Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hi. There in Love and afford Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, Bob doo Wop,
Speaker 1: Bob doo wop, debtop, Bob doo Wop. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Bob. That's always what we say. I'm Joe McCormick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And together we look at the future and we really
Speaker 1: kind of break it down. We look at sort of
Speaker 1: the technologies and trends that are in the present. We
Speaker 1: try to project out to the future can be kind
Speaker 1: of tricky, and today we're talking about something that's particularly
Speaker 1: tricky and a little maybe controversial is not the right word,
Speaker 1: but there's debate about it, and it's all that might
Speaker 1: be the right word. Yeah, there's there's discussion about social media,
Speaker 1: it's role in society and how it may be affecting
Speaker 1: us on perhaps a biological level, affecting us. Yes, you
Speaker 1: mean we're not just totally resilient past, you know. You
Speaker 1: mean the media that we consume also consumes us. There
Speaker 1: is this thing called plasticity. The brain has it, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, and it means that that the brain
Speaker 1: can change based upon the things that we encounter, and
Speaker 1: normally this is something that can happen over a fairly
Speaker 1: significant amount of time. But the whole that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why human beings are so resilient is that
Speaker 1: we are capable of adapting to changes in our environment. Right,
Speaker 1: But it can happen both ways. So if you have, say,
Speaker 1: a traumatic experience, like you're in a car accident or
Speaker 1: something like that, it can change your brain thereafter, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we see that. I mean there are lots of and
Speaker 1: oh sorry, and I don't mean just like physical damage
Speaker 1: to the brain, but that you can have a traumatic
Speaker 1: experience and be it can change the way that your
Speaker 1: thought patterns work later on. I would are you post
Speaker 1: traumatic stress disorder is a manifestation of that. We also
Speaker 1: see this in ways that are not necessarily associated with trauma.
Speaker 1: I mean, they are are people who are very well
Speaker 1: adjusted because of their uh, well, because of multiple reasons.
Speaker 1: We can't really boil it down to one thing. But
Speaker 1: that's kind of getting ahead of ourselves. To really understand this,
Speaker 1: we thought we'd first start with a quick discussion about
Speaker 1: where we are with social media right now, Like how
Speaker 1: big a deal is it? Is it? Is it really
Speaker 1: a big deal? I think it's officially a big deal.
Speaker 1: I'm not only saying that because that's my job here,
Speaker 1: Lauren's Lauren is both justifying her position and making a
Speaker 1: valid argument. It's kind of scary that I can't remember
Speaker 1: a time without it. I mean I can, but I
Speaker 1: just feel like, oh yeah, I remember. I remember being
Speaker 1: on my Space and thinking this new Facebook thing is
Speaker 1: never gonna take off. I felt like that about Twitter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when Twitter first came out, I was like, hundred and
Speaker 1: forty characters who can say anything in that, That's right.
Speaker 1: I made fun of Twitter when it first came out.
Speaker 1: I was like, this is ridiculous. I wrote the article
Speaker 1: on Twitter and I made fun of it. It was
Speaker 1: only about it. It was only about three months after
Speaker 1: I wrote the iCal that I actually created an account
Speaker 1: and stuck with it. But the point being that this
Speaker 1: is a trend that has really taken off over the
Speaker 1: last several years. When you get to the point where
Speaker 1: Facebook has over one billion registered users, it's a big thing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as of as of their six hundred and sixty five
Speaker 1: million daily active users on Facebook, that's huge. And then
Speaker 1: we've got all these different surveys, we can talk about
Speaker 1: that sort of extrapolate how much people rely on social
Speaker 1: networks and what they use it for. Uh. According to
Speaker 1: the Pew Internet, Personal Networks and Communities Survey, it pulled
Speaker 1: two thousand, five twelve adults. So first of all, let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and acknowledge that that's a relatively smallies, right,
Speaker 1: and then they extrapolate from that, Um, so let's keep
Speaker 1: that in mind. They said that American adults said they
Speaker 1: used the Internet, and nearly half of adults, which was arout,
Speaker 1: said that they use at least one social networking service.
Speaker 1: So this was in two thou eight that they took
Speaker 1: this survey, right, So that's also I think these numbers
Speaker 1: have changed. But remember and again as random people, we
Speaker 1: don't know who they called. They could have called a
Speaker 1: couple of senior living centers and the seniors might say, no,
Speaker 1: I don't use anything like that. I do get on
Speaker 1: the Internet, but I don't use a social networking service. Um.
