WEBVTT - My So Called Lifecasting 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.400 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:15.120 Forward Thinking. Hi everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:17.640 podcast that looks at the future and says, you came 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:20.120 and you gave without taking, but I sent you away. 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:25.200 I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Volcabama, I'm Joe McCormick, and uh, 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:28.840 we are taking a break from our discussion about superhero 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:34.160 movies True Story to have a podcast about really kind 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:38.120 of broadcasting our lives and the fact that this is 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:40.279 kind of a thing and it has been a thing 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:43.200 for a while. Yeah. In our last podcast, we talked 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:48.120 about surveillance, about how surveillance has been escalating in a 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:51.480 very rapid way for the past few decades um and 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:53.760 how that trend is probably going to continue, how we 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:55.680 should feel about it and what it's going to mean. 0:00:56.360 --> 0:00:59.720 But we should keep in mind that a lot of 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:03.760 the recording that's going on is not some government or 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:07.560 even some business with the CCTV camera capturing you without 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:12.960 you knowing. Yeah, it's your buddy with the smartphone or 0:01:12.959 --> 0:01:16.040 the webcam with a webcam, or your smartphone or your 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:19.640 Google glass. Yeah, we call this a sue veillance as 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:24.640 opposed to surveillance. Right, it's not a joke, was true, sue. 0:01:24.680 --> 0:01:27.240 Veillance it is the recording of an activity by someone 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:31.200 who is actually participating in said activity. I mean, I'm 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:36.759 learning words. This is great, this is actually huge. How 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:41.160 many photos do people upload to Facebook every day? It's 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:43.679 like for a month. I think it's three hundred million. 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:46.560 That's a lot of photos. And so then there's all 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:49.120 the video. There's seventy two hours of video uploaded to 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:52.360 YouTube every minute, according to the last update from YouTube, 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:54.080 which was quite a while ago. It was a couple 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:56.480 of years ago. It wasn't. No, no, it was several 0:01:56.480 --> 0:01:58.160 months ago, because a couple of years ago they said 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:01.520 it was right, you're right, yeah, but still it's probably 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:03.920 more since then. Oh sure, I bet we're I bet 0:02:03.920 --> 0:02:07.480 we're creeping up to the hundred hours per minute. Uh 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:09.640 you know, a hundred hours worth of video per minute 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:13.360 passing pretty soon. Yeah that's yeah. Wait, wait, way more 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.120 than any any one human person could possibly consume. It's 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:18.720 like twelve years of footage per day. Yeah no, and 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:22.440 it's it's accumulating so quickly there's no way for you 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:25.240 to be able to catch up. You would never just 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:28.120 there's not enough hours unless you find some way to 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:33.320 one make everybody stop and to achieve, if not immortality, 0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:36.000 incredible longevity for you to be able to go through 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:38.160 and watch everything that's been on YouTube, and a lot 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:40.959 of that is stuff that people have shot of themselves 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:44.640 that they want to share. They're either sharing their opinion 0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:48.919 about something or they're creating a an online journal that's 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:52.400 in video form or a vlog as a lot of 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:54.600 people like to call it, unless you're Felicia Day, in 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:57.680 which case you call it a flog. Even even outside 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:00.000 of that, there's there's Twitter updates, there's Facebook up day, 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:02.360 It's all of this text that is going into this 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:07.880 online uh giant world diary. Yeah. Sure, I think our 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:10.760 last podcast maybe got a little bit darker than we 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:14.040 meant it to. Uh well, because we should a superhero 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:16.840 discussion that we right need to get to, right, Okay, 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:20.560 But what we should have remembered is that there's there's 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:24.079 this irony, you know, like we want to be recorded. 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:28.320 People are like, my privacy, you know, and that's real, 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:30.840 that's not I'm not saying like the need for privacy 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:33.880 doesn't exist, but at the same time, we have this 0:03:34.440 --> 0:03:38.040 not all of us. Most people have this irresistible urge 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:41.680 to get recorded and make a mark, to share. I 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:44.600 mean a lot of I would say a great deal 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:47.560 of human interaction is all in the sharing of stories. 