Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. He there, and welcome back to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says your
Speaker 1: face to face with the man who sold the world.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren foc Oban, and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: That's kind of melancholy note to begin on. But we
Speaker 1: are back. Yeah, wait, wait till you hear the quote
Speaker 1: for the next one. It seemed okay. I I took
Speaker 1: it hard, but no, we are back. This is a
Speaker 1: moment of celebration for us. We are so pleased to
Speaker 1: be recording new episodes. This isn't an update to an
Speaker 1: old episode. This is brand new. Yeah, we had to
Speaker 1: like do research and like I had to go to
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. Oh man, that is an intense podcast episode, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: be straight with me. Sure, how futuristic were the buffets?
Speaker 1: I only no, eight I ate it to buffets, neither
Speaker 1: of which felt particularly futuristic. Although I started to I
Speaker 1: started to question my recent decisions after I started eating them,
Speaker 1: so I was really reflecting on the past, essentially the
Speaker 1: specific moments that led up to me going to a buffet,
Speaker 1: but I didn't really think so much about the future,
Speaker 1: which was pretty evident o the way I was eating.
Speaker 1: Question number two about Las Vegas, is anybody working on
Speaker 1: the packet bread from the Force awakens? As far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, no. But but keep in mind that
Speaker 1: we're talking about CS sixteen in this episode, and some
Speaker 1: of the forward thinking technology I saw there CS is
Speaker 1: is enormous. I mean, the number that was thrown around
Speaker 1: for two thousand fifteen I don't know that this is accurate,
Speaker 1: was that it had two point two million square feet
Speaker 1: of exhibit space across the Las Vegas Convention Center of
Speaker 1: the Sands, as well as a bunch of hotel suites.
Speaker 1: So it's just normal and ud uh like vendors shows
Speaker 1: close to close to four thousand, yeah, because it's and
Speaker 1: so some of them are huge, Like some of those
Speaker 1: booths are enormous and you could fit like forty booths
Speaker 1: in one of the big ones like Intel or Sony.
Speaker 1: In the future, we will have booths that take up
Speaker 1: entire building. That's kind of what it feels like. And
Speaker 1: of course, not all of the technology on display there
Speaker 1: is particularly forward thinking. Some of it is just you know,
Speaker 1: the latest in stereo systems, and it's not that all that, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's not it's not that that technology is is
Speaker 1: subbar or anything like that. It's just not the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff we associate with. All Right, what's sort of
Speaker 1: the groundbreaking pioneering tech out? Yeah, what's going to drive
Speaker 1: are our very lives over the next forty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we wanted exactly twenty to forty years. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: good to be back, but also we wanted to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to stress this is this is
Speaker 1: a show about consumer technology. So you wouldn't expect to
Speaker 1: see tech that is like the super prototype cutting edge.
Speaker 1: You know, we're ten years away from seeing this implemented
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. You tend to see stuff that in general,
Speaker 1: you know, you're talking about possibly a lot I imagine
Speaker 1: there's not like a DARPA booth. Strangely enough, you would
Speaker 1: be incorrect only in the sense that DARPA has a
Speaker 1: presence at CES, because often they end up being uh,
Speaker 1: you know, people who end up working for DARPA also
Speaker 1: end up working on these other projects, like Toyota hasment
Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, Toyota had a couple of former DARPA
Speaker 1: UM executives joined their artificial intelligence research facility for example. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting stuff. And ASSA has a booth there
Speaker 1: too actually at c Yes, okay, so actually what you're
Speaker 1: saying here is that there's so much going on there
Speaker 1: that you don't know for sure that there wasn't an
Speaker 1: entire wing devoted to the bread from the Force Awaken there.
Speaker 1: There could have been. I did not witness it myself.
Speaker 1: But then usually when I get home, the first thing
Speaker 1: that happens is I start looking at some of the
Speaker 1: footage from c e S and it looks like it's
Speaker 1: a totally different show than the one I went to,
Speaker 1: just because my experience was so limited. I just want
Speaker 1: to assure you listeners, by the way, who might be
Speaker 1: worrying if you haven't seen The Force Awakens yet, the
Speaker 1: bread is not a spoiler. This is no major platform now.
Speaker 1: The bread doesn't spoil. That's what makes it futuristic, all right.
Speaker 1: So we wanted to talk about the actual technology that
Speaker 1: I did witness and read up on as well while
Speaker 1: at CS. So these are these are just some examples
Speaker 1: of some of the stuff I saw personally. Keep in mind,
Speaker 1: this is not an exhaustive list, it doesn't include all
Speaker 1: the other things that I didn't get around to seeing. So,
Speaker 1: for example, I don't have any A R or VR
Speaker 1: stuff really listed here, and that's because I never got
Speaker 1: a chance to go to that part of the show floor.
Speaker 1: That's how big this show is. And I didn't even
Speaker 1: get a chance to go to where all the drones
Speaker 1: and robots are because I was running short on time.
Speaker 1: But I guess the lines for the A R and
Speaker 1: V R stuff for really long they were, And in fact,
Speaker 1: I think I might be mistaken, but I think Oculus
Speaker 1: decided to have a reservation's only approach, so you had
Speaker 1: to actually book a time to go and get a
Speaker 1: demonstration of the Oculus technology. I might be incorrect about
Speaker 1: that because I never went to see it. But one
Speaker 1: thing I did get to see was Intel's booth. I
Speaker 1: mentioned them earlier, and one of the reasons I think
Speaker 1: Intel is really interesting when you go to C E.
Speaker 1: S is Intel is known for making the sensors and
Speaker 1: processors that make other technology work right. They don't tend
Speaker 1: to be the company you would think of for a
Speaker 1: finished product. They make the guts of consumer products exactly,
Speaker 1: so most of the stuff you see on display at
Speaker 1: Intel is actually the representation of a partnership with some
Speaker 1: other company or multiple companies, where the the insides are
Speaker 1: Intel powered. And they showed off a couple of different
Speaker 1: things that were implemented in different ways. One of them
Speaker 1: was Intel CURI and this is it looks like just
Speaker 1: a little microprocessor. It's essentially a very simple computer on
Speaker 1: a chip system. It's about the size and shape of
Speaker 1: a button. Yeah, it's tiny, tiny, and it has uh
Speaker 1: six axis accelerometers and gyroscopes in there, as well as
Speaker 1: a means of communicating over Bluetooth low energy protocols. So
Speaker 1: it it SIPs it power has a tiny little battery
Speaker 1: that is dedicated just to this device. And this is
Speaker 1: something you would embed in other things like a wearable
Speaker 1: technology or as was the case in some of the
Speaker 1: demonstrations um sporting equipment. So we saw it in like
Speaker 1: snowboards and bicycles. And one of the things that could
Speaker 1: do is actually measure rotation in real time. So imagine
Speaker 1: you're watching the X games, like the Way or X Games,
Speaker 1: and you see a snowboarder leap into the air and
Speaker 1: start doing all those crazy twisty turny things. You could
Speaker 1: get real time update on exactly what sort of maneuvers
Speaker 1: that person was doing, and including like to the degree,
Speaker 1: and so it could be like, I'm sorry, that looked
Speaker 1: like a ten eighty, but it was not. This is
Speaker 1: snowboarding ten sixty and you have failed that. You could
Speaker 1: get that specific Yeah. I don't know that that's going
Speaker 1: to get to the point of judging, but you could
Speaker 1: at least, you know, as someone watching it, you could
Speaker 1: have a live feed that was just giving you the
Speaker 1: data from the Intel Cury PROCESSORB. We we always use
Speaker 1: technology to judge better. That's shade is important, right, I
Speaker 1: mean you can't bribe the sensor. No, No, it's it's
Speaker 1: not subjective. It is it is actually quantifying something that
Speaker 1: before we would just sort of say that was very impressive.
