Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, charge it, pointed,
Speaker 1: zoom it, press it, snap it, work it, quick erase it.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick. So hey guys, Hey, Joe,
Speaker 1: do you remember when last week we did a podcast
Speaker 1: about consumer technology? You know, a week seems like an
Speaker 1: eternity now, well, especially when that week includes dragon Con. Yes,
Speaker 1: must just got back from and they're a little bit crazy.
Speaker 1: You might you might be able to detect My voice
Speaker 1: is not what it usually is because of dragon Con. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we both sound like more like Tom Waits than usual.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yes, the uh, the hosts have not been drinking,
Speaker 1: just the microphones. Okay, is the future of dragons? You know? Uh?
Speaker 1: You would? Yeah, I'm pretty sure, but but no, what
Speaker 1: was your what was your Yes? We did, we did
Speaker 1: consumer technology. I do remember this and whether or not
Speaker 1: it will be as awkward in the future as it
Speaker 1: is now, and how that's portrayed in science fiction films, right,
Speaker 1: that maybe the idea that in science fiction and the movies.
Speaker 1: When we see the technology of the future, it's just
Speaker 1: too nice, it just works too well, it's unrealistic, right.
Speaker 1: And one of the touchstones we referenced there was the
Speaker 1: movie Minority Report, which very often comes up in discussions
Speaker 1: about future consumer technology because, let's face it, it has
Speaker 1: informed a lot of the post two thousand aesthetic about
Speaker 1: future technology. Right. In fact, you could say that it
Speaker 1: was predictive of many different technologies. Uh, we're specifically going
Speaker 1: to be talking about user interfaces today, but that's not
Speaker 1: the only one in Minority Report that has become kind
Speaker 1: of a if not a household term and emerging technology. Sure.
Speaker 1: Some of the other things include their interesting strange weapons
Speaker 1: in the movie. They've got these little non lethal sticks
Speaker 1: they use the jet packs. They've got robotic cars, self
Speaker 1: driving cars that sort of hook onto these weird tracks.
Speaker 1: They have the big data and Internet of things the
Speaker 1: world that responds to you as you move through it. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the personalized advertisements, that kind of thing. These
Speaker 1: are all this is all stuff that we're seeing in
Speaker 1: some form or another today. Yeah, and all of this
Speaker 1: came out in a movie that premiered in two thousand
Speaker 1: and two. That's what like five years before the iPhone. Yes, yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean even those user interfaces that we now like
Speaker 1: when you when you see John Enderton Tom Cruise's character
Speaker 1: moving his hands all willy nilly in order to sort
Speaker 1: through different stuff, and you think that kind of is
Speaker 1: how we deal with technology today, except we're actually touching
Speaker 1: a screen most of the time, not you know, putting
Speaker 1: on gloves or whatever. Um, you might think this this
Speaker 1: movie it was incredibly prescient, although if you look into
Speaker 1: it you realize that there was a lot of work
Speaker 1: going on behind the scenes. But we'll get to that
Speaker 1: in a minute. Well, yeah, let's start with talking about
Speaker 1: Minority Report itself. So we don't need to discuss the
Speaker 1: plot of the movie too much because maybe even if
Speaker 1: you haven't seen it, it's something you should experience as
Speaker 1: a surprise for the first time. But it's a sort
Speaker 1: of futuristic crime related thriller that deals with issues of
Speaker 1: free will and and things like that. But the technology
Speaker 1: of the movie is what we're focusing on today, and
Speaker 1: specifically the technology of how Tom Cruise and other characters
Speaker 1: in the movie manipulate virtual objects and data. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: we want to look at that and how has that
Speaker 1: shaped our user interfaces today and what might it be
Speaker 1: in the future. Okay, so when Tom Cruise sits down
Speaker 1: or not sit does not sit down? When Tom Cruise
Speaker 1: stands up at his computer, yes, movie, what's it look like?
Speaker 1: What's going on? So it so a big semi circular
Speaker 1: screen that he's working on, right, that's it's kind of
Speaker 1: giving him a panoramic view of lots and lots of
Speaker 1: data all at once. Well, there's one thing I'd like
Speaker 1: to add to that, which is that it's a clear screen.