0:03:47.960 --> 0:03:52.080 Those stories may not be formal stories that have a beginning, middle, 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:54.600 and end and you know, a narrative structure that you could, 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:58.520 you know, tear apart in a literature class, but they 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:00.600 are stories. It could be a story what happened to 0:04:00.640 --> 0:04:03.040 you that morning. It could be something that reminds you 0:04:03.080 --> 0:04:05.720 of something else you you had seen but you know. 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:08.280 Or it could just be taking events and then framing 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:10.920 it in such a way where it does form a narrative, 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:13.800 where whereas someone who was independently observing that may just 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:17.560 see a sequence of events that doesn't have any particular connection. 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:20.680 But you, as because of your experience, you can create 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:23.440 that connection and make it even more compelling. And then 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:26.080 you have the desire, Hey, I just realized these connections 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:29.960 between these seemingly disconnected events. I have to share this 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:33.520 with everybody because it's just cool. Well yeah, I mean 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:36.920 people have been turning their lives into narratives for hundreds 0:04:36.920 --> 0:04:39.520 of years, I guess even thousands, right, pretty much. Well, 0:04:39.640 --> 0:04:41.920 how long have people been making diaries? Well, I mean, 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:44.919 I would say cave paintings are probably technically sort of 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:49.839 diary tacular. That's eaten by mammoth today. Good day for 0:04:50.000 --> 0:04:56.479 Ugu was fighting grog for a woman. That's that's typical 0:04:56.560 --> 0:05:02.880 journal entry. That story of Jonathan strictly Actually, that was 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:05.719 on my live journal. That was that was something I 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:09.000 wrote three years ago. Actually. And an interesting historical point 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:13.520 is that back before the late nineteenth century, really back 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:17.040 before the twentieth century period, um diaries were a lot 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:21.680 less personal. It wasn't really until uh Freudian psychology, the 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:25.680 popularization of the novel, and the profession of journalism that 0:05:25.839 --> 0:05:28.720 we really started to have this concrete sense of a 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:32.719 personal identity and a personal self that deserved the kind 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:34.840 of attention that we give it through these diaries and 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:38.680 and so. But before people would would get together, friends 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:41.279 and family would get together and read each other's diaries 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:43.240 as a way of sharing what was going on in 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:45.560 their lives, which is kind of unheard of these days. 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:47.400 I mean, diaries are supposed to be this very private, 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:49.800 very personal thing right up until you start putting it 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:53.680 on Twitter or live journal or etcetera. Raise your hand 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:56.120 if you or a sibling had one of those diaries 0:05:56.160 --> 0:05:59.680 with a little lock on it, yea, or well, and 0:05:59.720 --> 0:06:03.440 those things are so easy to pry apart. But Joe 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:05.279 has been burned before. That's what we're trying to say. 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:07.840 All you need is a crowbar and and a little 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:11.119 bit of elbow grease and the desire to see it done. Uh. Yeah, 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:14.360 So there is this this sort of for a lot 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:17.640 of people, this desire to to record and to share 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:21.640 their observations, the things that happened to them, really their 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:26.120 life story. And technology has given us more tools to 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:29.279 do that now than we've ever had access to before, 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:32.680 to the point where we're getting closer and closer to 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:36.040 a time when we could have our entire lives documented 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:38.719 from birth to death. Yeah, did people ever try to 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:42.559 do this just in writing like a standard diary? How 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:46.000 close could you get? The answer is yes, there there 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:49.359 there are several people. Um it's called a obsessive obsessive 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:54.159 diary writing or obsessive diaryists. And uh, there's one terrific 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:58.200 example of a of a Mr of a Reverend Robert Shields, 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:01.600 who was a reverend teacher and Washington State wrote three 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:04.760 to six thousand words per day for over twenty years, 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:08.920 a total of thirty seven point five million words over 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:11.680 the course of his lifetime. He had six typewriters arranged 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:14.120 in a horseshoe around a swivel chair and would just 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:17.160 sit down and and circulate amongst the typewriters until they 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:20.320 ran out of ribbon um. And this was I mean, 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:23.800 he was recording things in five minute increments um that 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:26.960 there was a terrific story in an NPR about it, 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:32.040 and you know, things things like a twelve twelve twenty 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:34.000 five I stripped to my thermals. I always do that. 