Speaker 1: And they said that out of the ones they serve,
Speaker 1: of them used Facebook, so it was overwhelmingly the social
Speaker 1: networking service of choice. Among the people they surveyed said
Speaker 1: that they used my Space, so they I would hope
Speaker 1: this would be back in two thousand eight and eighteen
Speaker 1: percent used linked In and used Twitter. And again that
Speaker 1: makes sense again if you're talking about two thoight, that's
Speaker 1: young days for Twitter. Sure. As as of as of December,
Speaker 1: Twitter had about two hundred million monthly active users, so
Speaker 1: um compared to that sixty yeah, And I mean it's
Speaker 1: hard to say because people some people never send out
Speaker 1: a Twitter message at all. You know, they get on
Speaker 1: Twitter and they follow people, but they aren't generating their
Speaker 1: own messages. They're just following other folks. Only a relatively
Speaker 1: small percent of people on the Internet are actually creating
Speaker 1: new content, It's something like less than a fourth, and
Speaker 1: everyone else is basically just reposting. I'm one of those
Speaker 1: people creating. No one's reposting it though, so I'm not
Speaker 1: really contributing in any meaningful way. And that's fine. I'm
Speaker 1: alright with that. I wouldn't repost myself either, and now, um,
Speaker 1: so on top of that, we also have some stats
Speaker 1: from a Nielsen and in m Insight social media report
Speaker 1: that gives us a little bit more data about some
Speaker 1: of the more recent trends. One of those being that
Speaker 1: if you look at all the time being spent on
Speaker 1: the Internet, and this is social networking sites included, but
Speaker 1: everything else added on top of that, they found that
Speaker 1: in July two thousand twelve, uh, that people spent five
Speaker 1: twenty point one billion minutes on the Internet, so you know,
Speaker 1: more than half a trillion minutes in one month on
Speaker 1: the Internet. Now, out of that, of the time that
Speaker 1: was spent on PCs was on some sort of social
Speaker 1: networking site, and thirty percent of the time spent on
Speaker 1: mobile devices would be on social networking sites. So that
Speaker 1: tells us also that the growth for the mobile market
Speaker 1: is exploding. That's what you hear. Mobiles the trend right
Speaker 1: social media, they're trend to down to that form exactly,
Speaker 1: And that same survey said that that mobile accounted for
Speaker 1: sixty three percent of year over year growth in social media.
Speaker 1: In fact, I believe PCs took a little bit of
Speaker 1: a dip in the in that trend, but mobile more
Speaker 1: than made up for it. And uh, we're seeing that
Speaker 1: more and more. And you know that just means that
Speaker 1: we it's always just uh a touch away. You've often
Speaker 1: got one of these devices between between WiFi and three
Speaker 1: G it's you're you're never really not connected if you're
Speaker 1: in the you know, continental United States, certainly. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: that raises some questions. If you are always, or for
Speaker 1: all practical purposes, always connected to social media and the internet,
Speaker 1: how could that possibly affect you beyond just the fact
Speaker 1: that you can tweet out what you're eating any given
Speaker 1: time of the day. So this is actually where we've
Speaker 1: got some disagreements in in various circles about how much
Speaker 1: does all this social networking actually affect us. Does it
Speaker 1: just give us yet another outlet so that we can
Speaker 1: connect with people, or is it supplanting our our our
Speaker 1: tendency to form real lasting relationships with people, or is
Speaker 1: it actually rewiring our brains to the point where the
Speaker 1: normal kind of social interactions we would associate with face
Speaker 1: to face meetings no longer are supported that we we
Speaker 1: are we are essentially raising a generation of people who
Speaker 1: are incapable of having a an interaction face to face
Speaker 1: and pick up on things like facial cues and other
Speaker 1: little social cues rewiring brains. Now, I just saw this
Speaker 1: language come up all over the place on this topic,
Speaker 1: and it got me a little curious, Uh, does that
Speaker 1: originate anywhere? What rewiring the brain? Well, I mean this
Speaker 1: this exact language, that it's going to rewire your kid's brain.
Speaker 1: I would argue that. Well, I'll tell you someone who
Speaker 1: definitely used that phrase and similar phrases over and over again.