Speaker 1: Now we can say we can say exactly to what
Speaker 1: degree that was impressive. Now I have a question. You
Speaker 1: said it's called the Curi spelled c U R I
Speaker 1: E I. I assume is that named after the Curies,
Speaker 1: like Marie and Pierre. That was my assumption. It's usually
Speaker 1: Intel tends to name a lot of their products after places,
Speaker 1: uh specifically places that are around Intel's headquarters. But in
Speaker 1: this case, I think it was specifically after the curies.
Speaker 1: But that's my that's my guests. I didn't actually ask
Speaker 1: anyone there. I was too busy looking at some of
Speaker 1: the other implementations, like they had them embedded in gloves
Speaker 1: and then they would play air guitar and get actual
Speaker 1: music out of it there at the Intel press conference,
Speaker 1: which I did not attend. I only watched the video.
Speaker 1: It's just as awkward as it sounds. Imagine an Intel
Speaker 1: executive coming out wearing a do rag and and having
Speaker 1: these gloves on and then playing either air guitar or
Speaker 1: air drums and you'd actually get uh, you know, music
Speaker 1: playing out of this and then looks like he's having
Speaker 1: some kind of episode possibly that I I that would
Speaker 1: not be outside the realm of plausibility. Should you watch
Speaker 1: this video that you would have that reaction. Also, it's
Speaker 1: just there were a couple of grandiose comments that uh,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like not quite to the extent
Speaker 1: of music will change forever, or we don't need we
Speaker 1: don't need guitars anymore, but but kind of going and
Speaker 1: and like you could see an implication there. This is
Speaker 1: one of those things where you think, really, I mean
Speaker 1: it's impressive. It's kind of cool and fun. I could
Speaker 1: see that being an interesting implementation of that. But there
Speaker 1: were other uh demos as well. They actually want I
Speaker 1: got to try. They had these bracelets with l E
Speaker 1: D s in them, and the l d s would
Speaker 1: light up whenever you were using the bracelet properly. They
Speaker 1: had this big curved display. They had digital little fish
Speaker 1: on them, and when you would waive the bracelet around
Speaker 1: in front of it, it capture the fish's attention. You
Speaker 1: can get a little school of fish, and you can
Speaker 1: make them spiral around and direct them to different parts.
Speaker 1: And they had about, you know, a dozen people are
Speaker 1: so lined up on this thing, all kind of stealing
Speaker 1: each other's fish. And it was again just a demonstration
Speaker 1: that this thing could fit into really small stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a practical demonstration of the power of this.
Speaker 1: It was more of a practical demonstration of it's so
Speaker 1: small and self it's it's like self contained in the
Speaker 1: sense that it's pretty much everything you need to do
Speaker 1: some basic control. That that was really the power of
Speaker 1: that demonstration. Yeah. Yeah, on a more practical level, I
Speaker 1: suspect that it would be implemented into like the fitness
Speaker 1: tracking technology kind of stuff, partially because the tech that
Speaker 1: comes from Curry comes from the company Basis, which Intel
Speaker 1: brought back in March. Um and uh I read this interview,
Speaker 1: this really good interview with Intel's vice president Mike Bell
Speaker 1: in the Internet publication Alpha. I had never heard. I
Speaker 1: had never heard of before. Interesting, it apparently exists. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he was talking about how they're they're working on making
Speaker 1: technology like this adaptive to every individual who use it.
Speaker 1: Who uses it, you know, like like learning what it
Speaker 1: looks like when you Joe go running or play racquetball
Speaker 1: or are sleeping. You don't want to know what that
Speaker 1: looks like, Well maybe Intel does. Maybe maybe you want
Speaker 1: statistics on on how well you're running, how how how
Speaker 1: your body is moving, all of your heartbeat kind of
Speaker 1: you know, all that sort of stuff. Maybe in what
Speaker 1: point of any given physical activity do you see your
Speaker 1: physical performance start to drop? That kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of people these days are min maxing their own
Speaker 1: bodies and in fitness tracker kind of ways, which I
Speaker 1: work it's but but you know, he was talking about
Speaker 1: how how for for a lot of this technology today
Speaker 1: it's geared towards the average user, that there's really no
Speaker 1: such thing as the average user. Of course, we're all
Speaker 1: in our own ways outliers, and so you know, making
Speaker 1: something that can adapt and can learn what you do
Speaker 1: is a lot more useful to any given human. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Now. Sometimes I wonder about, say,
Speaker 1: the the fitness tracker on my phone. It has an
Speaker 1: estimate of how many steps you took today, but that's
Speaker 1: got to be based on some averaging and some estimating
Speaker 1: because because it doesn't really know for sure. It's not
Speaker 1: like it's a pometer. What if my gate is kind
Speaker 1: of weird or what I I just don't know how
Speaker 1: accurate it is. Yeah, yeah, no, that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, especially if it's something where it's just estimating
Speaker 1: based upon the speed and distance that you are traveling.
Speaker 1: So in other words, if there's not a predometer, if
Speaker 1: there's nothing like if the accelerometer isn't trying to gauge
Speaker 1: an actual step, then you could do something like jump
Speaker 1: on a moving sidewalk, and just because of the speed
Speaker 1: and distance, it's going to say, oh, well that that
Speaker 1: includes those those are steps too. Yeah. Oh I like
Speaker 1: it when I know sometimes it's wrong because occasionally it
Speaker 1: tells me that I bicycled for fifteen minutes today and
Speaker 1: I have not ridden a bicycle. Yeah. Yeah, There are
Speaker 1: a lot of other potential applications of this. Again, this
Speaker 1: was really a proof of concept in the sense that
Speaker 1: Intel could say, you probably have ideas of what you
Speaker 1: want to do. We make the stuff that makes your
Speaker 1: ideas possible. And another example of that was their Real
Speaker 1: Sense technology, which is pretty similar to the way the
Speaker 1: connect sensor works for the Xbox. It actually contains three cameras.