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:36.360 Twelve thirty to twelve fifty. I eight left over Sam 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:38.960 and Alaska read salmon by Bumblebee about seven ounces, drank 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:40.840 ten ounces of orange juice while I read the Oxford 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:46.240 Dictionary of Quotations. I could keep going spectacular. The fact 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:48.720 that he always does that, Why did he did he 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:51.160 only report it once or did he reported every day 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:54.040 every day? Do you know? Now here's the question, though, 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:57.800 do you know if he did this intentionally for public 0:07:57.840 --> 0:08:00.880 consumption or was he doing it just or his own reasons? 0:08:00.960 --> 0:08:02.760 He was doing it for his own private reasons. He 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:05.280 um well, he was. He was born in nineteen eighteen. 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:08.200 His father happened to be a speed typing champion, UM 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:11.320 who could type the Gettysburg address over and over at 0:08:11.320 --> 0:08:13.520 two and twenty two words per minute. That break in 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:18.160 question Quarty keyboard or Dvorak or what I'm guessing it 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:22.240 has to be Quarty if you're talking nineteen eighteen. Yeah, okay, sorry, 0:08:22.360 --> 0:08:25.200 I do not have personal data. To be fair, there 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:28.160 were other keyboards early early on in the typewriters, just 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:30.560 the Quarty one is the one that ended up catching on, right, 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:34.000 I'll look into it and get back to Yes. He 0:08:33.840 --> 0:08:36.040 he started a diary at the age of seventeen, but 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:38.640 gave it up, lost interest in it, and then uh 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:41.520 and then yeah, when he was I guess what, in 0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:44.200 his fifties or sixties. At some point he started this um, 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:47.360 this obsessive diary. He he said that he didn't know 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:49.720 why he was doing it, he just did and he 0:08:49.840 --> 0:08:52.120 just had to, and that the thought of stopping it 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:55.480 would be like turning off his life. Yeah. So, I 0:08:55.480 --> 0:08:57.920 don't know if y'all have ever kept a journal or 0:08:57.920 --> 0:09:01.160 a diary, but it's really interesting the way that writing 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:04.960 down your experiences can help give them a sense of meaning. 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:08.000 What was before just something that happened to you takes 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:11.840 on a kind of symbolic or narrative significance when you 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:15.240 put put it to words, and and historically speaking, even 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:18.480 very mundane accounts like these could be very interesting, you know. 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:20.320 I mean, I mean, they're they're they're pretty boring to 0:09:20.360 --> 0:09:22.760 read them right now, But in two hundred years and 0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:25.360 four hundred years, that material is gold because we have 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:27.520 so little information about what was going on at that 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:31.120 time aside from these written diaries. Oh yeah, that's totally true. 0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:33.079 I mean if we just had access to a few 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:37.240 totally mundane records of daily life from say ancient Sumeria, 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:40.440 I mean, how fascinating would that be now, right right, 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:44.840 especially people that were involved in large world changing events 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:48.800 and in wars and politics, and in in spectacular events 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:53.000 and disasters. I'm just thinking, it's been a quiet week 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:59.280 in ancient sumer my homeland, s Sumeia if he's Samaria. 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:02.439 But I'm going with the prey home companion approach. Oh 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:05.599 I see secular thing? No, yeah, I get it? Or 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:08.240 or would it be you know, just as someone sitting there, 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:11.120 like like like this guy just going like, like I 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:14.199 took some temperature readings across my house over the course 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:15.960 of today. Would you like to hear all of them? 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:21.439 The paper answers yes. And like I said, we we've 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:25.400 developed technology now that really makes us even easier. Yeah. 