Speaker 1: And it's someone who is very prominent in science scientific circles,
Speaker 1: particularly in the UK, and that was Susan Greenfield. And
Speaker 1: Susan Greenfield better known as Baroness Greenfield, where she does
Speaker 1: hold that title. She's a neuroscientist, neuroscientist and was until
Speaker 1: the director the Royal Institution of Great Britain and as
Speaker 1: such she had a very prominent role as a scientist,
Speaker 1: someone who would popularize science and was very active in
Speaker 1: courting the media to talk about science and that's an
Speaker 1: important job. We've seen lots of people take up that mantle,
Speaker 1: either officially or unofficially. We've seen a lot of it,
Speaker 1: ironically enough on social media. Absolutely, people like Phil Play
Speaker 1: and people you know talking professor Brian Cox, not the
Speaker 1: actor but the but the professor out of the UK
Speaker 1: who who does some fantastic work. Um, he talks a
Speaker 1: lot about fusion. Phil Plate, of course, the bat astronomer
Speaker 1: talks a lot about astronomy. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: others too, who have used social networking to get information
Speaker 1: about science across and make people excited. Susan Greenfield has
Speaker 1: has used her position UH to talk about her concerns
Speaker 1: about social media and its effect on the way we
Speaker 1: think and the we create these interpersonal relationships, and maybe
Speaker 1: even the way our brains develop. One of the fears
Speaker 1: that she has expressed was that by kind of channeling
Speaker 1: people's interactions online and removing that face to face interaction,
Speaker 1: at least to some extent through the traditional personal model
Speaker 1: of friendship, right, that this would lead the human brain
Speaker 1: to develop differently, and the parts of the brain that
Speaker 1: would develop with all that interaction, that face to face interaction,
Speaker 1: would a trophy and or not even not even develop
Speaker 1: in the first place. And that so you would have
Speaker 1: again this this sort of generation of children who grow
Speaker 1: up to be adults who cannot really interact in a
Speaker 1: in a face to face physical environment UH effectively. Well,
Speaker 1: that sounds alarming if we have research indicating that social
Speaker 1: media is destroying our children's brains. It would in fact
Speaker 1: be alarming if we had such research. But there in
Speaker 1: line is one of the problems. Uh So, one of
Speaker 1: the big criticisms leveled against Greenfield and and many many
Speaker 1: people have brought this up, is that she would tend
Speaker 1: to have these discussions but not really have an actual
Speaker 1: study that she was citing to show that there was
Speaker 1: a demonstrable effect. Uh that. It was almost like it
Speaker 1: was armchair psychology or armchair neural biology, the idea that, well,
Speaker 1: I do know that the brain can be affected by things,
Speaker 1: and I know that this is a growing trend that
Speaker 1: is becoming more and more important. And using that, yeah,
Speaker 1: using that, I have to come to the conclusion that
Speaker 1: this trend is affecting people's brains. But without the act.
Speaker 1: And she may very well be right. Let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and say that she could be absolutely right, but there's
Speaker 1: no real hard evidence to point that way. Yeah. From
Speaker 1: what I read, it seemed more like this was emanating
Speaker 1: from the intuitions of an established authority rather than empirical day. Right,
Speaker 1: the argument from authority, which is a logical fallacy, right, Um,
Speaker 1: And and there there is plenty of research being done
Speaker 1: about this. Back in two thousand five, one of the
Speaker 1: big studies that you might hear quoted about about social
Speaker 1: isolation and the Internet UM was done by Norman ny
Speaker 1: and the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society UM,
Speaker 1: and it found that uh, people who use the Internet
Speaker 1: at that time, it was one of the US population.
Speaker 1: They uh had extrapolated of of those that use the
Speaker 1: internet frequently, UM, they spend seventy minutes less daily interacting
Speaker 1: with their family UM, which which sounds which sounds scary,
Speaker 1: I mean because you know, family interaction is a big
Speaker 1: important thing. And uh, and that in seventy minutes, you know,
Speaker 1: of twenty four hours, that's a you know, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a sizeable chunk of time. However, you know this
Speaker 1: was a and two thousand five before social media, social
Speaker 1: networking was really out there. You know, people weren't going
Speaker 1: to be on Facebook in two thousand five talking to
Speaker 1: their aunt. Uh. So so that's that's part of that.