Speaker 1: It's a system that uses three cameras. One of them
Speaker 1: is in the optical spectrum. It's like a ten eighty
Speaker 1: high definition camera. One is an infrared camera, and one's
Speaker 1: more of an infrared projector. So the idea being that
Speaker 1: using these this combination, you can create a system that's
Speaker 1: able to sense objects in depth and um and so
Speaker 1: you could put it into a laptop. They had several
Speaker 1: laptops on display where that was part of the laptop camera,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't just a regular camera. You could also
Speaker 1: use it for gesture controls and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I've I've also read that Intel is looking to use
Speaker 1: real Sense to let your your device, your laptop, your phone,
Speaker 1: your tablet, whatever, uh, watch your reactions to what you're
Speaker 1: experiencing on that device, like whether you're happy or sad
Speaker 1: or board. And I'm not sure why. Yeah, let me
Speaker 1: let me get back to that, because there's there's something
Speaker 1: specific I want to talk to you guys about. Didn't
Speaker 1: put it in the notes, but it's called smart me
Speaker 1: up or they might even smart me app. But it's
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's it's it. Maybe it was a it
Speaker 1: was an app with facial recognition technology that also could
Speaker 1: recognize mood. I'll get back to that because it's similar
Speaker 1: to what you're saying, Lauren, Okay, alright, But but you
Speaker 1: could also put this another technology to One of the
Speaker 1: examples they had was the hover butler um, and the
Speaker 1: hover butler is essentially, think one of those personal transportation
Speaker 1: devices that often are called hoverboards, which Joe, I know
Speaker 1: you object to the term hoverboard for something that uses
Speaker 1: wheels to get so, but this is a hover butler.
Speaker 1: It's a hover butler catch on fire. It did not
Speaker 1: in the presentation, and and considering who is behind it,
Speaker 1: I would suspect it would not catch on fire. But
Speaker 1: it's a it's a fire butler. It's like it's bring
Speaker 1: so if they called it Prometheus, but it's a uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's like a hoverboard, so you can stand on
Speaker 1: it and wheel around just as you would with one
Speaker 1: of those. But it has um kind of a little
Speaker 1: central post that extends up a little bit from the
Speaker 1: base and you can convert it into a robot. And
Speaker 1: so the the the actual stem will switch a little
Speaker 1: bit and a little digital screen will pop out and
Speaker 1: these cute little eyes are there and it can talk
Speaker 1: to you. You could even have it do things like
Speaker 1: answer the door and stuff, or at least go and
Speaker 1: look at who's at the door. There are cameras embedded
Speaker 1: in it, so you can get live streaming video and
Speaker 1: it uses real sense to uh to detect objects in
Speaker 1: its environment and maneuver around them. Um. And my favorite
Speaker 1: part was when they added arms to it. There was
Speaker 1: a segment on the back that you could unscrew and
Speaker 1: then you could plug in a physical extension to this robot.
Speaker 1: And in this case, they plugged in a physical extension
Speaker 1: that were a pair of arms, and uh, they let
Speaker 1: the robot knows, okay, robot, you have arms now, say
Speaker 1: these are my arms, and it lifts its arms up
Speaker 1: and then goes awesome. It was in the demo and
Speaker 1: everyone was like, oh uh yeah a do you guys
Speaker 1: just have her butler? What a time to be alive?
Speaker 1: Am I? Right? Yeah? Someone someone named a product that,
Speaker 1: but be the people who named a product that. It's
Speaker 1: a project from Segway and Segways new owners nine butt.
Speaker 1: So you guys, Segway is still a thing, which is
Speaker 1: why I would expect it probably doesn't burst into flay
Speaker 1: hold on to Segway not make the other hoverboards. No,
Speaker 1: oh I see, yeah, In fact, there there's a different,
Speaker 1: totally different thing. Yeah, the hoverboards stuff like there actually
Speaker 1: are some some patent disputes about whether some of them
Speaker 1: have infringed upon Segways patents. There have actually been some
Speaker 1: some threatens, threats of lawsuits. But the interesting thing here,
Speaker 1: and Lauren, I know you can talk about this a
Speaker 1: little bit too, is that while you, you know, you
Speaker 1: might think, oh, that's a very cute idea, this idea
Speaker 1: of a of a robot slash personal transportation device that's adorable,
Speaker 1: they're also looking at involving other parties by making it
Speaker 1: an open platform both from software and hardware and UM
Speaker 1: and I remember, like right here in the our notes,
Speaker 1: you've got a little bit about UM using Android operating
Speaker 1: systems in order to do that. Yea, yeah, until so
Speaker 1: far has been pairing these technology these with Android and
Speaker 1: trying to encourage independent developers to really dive in and
Speaker 1: find new cool ways to to use it, like like
Speaker 1: you were saying, yea, and the same thing with the
Speaker 1: arm extension, I was talking about that's just one potential
Speaker 1: hardware piece that you could attach to this thing. What
Speaker 1: are you thinking articulated spider legs, right, or tentacles you know,
Speaker 1: or just dart guns, fire extinguisher extensions to put out
Speaker 1: your hoverboard fires right right? So uncle? Nope, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: why did you teach me to love? Uh? Yeah, might
Speaker 1: be we might be a little loopy after our long hiatus.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was again like meant to sort of
Speaker 1: demonstrate the potential I possibly with the hover butler more
Speaker 1: of an actual potential product. I don't know who would
Speaker 1: who that market is, like, don't you know it's it's
Speaker 1: combining those you know, people with limited mobility or or
Speaker 1: any time that you've got a you know that that
Speaker 1: like office robotic avatar that we've talked about a few
Speaker 1: times on the show. Like being able to plug that
Speaker 1: into something like that would allow not having your your
Speaker 1: office avatar just bump into doors continually. Must be like
Speaker 1: way less embarrassing. I think it would be hilarious to
Speaker 1: be fired by the hover butler because it would be
Speaker 1: so adorable. You couldn't be mad about Yes, back up
Speaker 1: your things. It doesn't come across like that at all.
Speaker 1: The voice is so cute, but well, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think the cuteness has got to be a factor there. Right,
Speaker 1: you're asking who would be interested in I mean, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a certain audience for things that are robotic novelties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just also I imagine and I don't know what
Speaker 1: the price would be for this particular thing, but I
Speaker 1: would imagine it would be pretty expensive. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: you're talking about Segway technology, and Segways were not known
Speaker 1: for being cheap um. They were really known for anything
Speaker 1: other than Yeah, I remember, I still distinctly remember the
Speaker 1: day when Good Morning America unveiled what it was, because
Speaker 1: before that they called it either Project Ginger or it
Speaker 1: and then they had the reveal that this is the segue.
Speaker 1: And I remember I was sitting there thinking what this um?