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:28.280 One thing that occurred to me, and I'm sure there 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:30.800 are people who are maybe art philosophers or somebody who 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:33.840 commented on this, but it seems to me that by 0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:38.120 recording something you kind of imbue it with a significance 0:10:38.160 --> 0:10:39.800 in the same way that you did by putting it 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:43.880 to words, by writing down your experiences. There's something magic 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:46.240 that happens there. And it's similar when you take a 0:10:46.280 --> 0:10:49.040 picture or record it something, or even or even just 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:51.240 live streaming where you're not recording it but you know 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:55.240 someone else is watching, which I can't. I'm not one 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:58.200 of those people. I don't. I don't have of camera 0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:00.960 on me all the time. That's stream me my my 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:05.079 mundane activities out to the internet. But as an actor, 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:08.160 as someone who gets up on stage and performs in 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:11.240 front of the audiences, live audiences, I mean part of 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:13.400 the reason why I do that. I'm not saying this 0:11:13.480 --> 0:11:16.120 is for all actors, but for my own personal reasons 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:21.480 is that there's this sense of validation that comes from someone, Yeah, 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:24.480 being reacting to something that you are doing and knowing 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:27.280 that that reaction is affecting someone gives you that sort 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:31.000 of sense of satisfaction and validation. I expect, I suspect 0:11:31.080 --> 0:11:33.840 rather that some of the people who are life casting 0:11:33.880 --> 0:11:36.439 get a similar kind of sense of validation from that. 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:41.160 So these days what is life casting involved. Well, before 0:11:41.160 --> 0:11:43.240 we get into what these days what it involves, we 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:45.520 need to kind of talk about the beginning of what 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:48.400 life casting was. Yeah, where did they come from and 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:51.160 how did people How do people get to doing this? 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:55.079 I would argue that it originally sort of got a 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:58.840 shot in the arm back in nineteen seventy three, So 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:02.280 this is pre web obviously by a couple of decades. 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:06.640 Nineteen seventy three, that's when PBS premiered a show called 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:11.679 All an American Family. An American Family was a precursor 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:16.200 to reality television. It followed the on PPS and it 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:19.640 followed the life of an American family, and cameras were everywhere, 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:22.240 and it was uh. There was some criticism that that 0:12:22.320 --> 0:12:25.920 it wasn't a perfectly natural kind of setting, which is 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:28.679 the case whenever I think you put cameras and I mean, 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:30.680 it's it's starting to get to the point where cameras 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:34.000 everywhere is natural. So I would argue that we're getting 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:36.120 to a point where you could do a reality television 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:38.000 show where the fact that cameras are there is not 0:12:38.120 --> 0:12:41.800 actually making it artificial. But now if you have a 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:44.240 big crew there, who is standing there behind the cameras 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:46.520 and monitors and saying that argument was great, but we 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:48.520 missed the end. Could you do the same argument again, 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:52.120 that's not so natural. But anyway, well, there's also still 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:54.280 be a difference I think between people who know they're 0:12:54.320 --> 0:12:57.199 being recorded and maybe a few people are watching versus 0:12:57.240 --> 0:12:59.320 people who know they're being recorded and they know a 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:01.199 million b right right. If you know that you're doing 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:03.360 it for an audience, then you're going to behave differently 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:05.280 than you would otherwise. Really depends on what kind of 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:07.880 psychopath you are, I think, because the kind of psychopath 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:10.200 I am, I don't I don't change if it's if 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:14.680 it's one person watching or one million. I'm still psych 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:18.880 That's why I'm an actor. Uh yeah. And then there 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:21.440 were other movies that came out that like Real Life, 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:25.760 which was a comedy that was spoofing this sort of stuff. Uh. There, 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:27.600 I wanted to talk about one of my favorite movies 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:29.720 of all time, which also kind of ties into this 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:35.160 idea of reality reality show and turning your life into 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:38.440 a type of entertainment for other people. That film would 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:43.319 be Shock Treatment, which is the spiritual sequel to Rocky 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:46.160 Horror Picture Show. It involves several of the characters. Brad 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:49.440 and Janet are the two main characters in Shock Treatment. Uh. 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:53.480 Interesting little side note, there's only one actor in both 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:56.960 Rocky Horror and Shock Treatment who is playing the same character. 0:13:57.160 --> 0:14:00.360 That's your dough Brian No. Richard O'Brien is in both movies, 0:14:00.400 --> 0:14:02.440 but he's not playing the same character. He's riff raff 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:06.560 in uh in Rocky Horror, and he's McKinley in Shock Treatment. 