Speaker 1: Something I'm going to focus on later. But yes, a
Speaker 1: big semicircular, clear, transparent pain of glass. And what happens
Speaker 1: on that glass, Well, that's where all this data gets projected,
Speaker 1: including video, text, lots of different stuff going on at once.
Speaker 1: And in order to sort through this, instead of using
Speaker 1: say a keyboard and mouse, he dawns these kind of
Speaker 1: electronic gloves, right, and those gloves are acting as his
Speaker 1: link to the data that's on the screen. Moving his
Speaker 1: hands around, he can select specific pieces of data, he
Speaker 1: can resize it, he can swipe it out of the
Speaker 1: way if he's done with it. One of the things
Speaker 1: it's often compared to is that it looks supposedly like
Speaker 1: he's conducting an orchestra. I think that's even something the director,
Speaker 1: Steven Spielberg was going for when they went into it.
Speaker 1: He wanted it to look like Tom Cruise was standing
Speaker 1: there conducting all of his data as you would the
Speaker 1: different instruments in an orchestra as they come in and out,
Speaker 1: and and he's so he's he's got his arms going
Speaker 1: all over the place. It's really all about how would
Speaker 1: you physically manipulate the thing you're seeing on the screen,
Speaker 1: knowing that you can't actually touch it, right, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't touch the video that's playing on the screen,
Speaker 1: So how would you if you wanted to make it bigger?
Speaker 1: How would you make it bigger? And you think, well,
Speaker 1: if it was like, you know, silly putty something like that,
Speaker 1: that I could physically have my hands it stretch it out. Yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: you take the corners an you kind of stretch yep. Uh.
Speaker 1: So some other screens in the movie, one thing I've
Speaker 1: noticed is that they're also often clear screens, so they're transparent,
Speaker 1: but they have data facing one way on them and
Speaker 1: their multi touch displays right, so they are touch screens
Speaker 1: like your iPhone would be. But many historical touch screens
Speaker 1: could only deal with one contact point at a time,
Speaker 1: or maybe one or two contact points at a time,
Speaker 1: but but not interactively with each other. It was more
Speaker 1: like I can press this button or I can press
Speaker 1: this button kind of issue. Yeah, Um, minority report shows
Speaker 1: screens and hovering touch based interfaces that accept multiple points
Speaker 1: of contact simultaneously, which we actually do have in super
Speaker 1: technology now. Yeah, And the back in the day, it
Speaker 1: used to be where if you had a capacitive touch screen,
Speaker 1: that's the kind where it's detecting. It has a very
Speaker 1: weak electric field that goes across the screen. When your
Speaker 1: finger or really anything that's conductive touches against well, it
Speaker 1: has to be a special stylus for a capacitive but
Speaker 1: if it if it is a conductive material and it
Speaker 1: makes contact, then that interrupts the electric field. And in
Speaker 1: the old days, really you could only get the one
Speaker 1: point of contact. And just think of the the think
Speaker 1: of like an invisible grid that's laying across that screen,
Speaker 1: and when you press against it, you are interrupting some
Speaker 1: of the lines on that grid, and that's how the
Speaker 1: computer knows where you are touching on the display. There
Speaker 1: are other types of displays that rely on pressure, which
Speaker 1: originally you could get multi touch displays that did that
Speaker 1: that that could detect several different uh actual pressure points.