Speaker 1: But you know it was and your reaction was thus
Speaker 1: the whole world. I did not intend to be a
Speaker 1: pioneer in that space, but there were a lot of
Speaker 1: other things I got to see as well. So that
Speaker 1: was in the central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Speaker 1: That's where a lot of the really big companies like
Speaker 1: Sony and Panasonic and things like that are there. And
Speaker 1: Intel was is always in the central hall. But the
Speaker 1: next one that I looked at was over in the
Speaker 1: South hall of the convention Center. And this was one
Speaker 1: of those things that I would have totally missed. I
Speaker 1: would have overlooked it except a friend of mine I
Speaker 1: as actor of of c NET, hadn't mentioned he had
Speaker 1: heard something about it and gave me the heads up
Speaker 1: and so put on our list of things we had
Speaker 1: to check out. I'm so glad because I'm so excited
Speaker 1: about this one. Yeah, this is a General Financial which
Speaker 1: is a long term care insurance company. And you might think, well,
Speaker 1: why are they at ce S. I mean, it's and
Speaker 1: what exactly is long term care insurance? Well, it's insurance
Speaker 1: that you would in our into you would hold a
Speaker 1: policy for in order to get reimbursed for long term
Speaker 1: care for people who cannot care for themselves, typically the elderly,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily just the elderly, but for services like
Speaker 1: assisted living, so feeding and bathing and dressing and that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff. That these are services that you have
Speaker 1: to pay for. Well, this kind of insurance gives you
Speaker 1: a reimbursement, a daily reimbursement, and it's it's a really
Speaker 1: important idea, particularly with a growing aging population, but it's
Speaker 1: also a tricky one to talk about with younger people
Speaker 1: to get across. Uh, you know what it's like to
Speaker 1: go through these experiences, right, I mean people they just
Speaker 1: think they're going to be young and strong forever, or
Speaker 1: even if they're thinking about the like a parent that
Speaker 1: they might be caring for, it's still an experience that's
Speaker 1: so far removed from their own personal experience. It's hard
Speaker 1: to have that kind of sympathy, right, And frankly, this
Speaker 1: isn't something we usually want to think about, so sure well,
Speaker 1: and and also it's this kind of issue of sympathy
Speaker 1: and empathy with any kind of patient is is a
Speaker 1: huge issue in the medical industry and it's been luckily
Speaker 1: getting increased attention in the past couple of decades, but
Speaker 1: no one has really come up with a really good
Speaker 1: solution for it yet. Um, you know, like a hazard
Speaker 1: that most human people want to be sympathetic to the
Speaker 1: plight of of their of their fellows. Yes, at least
Speaker 1: in the abstract sure, hypothetically, Um, but you know a
Speaker 1: like like like you said, like, it's hard to understand
Speaker 1: what people are going through if you've never had any
Speaker 1: kind of similar symptom and be there are unfortunately groups
Speaker 1: of people that society is sort of trained to disbelieve
Speaker 1: about their symptoms. Women and the elderly and picular are
Speaker 1: two groups that numerous studies have indicated received less medical
Speaker 1: care for equal symptoms reported. So, since society is a
Speaker 1: really hard thing to change, especially quickly, it's it's really
Speaker 1: cool that that work is being done to fix part
Speaker 1: a of this equation, being able to to to let
Speaker 1: people better sympathize. Yea does, folks, And that is through
Speaker 1: this project. Yeah, it's actually called the aging experience. So
Speaker 1: how do you how do you convey what is an
Speaker 1: abstract idea into a real, actual experience for someone who
Speaker 1: otherwise would never have these symptoms that often come along
Speaker 1: with aging. A rapid aging drug that would be one
Speaker 1: way of doing it, but sadly not necessarily reversible. A more,
Speaker 1: uh perhaps a kind way of doing this is to
Speaker 1: simulate it. And to do that, gen Worth turned to
Speaker 1: a company called Applied Minds. All right, Now, Applied Minds
Speaker 1: was founded in two thousand by a couple of four
Speaker 1: or Disney imagineers. So these were engineers who really thought
Speaker 1: outside the box in order to create stuff. And one
Speaker 1: of those two, Brand Farron, is still with the company,
Speaker 1: and in fact I got to meet him. He was
Speaker 1: the person who led the UM the demonstration that I
Speaker 1: was part of. I was actually put into this piece
Speaker 1: of technology, which was an exo skeleton. Now, when we
Speaker 1: talk about exoskeletons, we are normally talking about technology meant
Speaker 1: to increase your ability. Power you up so you can
Speaker 1: lift throws or at least walk, right, Like, there are
Speaker 1: the exo skeletons that are designed for people who have
Speaker 1: lost mobility and I've learned to walk again. That sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. Not the case with the aging simulator. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was actually meant to to diminish your physical capabilities
Speaker 1: rather than enhance them. Now. I even got to to
Speaker 1: do the whole demonstration. I got to put the whole
Speaker 1: thing on. There's actually a video up. If you haven't
Speaker 1: seen the video, you can go to Forward Thinking and
Speaker 1: check it out. And if you look like like iron
Speaker 1: Man in this thing, a very doughy iron Man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I was very aware of how tight those
Speaker 1: straps were. Um, but it was. It was an interesting experience.
Speaker 1: And so it consists of a helmet which has a
Speaker 1: heads up display, actually has two cameras mounted on the
Speaker 1: outside so where your eyes would be, so you get
Speaker 1: the stereoscopic vision. Uh. That feed is fed directly to
Speaker 1: monitors inside the helmet. And there's no latency that I
Speaker 1: could detect, which is fantastic because if there's latency, that
Speaker 1: means when you turn your head, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: delay between when you turn and what you see. Right.
Speaker 1: It's the thing that makes people puke when they're using
Speaker 1: bad VR, right right, Yeah, so kind of like feeling seasick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: aren't exactly. Yeah, your brain is like, um, your body
Speaker 1: is going through one thing, but your senses are doing
Speaker 1: something else. So we're just gonna dump everything in your
Speaker 1: stomach right now, all right, guys out because I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what to do. So, if this is supposed to
Speaker 1: simulate the debilitating effects of age or disability, shouldn't it
Speaker 1: have had some latency to kind of make you feel
Speaker 1: even worse. No, because they said specifically that they didn't
Speaker 1: want people to become nauseated and they didn't want to
Speaker 1: simulate actual pain. Is that those were the elements that
Speaker 1: are not part of the experience because they want you
Speaker 1: to be able to have a have sort of a
Speaker 1: logical reaction as well as promotional one. Sure, sure, well,
Speaker 1: but they did alter your your vision in a couple
Speaker 1: of ways. Absolutely. Yeah. This is the fact that it
Speaker 1: was a video feed meant that they could interrupt the
Speaker 1: signal from the cameras to the monitors in different ways.
Speaker 1: So uh. At one point they gave me tunnel vision,
Speaker 1: So the periphery of my vision started to close in
Speaker 1: and close in and close it until I only had
Speaker 1: a small window that I could see through, and even
Speaker 1: that was blurry, very disorienting. They did the opposite, where
Speaker 1: I had a blurry section in front of my vision
Speaker 1: and the peripheral as a little more clear. They also
Speaker 1: ended up giving me the experience of having a cataract
Speaker 1: in one eye by my right side got all milky
Speaker 1: white and I couldn't see through it very well. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: they kept on cranking up the thing as the demo
Speaker 1: was going on for that section, So while it would
Speaker 1: first be disorienting, it would get progressively worse as that
Speaker 1: as that section of the demo went on, and I
Speaker 1: would start thinking, like, you are going to reverse this right,
Speaker 1: because I'm not able to see anything. This is kind
Speaker 1: of terrifying. Now, did they also have you like doing
Speaker 1: tasks or running through an obstacle? Course, I'll get to that.