Speaker 1: And also it's uh Norman and I has has admitted
Speaker 1: to being a an Internet addict. He's self professed in this,
Speaker 1: and so I feel like possibly his findings are a
Speaker 1: little bit colored by that. And that therefore, Yeah, when
Speaker 1: when people throw around numbers from the study, that it's
Speaker 1: maybe not as unbiased or as a clear cut here
Speaker 1: in as it otherwise could be. Right, Well, I mean
Speaker 1: the difference between two thousand five and ten. It might
Speaker 1: be one thing, and I don't know bacteriology, but in
Speaker 1: internet use, in social media, this is a this is
Speaker 1: like a century. You know, it's so different now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again you know, this is one of those things
Speaker 1: where I think the problem is that it's so young
Speaker 1: that we don't have enough scientific rigor there to really
Speaker 1: be able to say one way or the other. Well,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of problems with this, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: first of all, yes, it's the widespread social media phenomenon
Speaker 1: is extremely new, and so there has just hasn't been
Speaker 1: enough research. Number two, even if it had been around
Speaker 1: for a while, it's hard to conduct studies on this
Speaker 1: kind of thing because you're studying social phenomenon where there's
Speaker 1: a lot of variables and it's difficult to pin down causes,
Speaker 1: exactly like in a in a traditional scientific inquiry. Let's
Speaker 1: say that we are studying we're trying to determine the
Speaker 1: effects of a particular chemical reaction, for example, and if
Speaker 1: you were really studying that in a scientific way, you
Speaker 1: would try to eliminate as many other variables as possible,
Speaker 1: so that you could be reasonably certain that any effect
Speaker 1: you observed was in fact a result of that chemical reaction. Right,
Speaker 1: So you would want to make sure that your instruments
Speaker 1: were properly cleaned and calibrated and all of this so
Speaker 1: that you could you could eliminate, right, yeah, eliminate, eliminate
Speaker 1: anything that's going to cause a problem. The problem with
Speaker 1: the social science is not maybe a problem is the
Speaker 1: wrong word. The challenge is that you can't eliminate the variables.
Speaker 1: It's if you were one of the most uh frequently
Speaker 1: used methodologies is the survey, which you know, we kind
Speaker 1: of opened up talking about surveys, but surveys themselves, you
Speaker 1: can't eliminate all those other variables that go into a
Speaker 1: person's background that may guide him or her to make
Speaker 1: certain choices. So you could say, out of all the
Speaker 1: people we survey said, they're using social networking services more
Speaker 1: and interacting with people real people less. But and I
Speaker 1: mean in a study like that, to be honest, I
Speaker 1: have no idea how much I use social media. Like
Speaker 1: if you were to ask me, I'd have to guess,
Speaker 1: and that would show up on a survey as some
Speaker 1: kind of guess, you know, whatever number I estimated, they
Speaker 1: might have really no bearing on on how much time
Speaker 1: I actually spend staring at Facebook. And and also that
Speaker 1: can change. Oh of course, yeah, a day to day,
Speaker 1: hour to hour. You know, how fully they would be
Speaker 1: using some kind of a computer tracking method, some kind
Speaker 1: of digital tracking method to actually look at the number
Speaker 1: of hours you did spend doing that thing. I mean
Speaker 1: that that would be more accurate. But but but but
Speaker 1: a survey is yeah, usually the way that these things go.
Speaker 1: And also, even if you were able to show that
Speaker 1: there was some sort of correlation between the two, you
Speaker 1: can't be certain that there's causation because there could be
Speaker 1: other factors that you did not control for that are
Speaker 1: impacting that situation. That the experiment even more difficult, because
Speaker 1: you'd have to isolate all the differing how many troll
Speaker 1: for different variables, how many of those people moved away
Speaker 1: from home to go work somewhere else, And therefore all
Speaker 1: of the people that we were part of their social
Speaker 1: network are now a thousand miles away. Maybe the social
Speaker 1: networking sites is how that's how they maintain the real
Speaker 1: relationships they've already developed. Absolutely, there's been a bunch of
Speaker 1: medical research done into people with physical and mental disabilities,
Speaker 1: figuring out that actually for these for these folks, social
Speaker 1: media is very useful in maintaining and foraging new relationships.
Speaker 1: Right And according to the Pew Internet study, which again
Speaker 1: dated from several years ago, they said that the people
Speaker 1: who were using social networking sites were forty percent more
Speaker 1: likely to visit a cafe, more likely to visit a library,
Speaker 1: percent more likely to visit a fast food restaurant, more
Speaker 1: likely to visit other restaurants, and forty two percent more
Speaker 1: likely to visit a public park, saying that the the
Speaker 1: the image that people have in their minds of the
Speaker 1: person who has sequestered him or herself into the basement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just sitting down and on the computer and they
Speaker 1: never go outside. That that is a fallacy. Um. But
Speaker 1: they also said that uh that that bloggers, people who
Speaker 1: are actively uh posting things on the Internet for others
Speaker 1: to read, were more likely to belong to a local
Speaker 1: voluntary association than those who do not blog, and that
Speaker 1: six of all the people who are using the web
Speaker 1: regularly often talked to a neighbor at least once per month,
Speaker 1: and that that may in fact be higher than people
Speaker 1: who don't use the web frequently. So these are not Again,
Speaker 1: nothing here is is telling me specifically that internet use
Speaker 1: and social networking sites in particular are positively or negatively
Speaker 1: impacting our ability to socialize outside the realm of the web.