Speaker 1: But the problem with those is that it uh they
Speaker 1: can wear down pretty quickly because you're actually having to
Speaker 1: push against the screen, it's not just gently touching. And
Speaker 1: then of course there are other ones that use cameras
Speaker 1: to actually detect where your fingers are. Now, these would
Speaker 1: have to have either a top facing camera, you know,
Speaker 1: top down camera so you're thinking of like a table,
Speaker 1: or it would be actually cameras mounted underneath the screen
Speaker 1: pointing up that are probably using infrared, something that's not
Speaker 1: going to interfere with us when we're looking at the display,
Speaker 1: so they can detect where the points of contact just
Speaker 1: secretly shining into your eyes and making you blind over
Speaker 1: many decades, you know. But but on the flip side,
Speaker 1: you can use all your fingers when you're trying to
Speaker 1: manipulate datas. I'm just kidding that. I don't think they
Speaker 1: do know now, but there are lots of different implementations
Speaker 1: to achieve this particular outcome. Yeah, And so then we
Speaker 1: also can look at the specific gestures that are involved
Speaker 1: in the gesture UI in Minority report, and some of
Speaker 1: them are ones that are very common now, like swiping,
Speaker 1: or they pinching or stretching for zooming in and out
Speaker 1: of images. I mean that's practically universal. So, and it's
Speaker 1: a little problematic because you have companies that have patented
Speaker 1: certain gestures and saying that they essentially owned those, and
Speaker 1: that's caused some tension in the touch Screen World book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hold on a second. You can patent the idea that
Speaker 1: you swipe something to get rid of it. Currently, Yes,
Speaker 1: you can. You or you can at least submit a
Speaker 1: patent to the Yeah, you can submit a patent to
Speaker 1: the patent office, and if the patent office is feeling
Speaker 1: in a capricious mood, they may very well awarded to you.
Speaker 1: Has happened If Lauren hands me a piece of her
Speaker 1: fan fix and puts it on my desk and I
Speaker 1: swipe it off into the trash, Am I going to
Speaker 1: get sued? No? But if Lauren writes a piece of
Speaker 1: fan fiction and electronic format, and you design a program
Speaker 1: specifically designed to allow you to read fan fiction, and
Speaker 1: that program includes the swipe to remove command that you
Speaker 1: have programmed yourself. You have probably uh interfered with that
Speaker 1: you would need to pay a license. It's it's chrono
Speaker 1: trigger fan fiction. By the way, I'm glad we I'm
Speaker 1: glad we got to the bottom of it. Thanks Joe.
Speaker 1: That's a relatively okay, thanks for fan fiction about I think. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's tell the story of Minority Report. Where did all
Speaker 1: these ideas come from? Well, that's the thing is that
Speaker 1: it's not like they just invented the ideas out of
Speaker 1: whole cloth. That what happened was Steven Spielberg who really
Speaker 1: wanted to have a vision of the future that would
Speaker 1: be believable. Yeah, something where you feel, yeah, based upon
Speaker 1: the way the world is right now, I could see
Speaker 1: the kind of technology existing, and I believe the Year
Speaker 1: of the movies somewheround. Yeah. Yeah, I think originally it
Speaker 1: was meant to be got pushed back right, right, so
Speaker 1: push forward? Well, I guess it all depends upon your
Speaker 1: point of view. But yeah, it's it's um at either
Speaker 1: at any rate. What's interesting is not just that the
Speaker 1: technologies have started to appear, but they have appeared much
Speaker 1: more quickly than you would anticipate, given the fact that
Speaker 1: the movie is based in twenty fifty, we would we
Speaker 1: would now think that the technologies of Minority Report are
Speaker 1: probably a little too conservative based upon where we are
Speaker 1: right now with a lot of those technologies, even if
Speaker 1: they're in their infancy, by twenty fifty, they're going to
Speaker 1: be much further along well ye years sorry, yeah, singularity.
Speaker 1: I mean, the fact this movie exists is even just
Speaker 1: it's it's just a pure fantasy. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: the he what he wanted to do was he wanted
Speaker 1: to say, all right, what's the Steven Spielberg. Uh. What
Speaker 1: he wanted to do was get the some some really
Speaker 1: smart people who are working in various fields trying to
Speaker 1: develop cutting edge technology. We're talking about stuff that's in
Speaker 1: the concept stage, not even necessarily practicable, or if it were,
Speaker 1: it was something that was just a prototype. He wanted
Speaker 1: to get them together and talk about what the future
Speaker 1: might look like, assuming that these concepts and prototypes bear fruit,
Speaker 1: that they actually do become a viable means of doing
Speaker 1: whatever it happens to be. So the big surprises, he said, Now,
Speaker 1: let's not just have some writers dream up some stuff.
Speaker 1: Let's talk to actual technologists and scientists and see what
Speaker 1: they have. Yeah. Yeah, and so in he held a meeting.