Speaker 1: So next they put the head helmet also has headphones,
Speaker 1: so they can mess with your hearing. Right, there's an
Speaker 1: external microphone that picks up all the audio and feeds
Speaker 1: it into the headphones. But they can also change that.
Speaker 1: So they introduced to nitis, also known as the ringing
Speaker 1: of the ears. If you've ever been to a loud
Speaker 1: show and you had your ears kind of ring up
Speaker 1: for a little while after that, sometimes it doesn't go away.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you can develop chronic tonitas and it will be
Speaker 1: there forever, and you might be able to take some
Speaker 1: medication to help mitigate it. But it's always there. I've
Speaker 1: experienced tonitis on more than a few occasions, being being
Speaker 1: the fan of punk rock than I am um, but
Speaker 1: fortunately don't have it as a as a chronic condition.
Speaker 1: But this was I mean, I was very familiar with
Speaker 1: the experience when they started playing it. Immediately I said, oh,
Speaker 1: it's tenitas. He's like, yep, you're absolutely right. They also
Speaker 1: started to muffle my hearing, so they didn't cut it
Speaker 1: off entirely, but they started cutting out the base and
Speaker 1: high notes that are high pitches that I could hear
Speaker 1: um and or actually they started to blur out the
Speaker 1: middle ones too, so I was starting to get hard
Speaker 1: to make out what was being said, Like I could
Speaker 1: hear that someone was talking, but I couldn't easily understand them. Oh,
Speaker 1: and they gave me the experience that I'm sure you
Speaker 1: guys have heard about where they fed my own audio
Speaker 1: back to me on a couple of milliseconds delay, and
Speaker 1: then they tried to make me say stuff. So I
Speaker 1: started talking like this because hearing yourself on a short
Speaker 1: delay starts to mess with your ability to form words.
Speaker 1: If anyone's ever had like a really bad uh sinus
Speaker 1: infection or something like that, you might have experienced something
Speaker 1: to that extent where where just your your ears are
Speaker 1: not functioning quite the way I've I've recently recovered from
Speaker 1: a very bad sinus infection, which is why I bring
Speaker 1: I've had it happened before when recording stuff, and uh
Speaker 1: had my own feed kind of coming back in to
Speaker 1: my headphones where it was on that short delay, and
Speaker 1: I thought, I've got to fix this because otherwise I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to talk at all. And then
Speaker 1: you won't even think it's a Jonathan's Trickling show, because
Speaker 1: come on, but I know, right, it's a show that
Speaker 1: John Than's on and he didn't talk. That's not right. Uh.
Speaker 1: So then the other piece of this, obviously is the
Speaker 1: actual body, the exoskeleton body, which weighed forty pounds by
Speaker 1: the way, strapped snugly, and several locations across my body,
Speaker 1: uh and uh, at all the major joints, so my
Speaker 1: shoulders and my elbows, my hips, and my knees, there
Speaker 1: are motors that can increase torque at those joints so
Speaker 1: make it more difficult for you to move. And they
Speaker 1: had me do things like reach up and pretend like
Speaker 1: I'm climbing a rope, and then they started to lock
Speaker 1: up my shoulders and elbows, so it suddenly became much
Speaker 1: more difficult. And in the Kuda Gras they had me
Speaker 1: walk on a treadmill, So that was the part where
Speaker 1: it wasn't an obstacle course, but it wasn't treadmill. And
Speaker 1: so I'm walking at a decent pace for someone who's
Speaker 1: wearing the Exo skeleton, which already restricts your movement a
Speaker 1: little bit. It's not like it's not like I could
Speaker 1: go jogging through the c E S Show floor wearing
Speaker 1: this thing. But then they started to lock up my
Speaker 1: hips and my knees. It was really disorienting when they
Speaker 1: only did one side that, because then I could move
Speaker 1: like I think it was my left leg I could
Speaker 1: move freely, but my right leg was locked up and
Speaker 1: so I was lurching around quite a bit. Um And Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a really interesting and enlightening experience to go
Speaker 1: through that and and feel what that was like, and
Speaker 1: so to think to them be able to extrapolate that
Speaker 1: experience in and think about other people going through that,
Speaker 1: it does create more of not just a sense of awareness,
Speaker 1: but one of empathy and sympathy for for people going
Speaker 1: through that situation. Um, and I thought it was absolutely
Speaker 1: a phenomenal idea, not just for that compassion, which I
Speaker 1: think is incredibly important, but also you could potentially use
Speaker 1: this for engineers who are developing products for the elderly. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in fact, they had said that they had had
Speaker 1: some developers for apps interested in having them come out
Speaker 1: with an exoskeleton so the developers could experience it themselves
Speaker 1: because they're trying to develop apps meant for senior citizens,
Speaker 1: and by actually experiencing these things, it may change the
Speaker 1: way they think about the presentation and interaction of those
Speaker 1: ups because now they they've actually understand yeah, what the
Speaker 1: what the need is exactly because you know a lot
Speaker 1: of problem times you know, not a lot of times,
Speaker 1: but sometimes engineer set out to solve a problem but
Speaker 1: it turns out it was the wrong problem to try
Speaker 1: and solve. And having this personal experience means it's more
Speaker 1: likely that they would actually hit the target they're aiming for.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was really an interesting thing. And
Speaker 1: the Applied Minds folks, by the way, super nice. They
Speaker 1: sat down and chatted with us, and they were really
Speaker 1: passionate about what they did and so it was really
Speaker 1: encouraging to have that conversation as well. Uh and not
Speaker 1: just like, um, you know sometimes when you go to
Speaker 1: c e s you encounter people who are perfectly nice,
Speaker 1: but they are pr people who have been hired to
Speaker 1: represent a booth. But these were folks who actually worked
Speaker 1: for the company, and so they had a real sense
Speaker 1: of investment, right. It wasn't just your job to stand
Speaker 1: there and not a gun for higher type thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was really cool. Another thing, of course, this
Speaker 1: show is sponsored by Toyota, so you did spend a
Speaker 1: bit of time checking out some of the concept cars. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: concept cars and also just the underlying technology. Uh. So
Speaker 1: Toyota's big thing was they went into more detail about
Speaker 1: their one billion dollar investment in artificial intelligence. Actually made
Speaker 1: a really good point that I had not I had
Speaker 1: not really thought about in a in a concrete way,
Speaker 1: which is that they mentioned, you know, AI autonomous car
Speaker 1: technology is at a point right now where your standard
Speaker 1: driving like you're under your standing standard scenarios. It's pretty good.