Speaker 1: There's conflicting information. Some of it, you know, seems very intuitive.
Speaker 1: Like if you were to tell me that people using
Speaker 1: social networking sites more and more frequently is resulting in
Speaker 1: UM higher instance of people misunderstanding social cues and physical settings,
Speaker 1: I would think that makes total sense to me. Intuitively,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, But we don't have the hard data
Speaker 1: there yet, so we really need to to hold off
Speaker 1: on making any assumptions, even though we may have some
Speaker 1: preliminary information that seems to either support or contradict that
Speaker 1: that that conclusion right and their overall societal trends UM
Speaker 1: that are that are in effect here and have been
Speaker 1: working I think since the Industrial Revolution at least UM
Speaker 1: wherein you know, A couple of the numbers that get
Speaker 1: thrown around is that as of the nineteen eighties or so,
Speaker 1: before the internet really hit UM, people had about three
Speaker 1: close social conducts UM. And they're talking about confidence, they're
Speaker 1: talking about someone who you can go to when you
Speaker 1: have a serious problem and hash it out with them. Um,
Speaker 1: and who am you know, strange package wrapped in a
Speaker 1: carpet and right, yeah, the people who will help you
Speaker 1: move a body. Yeah, yeah, the the what's in the
Speaker 1: box people? And uh and that this number has has
Speaker 1: gone down to about one point eight um since since
Speaker 1: you know whatever, you know, a few decades ago, and
Speaker 1: that's I don't know, I mean, you know, it's it
Speaker 1: is significant certainly. However, I don't think that the internet
Speaker 1: the other things have gone on on the planet because
Speaker 1: the Internet since then. Again, that's why the whole social
Speaker 1: science stuff is so complicated, because while it's simple for
Speaker 1: us to say, hey, this coincides with the rise of
Speaker 1: the Internet, there are all these other things that also
Speaker 1: happened in that span of time. And you know, we've
Speaker 1: we've also seen the move to UH to urban areas
Speaker 1: growing year over year over year. So that's another UH
Speaker 1: factor that you have to consider when you're thinking about
Speaker 1: these things. It's it's complicated what we're saying. It's very complicated.
Speaker 1: And also you know that the fear that the media
Speaker 1: that we use changes us is certainly not a new thing.
Speaker 1: Socrates was really concerned that that reading and writing was
Speaker 1: going to ruin people's brains, that you know, that that
Speaker 1: memory was going to be so weakened that we would
Speaker 1: all be infants. And then the two generations there were
Speaker 1: people who are afraid that the printing press was going
Speaker 1: to completely ruin the brains of everybody. I think those
Speaker 1: most a monks who are really hoping to keep on
Speaker 1: that illumination and manuscript writing. Uh, then you had things radio,
Speaker 1: television anytime. And this this also really applies to the
Speaker 1: youth as well, where there's this fear that social networking
Speaker 1: sites is really changing the way young people think. But
Speaker 1: the same argument has been made time and time again
Speaker 1: for lots of different stuff like rock and roll. You know,
Speaker 1: I think of the children, Yeah exactly, And I think
Speaker 1: it also this is why this is why you know,
Speaker 1: horror movies today are things like, you know, children like
Speaker 1: Samara in The Ring showing up being a product of
Speaker 1: technology versus Rosemary's Baby being a product of Satan. Satan,
Speaker 1: yeah so well, or or or medical science or whatever
Speaker 1: you wanna, yeah, whatever you want to attribute that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Too nice that the pop culture references are
Speaker 1: flying fast and furious there's another one. Uh then diesel there. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: I do want to say that even though we don't
Speaker 1: really know right now what the effects of social networking
Speaker 1: services are on us neurologically, Uh, that's not to say
Speaker 1: that there isn't an effect and that we won't you know, always,
Speaker 1: we won't always be in the dark about it. I
Speaker 1: do think that we will figure that out as time
Speaker 1: goes on. I think that's going to change as time
Speaker 1: goes on. But I also I am not so worried
Speaker 1: about saying, you know, stay away from social networking sites. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's going to ruin your kid's brains. I don't really
Speaker 1: believe that. I think the humans are more resilient. I
Speaker 1: think that we are capable of adapting to new situations
Speaker 1: and to retain old methods of communication as well. I
Speaker 1: don't think we're ever going to get to a point
Speaker 1: where people are so concentrated on social networking sites so
Speaker 1: that if you put two people in a room together,
Speaker 1: they can't have a meaningful conversation. I think that's that's unrealistic.