Speaker 1: He had a two day meeting with several people, including
Speaker 1: the folks who were involved in the movie, as well
Speaker 1: as experts in various fields. We're talking everything from computer scientists,
Speaker 1: automotive designers, architects, all sorts of different disciplines to kind
Speaker 1: of come together and say, all right, what will the
Speaker 1: city of eighty or the car of twenty eight or
Speaker 1: the computer of ty what will it look like, how
Speaker 1: will it perform? How will it be different from the
Speaker 1: way it is today? Yeah, And they all basically just
Speaker 1: hold up in a in a hotel in Santa Monica. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the I read one of the participants said,
Speaker 1: I think it was Jarren Lanier said that they went
Speaker 1: under the guise of being a dental technicians conference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something as boring as they possibly could manage so that
Speaker 1: no one would bug them. And yeah. The guest list
Speaker 1: included Jarren Lanier, Neil Gershenfeld, who was head of m
Speaker 1: I t S Center for Bits and Atoms, which is
Speaker 1: the best name for an organization ever. Uh, the automotive
Speaker 1: designer Harold Belker, Sean Jones, who worked in DARPA's Unconventional
Speaker 1: counter Measures laboratory. That sounds like a good lab. Yeah,
Speaker 1: John under Koffler, who was the He was a member
Speaker 1: of the m i T Media Lab at the time.
Speaker 1: There are actually quite a few video of the m
Speaker 1: I T Media Lab showing off an interface that looks
Speaker 1: essentially like the one you see in the movie, including
Speaker 1: the gloves, using the gloves to be the the uh,
Speaker 1: the point of connection between the user and the computer uh,
Speaker 1: and a lot more besides that. So there were some
Speaker 1: really important people in the in the space of design
Speaker 1: and engineering and science and they all kind of just
Speaker 1: sat and hashed out ideas. I love some of the
Speaker 1: stories from that, Like they came up with this concept
Speaker 1: for a car that had essentially just a seat and
Speaker 1: like you could sit down and just relax and then
Speaker 1: the car would take you everywhere you needed to go.
Speaker 1: And Spielbridge reaction was, well, where where are all the controls?
Speaker 1: And they said, well, it's all voice controled, you don't
Speaker 1: you don't need it in controls. And then the spiel
Speaker 1: brig said, Okay, where the actors supposed to do when
Speaker 1: they're just sitting in a car, And they yeah, you
Speaker 1: gotta show them doing stuff. This is why I think
Speaker 1: we also see we mentioned this and in the episode
Speaker 1: two in Star Trek, you would think by the time
Speaker 1: we get to the world of Star Trek, everything would
Speaker 1: be Yeah, you wouldn't need buttons, you wouldn't. I like
Speaker 1: that you're doing the flailing button pressing. Oh. I was
Speaker 1: gonna get around to saying it eventually, Yeah, yeah, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's all the actors in Star Trek are either pressing
Speaker 1: one single button very effectively, or ninety million buttons all
Speaker 1: at the same time. Go yeah, yeah. The whole thing
Speaker 1: being that if you don't have buttons to press, you're
Speaker 1: really just a bunch of people sitting around. So it's
Speaker 1: a Star Trek economy. You gotta come up with jobs somehow.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a cinematic it's a cinematic uh concession. Right,
Speaker 1: you have to say, all right, well, maybe in the
Speaker 1: future we'll have this wonderful technology where we won't have
Speaker 1: any kind of the interface will be invisible because it
Speaker 1: will be so integrated into the experience. But for the
Speaker 1: purposes of a movie, we need to make some concession
Speaker 1: so that there's something interesting to watch. Either that or
Speaker 1: we just cut cars from the film entirely because there's
Speaker 1: no point in having someone just sit there doing nothing,
Speaker 1: so then you had uh to look specifically at a
Speaker 1: couple of these people. U. Jarn Lanier is someone that
Speaker 1: we may have mentioned in previous episodes. Yeah, definitely. There
Speaker 1: was one I know in December called Virtual Eventuality in
Speaker 1: which we spoke at length about him, So so go
Speaker 1: check that out if you want to know a lot
Speaker 1: about him. But in brief, he is the guy who
Speaker 1: popularized the term virtual reality. He may have even coined it,
Speaker 1: but you know who knows at this point. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of people were working on it at the time.