Speaker 1: Like it's we have seen the demonstration that that technology
Speaker 1: is pretty mature. It's when you get to the outliers,
Speaker 1: the weird situations that don't happen all the time, but
Speaker 1: can happen things that you don't necessarily anticipate as a programmer.
Speaker 1: That's when you have to start saying, well, that's where
Speaker 1: we have room to improve in AI. And uh. It's though,
Speaker 1: one thing I do think I remember us discovering in
Speaker 1: previous discussions about you know, what do you do in
Speaker 1: these weird scenarios come up in an autonomous car? We've
Speaker 1: often found that it's a surprisingly effective solution for most
Speaker 1: cases to just reduce speed and come to a halt. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: for most most of the time, that would be probably
Speaker 1: the best approach. I mean, if you're talking about just
Speaker 1: a small percentage of autonomous cars on the road, it
Speaker 1: could still be dangerous depending upon like if you're on
Speaker 1: highway and you're moving on highway speeds, it could still
Speaker 1: be dangerous, But generally speaking, that seems to be the
Speaker 1: the best course of action. Like it, it's just surprising
Speaker 1: how far that simple strategy will take. Sure, But as
Speaker 1: they were pointing out, they were saying what they wanted
Speaker 1: to do was develop AI that could encounter a new
Speaker 1: situation and react appropriately to it, even though nothing had
Speaker 1: ever been programmed specifically in the AIS programming to deal
Speaker 1: with that situation. And so that's that's a hard problem.
Speaker 1: That'sn't that's a hard AI problem that has implications well
Speaker 1: beyond the auto industry. But that's one of the things
Speaker 1: they're going to really be focusing on in these AI centers.
Speaker 1: But they also talked about things like the connected car,
Speaker 1: which is a lot more simple to grasp. Right, So,
Speaker 1: connected car on its simplest form, it might be a
Speaker 1: vehicle that has an entertainment system that streams various stuff
Speaker 1: from the Internet into your car, or it may be
Speaker 1: able to give you real time updates on things like
Speaker 1: weather or traffic, or the kind of thing that we
Speaker 1: already have these days where your car will will connect
Speaker 1: to your phone when you get in and start playing
Speaker 1: whatever music right here. Yeah, your phone becomes the conduit
Speaker 1: and your car is really just connecting via Bluetooth or
Speaker 1: maybe a plug to use to utilize your phone is
Speaker 1: almost like a modem um. Now, what if you don't
Speaker 1: want it to automatically play your music when people get
Speaker 1: in the car for fear of embarrassment, Uh, download things
Speaker 1: other than smash Mouth, I guess about don't tell me
Speaker 1: what to do, Lauren. I only listen to awesome music,
Speaker 1: so I don't know what. I have no frame of reference.
Speaker 1: We need to make a embarrassing music exoskeleton for me
Speaker 1: to be in so that I can understand. Look, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm all about I'm all about my uh my various
Speaker 1: uh my, various punk rock bands, garage rock Lawrence Welk.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm all about that. So I don't understand
Speaker 1: this embarrassment stuff. Uh No. But at any rate, the
Speaker 1: connected car could go much beyond that, right, You could
Speaker 1: have actual connected car that can communicate with smart home technology.
Speaker 1: And in fact, that was a lot of what we
Speaker 1: saw on display at ce s Ford in particular. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they they announced. Did they announce or did they just
Speaker 1: show off their their contract with Amazon? They they had
Speaker 1: essentially they talked about it a lot that it was interesting.
Speaker 1: At the Ford booth they had a car, like a
Speaker 1: big like kind of muscle car on display that was
Speaker 1: really pretty. But I don't think I had any connection
Speaker 1: to the connected car concept. For the connected car stuff,
Speaker 1: they had walls that had information about how the Amazon
Speaker 1: Alexa integration was going to work, but still a pretty
Speaker 1: interesting idea. So Alexa's that that voice concierge system that
Speaker 1: works with Amazon's Echo product. So if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: the Echo, you can get that put in your home
Speaker 1: and you can you can do something as simple as
Speaker 1: asking Echo, Hey, what's the weather going to be like tomorrow?
Speaker 1: And it will tell you yeah. Yeah. It looks a
Speaker 1: little bit like a like a paper towel roll. It
Speaker 1: just kind of hangs out and like does stuff for you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And but you can also connect it to things like
Speaker 1: you're smart lightbulbs if you have them. You can say, uh, Alexa,
Speaker 1: dum the lights and it will do that automatically. Or uh.
Speaker 1: In this case with the car, you could say Alexa,
Speaker 1: start my car and it could actually start your car
Speaker 1: in your driveway which might be down. Yeah, so now
Speaker 1: can your can your connected car connect to your hover Butler?
Speaker 1: That's what I would imagine you could actually do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: however Butler bring my jacket out to the car for me,
Speaker 1: or hover Butler detects that you're experiencing road rage and
Speaker 1: hides in preparation for you getting home, or takes defensive measures,
Speaker 1: or just puts on the smooth Jazz so that cocktail
Speaker 1: lowers the lights a little bit. You know, Hover Butler
Speaker 1: is allowing you to experience a cool down period. Uh.
Speaker 1: This chillout period is is sponsored by Hover Butler. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so Alexa could also allow you to do things
Speaker 1: like have your car interact with your home in the
Speaker 1: sense that like let's say you leave your house, you
Speaker 1: get in your car, and you could even have it
Speaker 1: set up where you use Alexa to maybe lock the
Speaker 1: smart blocks on your house or or arm the security system,
Speaker 1: or change the lights or turned down the air conditioning
Speaker 1: or or open the garage door for all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. So it's it's just meant to try and
Speaker 1: create the sort of seamless experience you would have from
Speaker 1: moving from your home to your car and back again.
Speaker 1: That kind of stuff. Uh. And we saw some of
Speaker 1: that all so with other systems as well, not just Ford.
Speaker 1: Volkswagen had the Buddy bu d D dash lowercase E.
Speaker 1: That's their concepts electric van. Yeah, the Buddy sponsored by
Speaker 1: Polly Showing. Yeah by Day so Buddy Buddy. Actually I
Speaker 1: thought I thought Buddy. I thought Buddy looked pretty nifty. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I liked the design. But it's a concept car, so
Speaker 1: it's never going to hit production, we might see some
Speaker 1: of the technology work its way into other vehicles. You
Speaker 1: could also point out Volkswagen had a really uh compelling
Speaker 1: incentive to show off at an electric vehicle in after
Speaker 1: the which I believe we're our last episodes before the hiatus.
Speaker 1: Right when we were talking about the you and You
Speaker 1: and Me, Joe and uh Ben and Scott of yeah,
Speaker 1: that was kind of awkward. We didn't know those were
Speaker 1: going to be our final episod it's before a hiatus.
Speaker 1: We would have we would have said, sorry, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be on poles. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry about that, folks.
Speaker 1: But it was also interesting that that beyond talking about
Speaker 1: electric vehicles and connected cars, there was also a a
Speaker 1: weird conversation going on on the show floor about the
Speaker 1: battling concepts of personal ownership and a fleet of vehicles.