Speaker 1: I think part of the the fear here is the
Speaker 1: old cyborg fear. Yeah, I mean, people are um at
Speaker 1: at the core of it, they're afraid of having kind
Speaker 1: of human biological essence corrupted by the invasion of this foreign,
Speaker 1: synthetic kind of thing. And that's what the technological incarnation
Speaker 1: of a social network represents. Um. It seems more steel
Speaker 1: and wires and plastic than than human flesh. But I
Speaker 1: think it's something we're going to get over, because we
Speaker 1: got over it with every other technology that has ever
Speaker 1: enabled human interaction before. I mean, we got like there
Speaker 1: was a time when you couldn't write letters to people
Speaker 1: who were far away, and then you could, and then
Speaker 1: there was a time where you couldn't communicate in real time.
Speaker 1: Was someone who was right? And when when the generation
Speaker 1: that did not grow up with social networking goes into decline,
Speaker 1: then I think that that's going to be the basic Well,
Speaker 1: and the other point being that even let's let's say
Speaker 1: that the worst case scenario, according to what I guess
Speaker 1: Baroness Greenfield would say is true. Let's say worst case
Speaker 1: scenario is that it's fundamentally changing the way people's brains
Speaker 1: are quote unquote wired. How do we know that that's
Speaker 1: necessarily a bad thing. We're judging that based upon what
Speaker 1: our own perceptions of good and bad are right now.
Speaker 1: But if you were to project yourself out twenty years
Speaker 1: into the future and you're in the world where that's
Speaker 1: just the norm. That's not to say that people then
Speaker 1: would consider it to be a bad thing or that
Speaker 1: they had actually lost anything. There may be other elements
Speaker 1: of social interaction that we have not yet considered that
Speaker 1: would be very much the norm for them, and it
Speaker 1: would be fine. Yeah, what if it's actually i mean,
Speaker 1: assuming it is rewiring our brains, which again we don't
Speaker 1: have any necessarily good reason to believe. What if it
Speaker 1: makes our lives more fulfilling, right, And then again to
Speaker 1: look at the future, there's the whole idea of reaching
Speaker 1: this this level of augmented reality. Yeah, where where the
Speaker 1: social networking reality and our physical reality mesh and they
Speaker 1: are a new thing. They're all dimension rather than Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this, I think this is an artificial distinction anyway,
Speaker 1: And I'm going to make my case. You go home
Speaker 1: and you get on Facebook and you talk to people
Speaker 1: maybe that you were talking to at work a couple
Speaker 1: hours earlier, and there's this assumption that you're doing something
Speaker 1: fundamentally different in these two ways. But you're communicating either way.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're communicating with an avatar that maps to
Speaker 1: a real person, and they're getting what the message you send,
Speaker 1: and they're sending messages back. It's it's no more artificial
Speaker 1: than like we're just saying a letter or a phone call.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that this idea that there's the
Speaker 1: real world and then there's the Internet is something that's
Speaker 1: going to go away with time. The Internet is part
Speaker 1: of the world. The Internet is the real world, right,
Speaker 1: And with that overlaid, that will become even more of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a less integration, right exactly. Yeah, with augmented reality,
Speaker 1: it's going to become even more impossible to ignore the
Speaker 1: fact that this distinction is artificial. When you have Google
Speaker 1: Glass and you have what we would probably call I
Speaker 1: think we called in our video social reality, right, you know,
Speaker 1: you can walk around your environment and so you see
Speaker 1: the world you live in annotated with the likes and
Speaker 1: comments and and whatever new kinds of feedback there are
Speaker 1: from your friends and family. Right. I mean that that's
Speaker 1: a more social world than we've ever had before. Yeah.
Speaker 1: At that point, it actually becomes a challenge to filter
Speaker 1: your world to your preferences. So that you're not just
Speaker 1: overwhelmed with information from all those social contacts that you
Speaker 1: actually have. Well, you can always take the glasses off
Speaker 1: right that for now, Dune Dune done well. I think
Speaker 1: that's a good place to stop. This was a fun conversation. Guys.
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Speaker 1: And remember Gwyneth Paltrow's head, that's what's in the box wrong.
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