. It might
Speaker 1: become something that ends up being second nature after doing
Speaker 1: it enough times, but in itself it becomes this alien
Speaker 1: task because now you're you're trying to do something in
Speaker 1: order to make a command. I can easily understand what
Speaker 1: he's saying, because if you've ever worked with a voice
Speaker 1: command system and you have to issue commands in a
Speaker 1: specific way in order to get results, it feels very
Speaker 1: unnatural because you're having to preface what you say with
Speaker 1: some sort of command, or you have to word it
Speaker 1: in a specific way for it to understand what you're saying.
Speaker 1: It is not a natural thing. Um. And so he
Speaker 1: says that we would make ourselves kind of hyper aware
Speaker 1: of how weird it is to like run our fingers
Speaker 1: along the inside of our forearms to adjust the dimness
Speaker 1: of the lights in our house or whatever. And Pablos
Speaker 1: refers to a computer scientist named Paul Dorish or Dowrish,
Speaker 1: who in turn took inspiration from a philosopher Martin Hidegger.
Speaker 1: Hidegger Hidegger was a boozy beggar, according to Monty Python,
Speaker 1: and uh, it was all about differentiating two general types
Speaker 1: of tools. The first type was is called the ready
Speaker 1: to hand technologies. Those are things that feel like they're
Speaker 1: an extension of our bodies. Uh. And so think of
Speaker 1: a hammer when you're hammering a nail, he says, that
Speaker 1: would be a very very brute version, or in my
Speaker 1: case for this weekend, the rapier. I've been working with
Speaker 1: one for a while, so it feels like an extension
Speaker 1: of my arm when I first picked it up. That
Speaker 1: was not the case. It would fall into the second
Speaker 1: category of tools, which, uh, you know that and is
Speaker 1: the present at hand type, So ready to hand type,
Speaker 1: that's the kind where as you're using it, you're not
Speaker 1: even really thinking of the tool as a separate thing
Speaker 1: from you. It's an extension of you, right, but the
Speaker 1: present at hand, you are aware of the presence of
Speaker 1: that tool. So, for example, when I was learning to
Speaker 1: use a mouse, I was hyper aware of the mouse
Speaker 1: because it was so hard for me to learn how
Speaker 1: to use. It was something that I was absolutely conscious of.
Speaker 1: It did not feel like an extension. These days, it
Speaker 1: totally does because I've used it enough where I've reached
Speaker 1: that level of familiarity, so things can change. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyone who's learned how to play a musical instrument, for example,
Speaker 1: has probably gone through this. Yeah. That's a great, a
Speaker 1: great way of putting it. So any of you out
Speaker 1: there who think back to when you first started learning
Speaker 1: how to play any kind of musical instrument, think about
Speaker 1: your first day when someone first said, like, and this
Speaker 1: is a chord and you went little nope, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Or you're like, especially with stringed instruments, where like your
Speaker 1: fingers start to hit other strings so you're muffling some
Speaker 1: of the cored and you know that doesn't sound right
Speaker 1: what is going on here? And you feel in that
Speaker 1: first stage like you're never gonna get it right. It's
Speaker 1: never gonna happen like you have to concentrate so hard.
Speaker 1: But then eventually you start to develop a familiarity and
Speaker 1: it becomes that first type of tool where it just
Speaker 1: feels like an extension of yourself. Um. He says. The
Speaker 1: problem is if we turned our bodies into interfaces, at
Speaker 1: least for a while, they would turn into that second
Speaker 1: type of tool, that our bodies would feel weird and
Speaker 1: alien to us. He specifically took the the example of
Speaker 1: John cusas character and being John Malkovich trying to control
Speaker 1: John Malkovich. That's like a marionette dealing with a puppet,
Speaker 1: and and it's not you're you're not skilled yet, you
Speaker 1: don't know how to manipulate it properly. But instead of
Speaker 1: it being another person's body, it's your own body. And
Speaker 1: he says, that sounds like an awful experience. I don't
Speaker 1: want that. Yeah. Yeah, it enters into this, and I
Speaker 1: guess I was sort of emotionally reacting in this way
Speaker 1: when I was thinking about some of those examples, the
Speaker 1: tooth touching and whatever. Uh. It enters into this kind
Speaker 1: of Cronenbergian sort of sort of body horror area where
Speaker 1: you yourself are a foreign object. Yeah, and how do
Speaker 1: how do you deal with that? Well, you reconcile that
Speaker 1: the two and you figure that that these these interfaces
Speaker 1: are ultimately going to be designed by somebody who thought
Speaker 1: this has got to be the best way, this is
Speaker 1: the way it makes sense to do this thing right,
Speaker 1: But that's not you. So it may be that something
Speaker 1: that seems natural to the person who designed the system
Speaker 1: is completely unnatural to you. And then you have to
Speaker 1: commit this unnatural motion in order to do something you
Speaker 1: want to do. That's not a good experience. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I I think there could totally be a Cronenberg style
Speaker 1: body horror film based upon this premise. You know, even
Speaker 1: if you're even if are doing something that isn't on
Speaker 1: the surface horrifying, if you make it clear that it
Speaker 1: is something that doesn't feel right in order for you
Speaker 1: to get the response you want, that is a very
Speaker 1: disturbing idea. Yeah, I wonder if this is the kind
Speaker 1: of thing. There's been some research lately into common facial
Speaker 1: expressions that that people across the world all make that.