Speaker 1: So I would argue that a lot of the connected
Speaker 1: car concepts are partially the car companies trying to create
Speaker 1: incentives for personal ownership, right like the because because you're
Speaker 1: talking about interacting with your home, you're not going to
Speaker 1: have a third party car service that you're going to
Speaker 1: have allowed to connect to your home. That seems like
Speaker 1: that's a bad idea. Though you may want a third
Speaker 1: party car service that connects to your smartphone or something
Speaker 1: like that. I would really be hesitant, especially anything that
Speaker 1: would allow you to control security systems. Oh of Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean smartphone makes a little more sense because if
Speaker 1: it's not in the car, then they're not likely and
Speaker 1: it's not like they're gonna flash the drive of your
Speaker 1: phone while you're in the vehicle, at least I hope
Speaker 1: they wouldn't. Um, so that if they did, that would
Speaker 1: be bad because they'd have a copy of your smartphone.
Speaker 1: And then next thing you know, your lights are going
Speaker 1: crazy and you're thinking it's a poulter Geist. No, it's
Speaker 1: your Uber driver who's ticked off that you give him
Speaker 1: a bad rating driving by your house. Um. But then, yeah,
Speaker 1: as we talked about in our driver List Taxi episode,
Speaker 1: what a lot of a lot of forward thinkers in
Speaker 1: the auto field these days are seemed to be looking
Speaker 1: at getting fewer cars on the road. Yeah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: that means that some companies are already looking forward to
Speaker 1: that as a potential pathway, and one of them was
Speaker 1: probably the most mysterious company going into c S, which
Speaker 1: is Faraday Future. Faraday Future is a kind of an
Speaker 1: Internet startup. What what what do you get if you
Speaker 1: mashed up an internet startup with a car company? Um,
Speaker 1: kind of this upstart company? That is that not sort
Speaker 1: of what Tesla is A little bit Tesla, Tesla, I
Speaker 1: would argue, is a little closer to your traditional car
Speaker 1: company than Faraday Future is, but not by much. I
Speaker 1: would say Tesla, certainly, for lack of a better term,
Speaker 1: paved the road for Faraday Future. I tried to come
Speaker 1: up with something else, but my brain locked on the
Speaker 1: pun Um they beat a path. Yeah, there you go,
Speaker 1: and so Faraday Future, uh kind of kinds following in
Speaker 1: those in those uh in that in the wake of Tesla,
Speaker 1: I would say, But Faraday Futures approach was to show
Speaker 1: off a really interesting and weird looking concept race car
Speaker 1: called the f F zero one. And when you look
Speaker 1: at this thing, it's a very weird, uh design. I mean,
Speaker 1: the physical appearance of this car is striking to the
Speaker 1: point where if you when you first look at you think,
Speaker 1: how the heck do you get in there? Like? Is
Speaker 1: that a car? Is that about mobile? And my batman,
Speaker 1: is it just a prop? Is it actually possible to
Speaker 1: get inside that? Thing it was. To be honest, it
Speaker 1: was a fancy prop Yeah. I mean by concept car
Speaker 1: they mean like I don't think it was drivable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they certainly weren't. They were. They were there to well,
Speaker 1: the whole idea of doors are so the past century.
Speaker 1: The whole idea was how can you grab a lot
Speaker 1: of attention, particularly in an area where you have all
Speaker 1: these established parties. Right, so you've got Toyota and four in,
Speaker 1: Volkswagen and Kia and Lexus and all of these companies
Speaker 1: having a presence there. How do you get noticed? And
Speaker 1: they designed this incredibly weird looking race car, and uh,
Speaker 1: the cool thing they had to show off wasn't really
Speaker 1: the race car. That was just to get your attention,
Speaker 1: get you in the door. They were showing off their
Speaker 1: variable Platform Architecture or v p A, which is kind
Speaker 1: of their their concept of car design moving forward, vehicle design,
Speaker 1: I should say, because it's not just cars, it also
Speaker 1: involves trucks, SUVs, and it's a it's a modular concept, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: You start with a basic chassis that can be modified
Speaker 1: to be longer or shorter depending upon what kind of
Speaker 1: car you want to build, and then you have a
Speaker 1: modular battery design, so they designed their batteries to be interconnected,
Speaker 1: and you add more batteries if you need more powers.
Speaker 1: So an suv would have more batteries than a subcompact car.
Speaker 1: A race car would have a lot of batteries because
Speaker 1: you need a lot of power very quickly, right, big
Speaker 1: suv exactly, or a truck, anything that requires a lot
Speaker 1: of torque or a lot of speed would need more batteries.
Speaker 1: Anything that was like a just a basic get around
Speaker 1: town kind of car would need fewer. Uh. And because
Speaker 1: you could change the shape of the chassis really the
Speaker 1: length of the chassis and the number of batteries there,
Speaker 1: it meant that you could develop these vehicles very very quickly,
Speaker 1: at least in concept. And in fact, the race car
Speaker 1: went from sketch to physical thing in eighteen months, which
Speaker 1: for cars is no time at all. I mean usually
Speaker 1: you're talking about five of her six year cycles to
Speaker 1: bring a car model out right to show it off,
Speaker 1: and they plan on having vehicles ready by which is
Speaker 1: pretty aggressive. Yeah. I've I've heard I have heard it
Speaker 1: referred to on the internet as vaporware a few times.
Speaker 1: I've seen I've seen that a lot I don't know
Speaker 1: that I would go quite so far as to call
Speaker 1: it vaporware. I would certainly say they have tons of
Speaker 1: challenges in order to make this a viable uh company
Speaker 1: in that space. I wouldn't go so far as to
Speaker 1: call it vaporware yet. I think that might be a
Speaker 1: little too cynical. But they the cards are stacked against them, right,
Speaker 1: They've got that we cut out for them, those plucky kids. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: fortunately they also have very deep pockets because they're getting
Speaker 1: funding from Chinese company and the two to billions of dollars.
Speaker 1: So when you got billions of dollars behind you, then
Speaker 1: you can afford to take some risks and uh, it'll
Speaker 1: be really interesting to see if these risks pay off.