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:08.839 Though the only actor who plays the same character, I 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:10.520 don't even know the actor's name. I know the character's 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:13.959 name is Ralph Hapschatt, who in Rocky Horror is the 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:16.720 guy who's getting married. At the very beginning of the movie, 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:18.800 Brad and jenetor are going to a wedding, and the 0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:22.720 wedding is between Betty Monroe and Ralph hap chat and 0:14:22.920 --> 0:14:25.160 the actor who played Ralph is the same guy in 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:30.680 both movies, and he plays Ralph, and yeah, well, the 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:33.240 the thing about Shock Treatment is that it all takes 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:37.920 place in Denton, and Denton is a town that's just 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:42.480 a giant television studio, and so there's a studio audience 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:44.880 that's watching everything that happens. And so the lives of 0:14:44.920 --> 0:14:47.120 Brad and Janet as they play out in the movie 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:50.400 are being observed by a live studio audience that's reacting 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:52.600 to the stuff that's going on during the course of 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:55.680 the film. So it's this kind of idea. And again 0:14:55.720 --> 0:14:58.320 this is before any real reality shows that come out 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:01.000 the sides of the PBS uh experiment that had come 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:03.720 out in seventy three. Uh, And this is the kind 0:15:03.720 --> 0:15:06.840 of stuff that started to get people into thinking, hey, 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:09.760 how could we you know, use this and make an 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:14.520 entertainment out of it. Meanwhile, Uh, once we get into 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:16.400 the nineties, you get into the rise of the Internet 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:18.200 in the world Wide Web. Now, the Internet had been 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:19.960 around for a while, but the Worldwide Web is what 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:23.360 made it really accessible to the average person. On top 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:27.520 of that, we started seeing things like digital cameras and 0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:31.080 when digital cameras became more and more common, and then 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:33.000 we could get into the point where we had webcams 0:15:33.000 --> 0:15:35.360 that could take a picture every you know, minute or 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:38.000 three minutes or whatever and then upload it. Because back 0:15:38.040 --> 0:15:40.920 then the broadband speeds were such that unless you were 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:44.800 at a university and had a dedicated line, uh, you 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:49.680 didn't really have the speed the throughput necessary to upload 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:52.480 digital streaming video. You can also, no one would have 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:55.120 had this speed to download it. I had to watch it. Yeah, 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:59.040 So the early earliest lifecasting was really just a bunch 0:15:59.080 --> 0:16:03.480 of webcams that were um position around various people's homes 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:06.160 that would take a photo every few minutes and then 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:08.040 upload it. And so you would go to the person's 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:11.120 website and then refresh the page, or the page with 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:13.480 itself would refresh every few minutes and give you an 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:17.240 updated view of what had happened in the the um 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:20.600 in that person's home. Now, this kind of stuff was 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:25.440 sort of mentioned in a novel that was written by 0:16:26.240 --> 0:16:31.960 a pretty famous science fiction author, William Gibson neuromancer fame. 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:36.840 So Gibson had talked about a concept called God's Little Toys, 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:39.640 and he took that actually from something that our friend 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:42.000 of william S Burrows said about a real to reel 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:46.280 tape machine, the idea that this is God's little Toys. 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:48.720 It's something that you could record thoughts and in playback 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:53.120 whenever you wanted. But in his his novel All Tomorrow's Parties, 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:56.280 God's Little Toys were these blimps that could follow a 0:16:56.320 --> 0:16:59.840 person around and stream everything so that it was con 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:04.119 stantly broadcasting that person's life and became a record of 0:17:04.119 --> 0:17:07.159 that person's life as they moved around. Uh So that 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:10.600 kind of idea filtered into reality once we get into 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:12.879 the nineties and we start with these webcams. Some of 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:15.680 the earliest people who some of the people who did 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:18.719 this first, this this idea of life casting, of broadcasting 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:24.560 their lives include uh Jennifer Ringley who started Jenny Cam. 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:31.040 So Jenny Cam went from about two four and she 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:35.400 had cameras up and would upload it was was uploading 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:39.159 pictures of her life every single day. She did her 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:42.160 best to have it running all the time. Uh. Steve 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:46.240 Mann was another early life caster and then by n 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:49.600 SO nine four nine six is when we start seeing 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:53.800 lifecasting get started. Ninety nine that's when it really started 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.600 to hit the public consciousness, this idea of people's lives 0:17:57.640 --> 0:18:01.639 being broadcast for entertainment, because that is when in the 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:06.760 Netherlands a television show called Big Brother hit there, and 0:18:06.920 --> 0:18:09.760 Big Brother, you know, it was all about throwing people together. 