Speaker 1: But he definitely was one of the pioneers in virtual
Speaker 1: reality technology way back even in the eighties, uh, And
Speaker 1: he was in that work trying to create systems where
Speaker 1: a physical person can experience a virtual environment in a
Speaker 1: meaningful way. And often we see that with a big
Speaker 1: head mounted displays, things that are allowing you to get
Speaker 1: a full look at the world. So when you physically
Speaker 1: move around, your perspective changes within that virtual world. This
Speaker 1: is something we're really pretty familiar with today. Things like
Speaker 1: the Oculus Rift are taking advantage of that same idea.
Speaker 1: But it means that you have to figure out, all right, well,
Speaker 1: what's the interface? How do you interact with this virtual
Speaker 1: world so that the interaction doesn't feel artificial or unnatural? Right,
Speaker 1: So like holding a game controller in your hands and
Speaker 1: then interacting in this world. That puts up a little
Speaker 1: bit of a barrier because it's not like the way
Speaker 1: you would interact within the actual real meat space. It's
Speaker 1: a thing that you have to learn very specifically how
Speaker 1: how to use and to fine tune how you use it,
Speaker 1: the same way that we all had to learn how
Speaker 1: to type at this certain point. Right. So jarn Linear,
Speaker 1: we should say, didn't just work on overhyped and mega
Speaker 1: disappointing things like virtual reality. He also worked on very
Speaker 1: popular things. Okay, no, that hurt a little bit, but
Speaker 1: it's fair. Yeah, he actually would go on to work
Speaker 1: on things that had user interface says that we're really
Speaker 1: familiar with. Now. You if you look at Minority Report
Speaker 1: and you see those gestures, it also looks a lot
Speaker 1: like what you might see someone who's using a Microsoft Connect.
Speaker 1: He actually worked on the Connect project, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about that too. So he's been
Speaker 1: Although you could argue that Connect is not necessarily that
Speaker 1: popular either, because a lot of people prefer to either
Speaker 1: turn it off or they went out and bought the
Speaker 1: Xbox version that didn't come bundled with the Connect once that,
Speaker 1: once that became available. Um, but yeah, he's he's certainly
Speaker 1: one of the instrumental people behind this. In fact, according
Speaker 1: to their memories, we read an article that talked about
Speaker 1: this meeting in but it was you know, the article
Speaker 1: was written several years after that meeting, I mean like
Speaker 1: a decade after or more. And uh, and so you
Speaker 1: have to remember that people are relying on their memory
Speaker 1: of the event. But he said he believes he brought
Speaker 1: a working pair of those gloves that had been they
Speaker 1: you know, they've been playing with those in in various
Speaker 1: developmental labs for a while to show them off. He said,
Speaker 1: you know, this way I could actually show off what
Speaker 1: I was talking about instead of just having people try
Speaker 1: to imagine the concept. And that, in fact, is one
Speaker 1: of the things that made his way into the movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I've actually seen a video of people using gloves
Speaker 1: like that in action. It was I think a two
Speaker 1: thousand ten TED talk with John under Koffler. Yeah, another
Speaker 1: person who was on that list. This guy is the
Speaker 1: one who was the former member of the M I
Speaker 1: T Media lab Um and has worked in various companies,
Speaker 1: one of the big I would say, evangelists of this
Speaker 1: sort of user interface. Yeah, definitely, And he apparently was
Speaker 1: the person who really worked to create the the gesture
Speaker 1: language used by Tom Cruise's character in the film uh
Speaker 1: To to sort through different data and select things, and
Speaker 1: and was definitely working with Spielberg to make it look
Speaker 1: like this kind of VERTU will Orchestra conducting experience. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he has a ted talk that you can watch where
Speaker 1: he goes through all of this. And again, if you
Speaker 1: have ever used any sort of touch screen or a
Speaker 1: connect or any other motion controlled UH interface that's kind
Speaker 1: of like that, it's gonna look very familiar to you. Okay,
Speaker 1: But as we mentioned earlier, Minority Report was actually very
Speaker 1: prescient in a lot of ways of real technology that
Speaker 1: came later. I mean, did it basically predict how we
Speaker 1: use touch screens today? I think Minority Report, well, I
Speaker 1: think it was predictive, but I don't necessarily think that
Speaker 1: the people behind the user interfaces were would necessarily cite
Speaker 1: Minority Report as the inspiration because this work. As we
Speaker 1: said in I mean, the whole reason why there were
Speaker 1: these discussions in the first places, because there were people
Speaker 1: working in media labs who were already kind of designing
Speaker 1: this sort of interface. So what if Minority Report had
Speaker 1: never happened, if the movie had never been made, I
Speaker 1: think we would still be in that gesture controlled world.