Speaker 1: And one of the things they talked about specifically was
Speaker 1: that the cars they make may never be used for
Speaker 1: personal ownership. They may end up being the company that
Speaker 1: makes cars specifically for fleets of autonomous vehicles. And they
Speaker 1: mentioned that beyond just the modular approach with the batteries,
Speaker 1: beyond the ability to change the chassis, they could also
Speaker 1: change up the drive train and they could incorporate autonomous technology,
Speaker 1: so you could end up with an electric vehicle that's
Speaker 1: autonomously controlled or as autonomous control, and it's just part
Speaker 1: of a fleet service like uber or lift, and this
Speaker 1: could be the company that does it. Man, I kind
Speaker 1: of hope that the I want to ask the car
Speaker 1: stuff guys about this one, because I'm curious to see
Speaker 1: how how people who have a very people who have
Speaker 1: very strong opinions about about models of cars. You know,
Speaker 1: you know people you know could car people are always
Speaker 1: talking about like, oh, man, did you see that sixties
Speaker 1: seven flirt Burt? And you're like, oh, yeah, the sixties
Speaker 1: seven was the best flirt that ever flirred Burden and
Speaker 1: and people get so excited about it. So so I
Speaker 1: wonder I'm gonna I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna pretend
Speaker 1: you said Cadillac, but yes, you know this classical you're saying, like,
Speaker 1: is this to them what it would sound like to
Speaker 1: us if somebody were like, wouldn't it be great if
Speaker 1: all food was just in little kill form? Exactly? So
Speaker 1: I can tell you I did an episode of Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff and had Scott on the show. This was the
Speaker 1: infamous ambush Scott episode where I had him on the
Speaker 1: show and they said, all right, Scott, I'm gonna hit
Speaker 1: you with a scenario. I want to hear your reaction.
Speaker 1: I said, imagine that it's it's you know, maybe twenty
Speaker 1: years in the future where this autonomous technology is truly
Speaker 1: mature to the point where it is demonstrably better than
Speaker 1: human performance, and at that point they outlaw human drivers
Speaker 1: and all personal car ownership is pretty much a thing
Speaker 1: in the past two and we all just rely on
Speaker 1: vehicles that arrive on demand and autonomously take us to
Speaker 1: our destination. What do you think And did it? Did
Speaker 1: his head just fall off? You could hear the moment
Speaker 1: his heartbroke. It was it was audible. It was like
Speaker 1: the sweetest dude. I did apologize to him in a
Speaker 1: subsequent episode, text there will be driving approved zones. Come on, now,
Speaker 1: you'll only be able to turn to the left, but
Speaker 1: it'll be there. Uh, that's a race car joke. So
Speaker 1: at any rate, Yeah, it was. It was interesting to
Speaker 1: see a company that was head on saying this is
Speaker 1: the way we think the future is going to be,
Speaker 1: because obviously the other car companies, I mean, that's a
Speaker 1: that that's that's a discussion that I don't think most
Speaker 1: car companies are ready to have. Yeah, So it was
Speaker 1: really interesting from that perspective. And uh, you know, of course,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of other things that were on
Speaker 1: display at CES I didn't really cover here. Oh the
Speaker 1: smart up. I totally forgot about that. I wanted this
Speaker 1: whole thing. Let me, let me, let me just give
Speaker 1: you a quick smart up. Yes. So we were talking
Speaker 1: about the real sense technology and the ability need to
Speaker 1: detect mood. This was a facial recognition software that also
Speaker 1: could detect like how happy are you? And it would
Speaker 1: look at your make a grown man cry not gonna
Speaker 1: sit there and go into rolling Stones quotes for the
Speaker 1: rest of this episode. No, it's it would look at
Speaker 1: one of us. It would look at your yea one
Speaker 1: of the three it would look at. It would look
Speaker 1: at your eyes and look at your smile and try
Speaker 1: to judge if you were sincerely happy or if you're
Speaker 1: just like grimacing. It could also, uh, it would try
Speaker 1: to determine your gender and your age. So I stood
Speaker 1: in front of it to see what it had to
Speaker 1: say about me. That's sort of a gun freaking years
Speaker 1: and perhaps coincidentally, my happiness rating dropped significantly after the
Speaker 1: forty five that popped up on the screen. This is
Speaker 1: going to be really useful for like if Ciri wants
Speaker 1: to know if you're gas lighting her, well, I was, no, Siri,
Speaker 1: I'm serious. See, I thought it was great. I want
Speaker 1: to know where the tofudi stand is. Imagine that you
Speaker 1: imagine that you're running a hip club and you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: but if this thing figures out you're older than twenty eight,
Speaker 1: you are out. You don't get to go in, or
Speaker 1: you have to be happy before we allow you into
Speaker 1: the store. And I thought, well, this could be a
Speaker 1: weird future, right where you suddenly have a different like
Speaker 1: it's not just it's not just authentication or verification now,
Speaker 1: it's are you happy enough to come inside? If you're not,
Speaker 1: then you need to go and rethink your life a little.
Speaker 1: Oh see I would but all the places where I
Speaker 1: hang out, I think that it would be like are
Speaker 1: you depressed enough to come? It would be like are
Speaker 1: you happy? You need to go somewhere? Have you today?
Speaker 1: You're right listen here Mary Sunshine. You might need to
Speaker 1: turn it around and go somewhere else. So anyway, this
Speaker 1: this was just kind of a quick overview of some
Speaker 1: of the cool tech I saw there. Uh, there was
Speaker 1: so much more there. I mean the Eureka Park section,
Speaker 1: which is really the very small startups that have Usually
Speaker 1: it's it's largely software based these days, but there's some
Speaker 1: that have physical products too. That was amazing. But by
Speaker 1: the time we actually hit that part of the show,
Speaker 1: we were all burnt out. And it got to a
Speaker 1: point where after we walked down five rows of the stuff,
Speaker 1: we realized that we couldn't name a single thing we
Speaker 1: had just walked past because we were we were now
Speaker 1: just going through the motions. And that's when we called it, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're not unless something really hits us over the head
Speaker 1: with how amazing it is, we're not going to even
Speaker 1: understand what we're seeing. And and shout out to your
Speaker 1: to your coworkers who went went out there, and Jason,
Speaker 1: our boss, was there too, and between between the four
Speaker 1: of us we were able to do a lot. We
Speaker 1: got I think four episodes of forward Thinking shot as
Speaker 1: well as I think six how Stuff Works Now videos
Speaker 1: and I recorded a tech stuff episode while I was
Speaker 1: out there. Says a lot of work, but yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: try to throw up links. We've we've been posting links
Speaker 1: to things as they've come up on on Twitter and
Speaker 1: on Facebook, but we'll try to do more of that
Speaker 1: or go back and check them out. And you, guys,
Speaker 1: we just recorded an episode of Forward Thinking, a whole
Speaker 1: new episode, and we'll be recording a whole another new episode.
Speaker 1: Just record the next one. So and with that in mind, guys, uh,
Speaker 1: if you are happy that we're back, let us know it,
Speaker 1: because validation is something I'm constantly seeking. You can let
Speaker 1: us know on Twitter, on Google Plus, on Facebook. We
Speaker 1: are f w thinking. Search fw thinking on Facebook to
Speaker 1: find us because we don't have the fw thinking domain there,
Speaker 1: but if you search, we pop right up. You can
Speaker 1: leave us a message there. You can email us f
Speaker 1: tow Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com let us
Speaker 1: know if there's any particular technology you're interested in, or science,
Speaker 1: or just a question about what the future might be like.
Speaker 1: Throw that in there. Do you have any other comments,
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear them, and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this topic and
Speaker 1: the future of technology, visit forward Thinking dot com. Problem
Speaker 1: brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places