0:18:09.800 --> 0:18:12.280 It's kind of like Real World that MTV had done 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:14.040 in the way, but it was it was throwing a 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:16.760 bunch of people together and seeing what happens, kind of 0:18:16.800 --> 0:18:19.879 like just starting an ant farm, but with people and 0:18:19.880 --> 0:18:23.120 then shaking it really good, just before the cameras start 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:29.400 rolling picking really controversial ants fight exactly. Yeah, and and yeah, 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:32.280 in a little bit more of a contained area than 0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:35.119 in the real world, right, And and there are people 0:18:35.160 --> 0:18:37.240 out there who still do quite a bit of streaming. 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:41.560 Some of them are life casting with wearable computers, are 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:46.399 wearable UM cameras, where it's more about capturing their point 0:18:46.400 --> 0:18:48.760 of view as opposed to the camera being turned back 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:51.639 on themselves. It's more about them capturing everything that's happening 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:54.280 to them from their perspective, which is the concept of 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:57.200 Google Glass. Well, that's one thing Google glass is capable 0:18:57.240 --> 0:18:59.840 of doing. Yeah, And if I can interject, I think 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:02.320 that's sort of the future trend. I think that's where 0:19:02.359 --> 0:19:05.000 this is going, is not so much turning the camera 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:08.199 on yourself for the I think I see it. I 0:19:08.240 --> 0:19:10.560 see it as sort of red from your point of view. 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:12.320 I think you're gonna have both because I think that 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:14.720 vlogging is still very much a thing. There are people 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:18.480 who feel that they have uh, something very specific to 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:20.960 say about various topics, and so they want to turn 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:24.640 that camera back on themselves and record themselves saying, you know, 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:29.320 why we should leave Brittany alone or whatever, right, And 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:30.840 then there are going to be the other folks who 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:33.440 are thinking, uh, you know, I just want the world 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:35.240 to kind of see what it's like to go through 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:38.120 life in my shoes. So I think we're gonna get 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:42.040 both types. Still, I don't I don't see one dominating 0:19:42.119 --> 0:19:45.000 over the other. I do see that the perspective stuff 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:48.119 is going to jump in popularity simply because the technology 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:50.520 is going to make it easier to do it well. 0:19:50.520 --> 0:19:53.919 And I'd also like to make a very important distinction 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:58.919 between the future of life casting people uh taping everything 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:03.120 that happens in broad casting it versus just plane recording 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:07.280 just personal her personally. I mean you said that shields 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:10.879 the diarist like he didn't necessarily plan to publish this 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:14.640 right right in fact, and let me scroll to find 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:18.119 maybe he actually he UM He donated all of his 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:24.400 diaries to Washington Washington State University. This was posthumously and 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:27.760 um under under the agreement that it would not be 0:20:27.800 --> 0:20:33.800 read or subjected to a word count for fifty years. Wow. Huh, 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:36.680 But I mean, well, that's interesting. I mean so, so 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:39.800 I think that tells us something that we sort of 0:20:39.880 --> 0:20:44.040 knew already is that there's clearly some personal value that 0:20:44.080 --> 0:20:47.600 people could get out of recording their experiences even without 0:20:47.640 --> 0:20:51.119 broadcasting them out to the world. And those seem like 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:55.159 two very different ways of approaching recording one's life. Absolutely, 0:20:55.200 --> 0:20:57.200 and there there's been a whole bunch of scientific research 0:20:57.280 --> 0:21:00.879 lately about UM about in in in health tracking, fitness tracking, 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:03.720 just making yourself aware of your habits and aware of 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:08.320 what you're doing. In psychology as well, people who who 0:21:08.359 --> 0:21:10.800 are working through issues and keep a diary about it 0:21:10.920 --> 0:21:13.719 end up having much better UM or maybe it's significantly 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:16.359 better at anyway results at the end. Yeah. Yeah, the 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:19.800 idea that that it's we we talk about this a 0:21:19.800 --> 0:21:23.520 lot as well. With the reliance upon the internet to 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:26.080 do a lot of the heavy lifting for us these days, 0:21:26.119 --> 0:21:28.560 things like we don't have to remember as many facts 0:21:28.640 --> 0:21:31.640 as we used to because we've put that into our 0:21:31.680 --> 0:21:34.959 phones or on our computers and uh, but when you 0:21:34.960 --> 0:21:37.360 write it down, you're actively thinking about it as you're 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:39.800 writing it, and then you have that personal record of it, 0:21:39.880 --> 0:21:42.240 not just you know, not just a Wikipedia entry that 0:21:42.280 --> 0:21:45.439 tells you about whatever the thing was that you were 0:21:45.480 --> 0:21:48.119 thinking about. Has your own personal perspective on there. I 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:50.560