Speaker 1: It's just that we wouldn't have the cultural touchstone of
Speaker 1: Minority Report to refer back to, right, And it might
Speaker 1: have been until uh later films like for example, Iron
Speaker 1: Man or something like that, that we might have seen
Speaker 1: that sci fi vision of the clear screens and all that.
Speaker 1: You know, it would have been up to whichever production
Speaker 1: designer on whichever film came up with the idea of, hey,
Speaker 1: if we put images and text right in front of
Speaker 1: the actor's face, it's a really easy way to make
Speaker 1: it visually interesting while they're really just typing on a computer. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. And in fact, if you ever there's there's
Speaker 1: there are people out there designers out there for actual
Speaker 1: uh software and hardware who lament the existence of such
Speaker 1: science fiction films, particularly Minority Report, but also Iron Man
Speaker 1: is an excellent example where they'll be told by the
Speaker 1: business side, Hey can you make this look like such
Speaker 1: and such, And they'll say, all right, yeah, what works
Speaker 1: really well on screen may not necessarily translate into a
Speaker 1: usable system in real space. But we'll talk about some
Speaker 1: criticisms too, But the certainly the the hand gestures, a
Speaker 1: lot of that language did in fact translate over into
Speaker 1: real uses. And maybe some of that wash was actually
Speaker 1: attributable to the the depiction in minority reports, So that
Speaker 1: whole uh swiping and pinching to zoom, that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: those sort of things I think may very well have
Speaker 1: become popular because people saw that in the movie and
Speaker 1: they responded positively. They thought, Wow, that's such a cool
Speaker 1: way to interact a lot of sense, let's do that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what you know, whenever I have like if I imagine
Speaker 1: I have multiple screens in front of me and there's
Speaker 1: something on one and I wanted directly in front of
Speaker 1: my eyes, I love the idea of being able to
Speaker 1: just reach out and grab it and pull it exactly. So,
Speaker 1: So it definitely was one of those that I think
Speaker 1: a lot of us intuitively felt this would make using
Speaker 1: computers so much easier for this specific use case. That's
Speaker 1: an important note to make. So um, you know, and
Speaker 1: like I said, you had people who worked on Minority
Speaker 1: Report or at least helped with this brainstorming session who
Speaker 1: went on to work in some of these interfaces. So
Speaker 1: like the connect would be the big one, you know,
Speaker 1: But so's it's a self fulfilling prophecy a little bit. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's kind of like if if I were writing a
Speaker 1: science fiction movie. Uh, you know, let's say that's it's
Speaker 1: ten years ago or so. Maybe not that long, but
Speaker 1: it's several years ago. And one of my buddies happens
Speaker 1: to work in Google's Project X department, and they're working
Speaker 1: on the Google self driving car, which has not yet
Speaker 1: become public information. And I'm trying to think of what's
Speaker 1: gonna set my my science fiction world apart. And this is,
Speaker 1: you know, I haven't talked to the guys that you know,
Speaker 1: I think self driving cars are gonna be a big thing.
Speaker 1: I don't think people in the future gonna drive, and
Speaker 1: I incorporate that into my story. Then the news breaks
Speaker 1: later that Google's working on this thing and that how
Speaker 1: far along they are, and then everyone's like, wow, you
Speaker 1: predicted something. And then Google went out and did it.