Speaker 1: There was one story that came out that I think
Speaker 1: the aforementioned how stuff works now uh covered about a
Speaker 1: nope face that apparently is just common to too many
Speaker 1: human populations. This this like I'm disinterested and I don't
Speaker 1: want to be interested kind of kind of facial expression.
Speaker 1: And so I wonder whether further research into that kind
Speaker 1: of thing could possibly identify common, common micro gestures that
Speaker 1: are just ubiquitous that would be natural for people to use,
Speaker 1: and that technology could pick up on without us even
Speaker 1: really being having to be aware that we're making this
Speaker 1: the and of course the challenge there also is that
Speaker 1: how do you how do you determine which ones need
Speaker 1: to be conscious decisions on the part of the person
Speaker 1: interacting with technology, Because if it's an active thing, you
Speaker 1: don't want to you don't want to accidentally activate your technology.
Speaker 1: If all you need to do is like scratch your
Speaker 1: nose or whatever, whatever tiny thing it might be, or
Speaker 1: or that you're blinking at a certain frequency, whatever it
Speaker 1: might be, you don't want to be activating your technology accidentally.
Speaker 1: Like like I ended up taking a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: pictures of myself when I was looking like a complete
Speaker 1: dou fist because it just so happened that the thing
Speaker 1: that I was going through at that time was the
Speaker 1: same as my command, Hey take a picture now, so
Speaker 1: there are some challenges. Yeah, I think I was thinking
Speaker 1: like so far ahead, like into the like her kind
Speaker 1: of university. I saw that film the idea where you
Speaker 1: actually have this world that can anticipate things like like
Speaker 1: the nest thermostatic model but on steroids. You know, this
Speaker 1: idea of we we talked about this in our our
Speaker 1: Internet of Things episode where he said, you know, you
Speaker 1: extend this idea outward far enough. It's a an environment
Speaker 1: that anticipates everything you need before you even are able
Speaker 1: to consciously think of what those needs might be. That's
Speaker 1: that's kind of the end destination that people really hope
Speaker 1: to get to. That was your body as a computer
Speaker 1: interface from the Forward Thinking podcast. You know, we don't
Speaker 1: do that one anymore. I really miss it because there
Speaker 1: is nothing like sitting down with some of the smartest
Speaker 1: people you know and just talking about cool potential stuff,
Speaker 1: like things that are on the cusp or just emerging
Speaker 1: uh or or perhaps are only hypotheticals, and kind of
Speaker 1: casting your mind forward and imagining what maybe obviously. Predicting
Speaker 1: the future is always a tricky thing. You never really
Speaker 1: want to double down on that because you could be
Speaker 1: wildly wrong. But it was fun to do. If you
Speaker 1: have never listened to the Forward Thinking podcast, I suggest
Speaker 1: to check it out. Just go through, look at the episodes,
Speaker 1: see if there are any that strike your your fancy. Um,
Speaker 1: because I feel like we did a lot of really
Speaker 1: good work now. Granted, also those episodes are several years
Speaker 1: old now. Some of those we were predicting things that
Speaker 1: either definitively came to pass or did not um and
Speaker 1: if they did come to pass, they probably looked very
Speaker 1: different from the way we imagine them. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's a really good show that you know, you
Speaker 1: can check out. There's also a Forward Thinking video series
Speaker 1: that I did several years ago that's all up on
Speaker 1: YouTube if you want to check those out. Um. I
Speaker 1: occasionally get notifications about people still watching those episodes, and
Speaker 1: I haven't done one in years, but it's very gratifying
Speaker 1: to know that people still watch it occasionally. Anyway, if
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions for future episodes, or you just
Speaker 1: want to say hi, anything like that, a couple of
Speaker 1: different ways you can do that. You can go to
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app and navigate to the text
Speaker 1: stuff page and there's a little microphone icon. You click
Speaker 1: on that and you can leave a voicemail message up
Speaker 1: to thirty seconds in length, or, of course, you can
Speaker 1: reach out via Twitter. The handle for the show is
Speaker 1: text Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you
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