Speaker 1: That's that's the perception, right, that's what it looks like,
Speaker 1: when the real real story is that I was able
Speaker 1: to jump on something, uh, because I heard a friend
Speaker 1: of mine say, oh, I think such and such. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, one of the ways that we can definitely
Speaker 1: say that movies like Minority Report, and specifically Minority Report
Speaker 1: in particular, have influenced things at large is in the
Speaker 1: esthetics of technology and popular culture. Absolutely, And in fact,
Speaker 1: that was mentioned by the author of one of the
Speaker 1: one interesting article I think we all read about criticisms
Speaker 1: of U I and Minority Report. Are you talking about
Speaker 1: Christian Brown? Yeah, he's an animator and he wrote a
Speaker 1: piece in the All a w L called how Minority
Speaker 1: Report trapped us in a world of bad interfaces. I
Speaker 1: had some interesting observations. Yeah, And this goes into that
Speaker 1: that element I was talking about earlier, where something that
Speaker 1: looks really good and compelling on screen may not necessarily
Speaker 1: be the best experience in real life. And the fact
Speaker 1: that even the designers on Minority Report were at a
Speaker 1: certain point aware of that because like your like your
Speaker 1: story with a self driving car not having any buttons,
Speaker 1: you know, they knew that that's not what self driving
Speaker 1: cars are really going to look like in the future,
Speaker 1: but they needed to give the actors something to do, right.
Speaker 1: So it's the same argument I hear about Peter Jackson
Speaker 1: saying that they needed to make certain adjustments to Laurer
Speaker 1: the rings in the Hobbit in order to make it
Speaker 1: more cinematic. Now, in that case, they were wrong, and
Speaker 1: I totally understand, and my my bias might be shown, sure,
Speaker 1: but you know, but you can see practical evidence of
Speaker 1: this in the Well, I guess, I guess anecdotal note
Speaker 1: that not that many people are really using the connect
Speaker 1: because it's still a little bit Yeah, I think, I
Speaker 1: think some people just well, it's because I think in
Speaker 1: part that no one has come up with the killer
Speaker 1: application of the technology that has made it so compelling
Speaker 1: that people want to use it. It's to me, it's
Speaker 1: the same in a way as a the Nintendo approach,
Speaker 1: where they took a very they took a very bold
Speaker 1: step with the Nintendo we and then with the Wi You,
Speaker 1: saying that instead of trying to compete against the other
Speaker 1: console companies by by pushing the graphics and and the
Speaker 1: processing power of their devices, they wanted to revisit and
Speaker 1: change the interface entirely and make the the actual gameplay
Speaker 1: experience very different. And it was one that initially worked
Speaker 1: like Gangbusters. It sold a lot of consoles, but it
Speaker 1: didn't seem to have a lot of staying power, which
Speaker 1: does start to raise the question are gesture controls something
Speaker 1: of a gimmick that are? They are very interesting to
Speaker 1: look at, and they're very intriguing to us as people.
Speaker 1: But once we start getting actual and I you know,
Speaker 1: not hands on experience, I guess, but hands off experience,
Speaker 1: that it loses its luster. Yeah. Well, I've read some
Speaker 1: pretty interesting criticisms of gesture based displays. Yeah. One of
Speaker 1: the things that Christian Brown pointed out in that terrific
Speaker 1: article was that although a lot of these UI developers
Speaker 1: are are referring to the gestures that we all use
Speaker 1: today is being very intuitive and natural. It's it's really
Speaker 1: he was saying that they're really learned the same way
Speaker 1: that we learned how to interact with any other piece
Speaker 1: of technology. Right, Like just as using a mouse to
Speaker 1: manipulate something on a screen, that's that's a learned behavior.
Speaker 1: You know, with a lot of practice, it becomes second nature.
Speaker 1: But it is learned, just as these these like you
Speaker 1: were saying, Yeah, we don't naturally reach out and try
Speaker 1: to manipulate stuff that's not there and pretend like there
Speaker 1: is something there and then expect a result if we're sane.
Speaker 1: So and that was right. His point was saying that
Speaker 1: he felt that we would need additional elements like haptic
Speaker 1: feedback to feel something. And then once you start to
Speaker 1: feel something like the presence of something, as if it's
Speaker 1: really there, then we start getting closer to the way
Speaker 1: we actually interact with our physical environments. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. Gesturing with blank invisible canvas as your
Speaker 1: as your object is not natural. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: inherently an unnatural activity. It's as learned as anything else.
Speaker 1: But once you're touching, sure, that's a baby could do it.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't have to be told. How Now, that's not
Speaker 1: the only criticisms against this interface, you, Joe, you have
Speaker 1: a very a very practical one. Right. Well, no, I
Speaker 1: I can't remember where I've heard this, but I've heard
Speaker 1: somebody make this point before. Uh, and so it didn't
Speaker 1: originate with me. But the point is simply that you'd
Speaker 1: get exhausted I mean, it looks really cool watching Tom
Speaker 1: Cruise stand there, uh and fling things around. But the
Speaker 1: power of something like a mouse and a keyboard is
Speaker 1: that it allows a lot of specific virtual movement to
Speaker 1: be conveyed through very little actual movement. Supposedly, even the
Speaker 1: quite fit Tom Cruise got worn out on the set
Speaker 1: of Minority Reports, so in between takes he'd have to
Speaker 1: sit down and rest. While he was shooting these scenes
Speaker 1: where he used the big computer, he was just getting
Speaker 1: exhausted doing all the arm motions. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could sell it as like a combination UI
Speaker 1: slash fitness device, but would people actually want that. I mean,
Speaker 1: for one thing, you all already mentioned what happened with
Speaker 1: the connect um, But remember when the Wii came out.
Speaker 1: When it first came out the Nintendo, we and you
Speaker 1: saw commercials of people using the Wii remote to place
Speaker 1: warts games, and they looked active, They're standing up, moving
Speaker 1: around a lot. They looked exciting and futuristic. Then came
Speaker 1: the reality you can really play almost any game on
Speaker 1: the Wii by sitting on the couch making tiny flicks
Speaker 1: of the wrist. And which game playing posture did most
Speaker 1: we users select. Uh, mine was switching on the Xbox.
Speaker 1: You know that you didn't notice that, And when people
Speaker 1: like very first got it, they'd stand up and move
Speaker 1: her out. Yeah, and then quickly realized that they could
Speaker 1: just slouch deeper and deeper into their couch and and
Speaker 1: make the tiniest gestures possible. Yeah. And so I think
Speaker 1: generally the path of least effort is usually what people
Speaker 1: actually want. Yeah. I think, uh, in certain cases, like
Speaker 1: a party game, then something like motion controls has a
Speaker 1: lot of appeal to it. Right. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: going out to actually play tennis with people. Sure, Sure,
Speaker 1: maybe like for the standing desk crowd, like like people
Speaker 1: who are actively trying to be more active in their
Speaker 1: day to day work life. Yeah. And I think also
Speaker 1: there's this element that if I'm playing, if I'm jumping
Speaker 1: around like a lunatic in front of my my video
Speaker 1: game console and other people are with me, that's a party.
Speaker 1: If I'm jumping around like a lunatic and I'm all
Speaker 1: alone in my house and I'm playing a game that's
Speaker 1: a little weird, it's entertaining for your neighbors, though it
Speaker 1: may also be entertaining for whomever has access to the
Speaker 1: camera on my connect. But that's going into more of
Speaker 1: a kind of dark like hacking conspiracy sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So no, I just imagine they've got like a streaming
Speaker 1: show called like Jonathan Jiggles, you know it's that would
Speaker 1: be accurate. That'd be about the right name for it. Also,
Speaker 1: you'd have to have a much bigger office environment, wouldn't you.
Speaker 1: I mean, because otherwise I'd just be smacking Joe in
Speaker 1: the face right time I had to swipe something off
Speaker 1: the screen. And that's yeah, Yeah, it does really seem
Speaker 1: like this would not work in a place where people
Speaker 1: were looking at well, it doesn't really work for all
Speaker 1: sorts of computer applications. That's the real thing we're getting
Speaker 1: down to is that if if you are playing a game,
Speaker 1: or if for some reason you need to be able
Speaker 1: to sort through a lot of images, for example, quickly,
Speaker 1: and you want to do it in a way that's
Speaker 1: visually entertaining for the people who are there, then this
Speaker 1: sort of approach kind of has it's kind an element
Speaker 1: of the dramatic to it, obviously, and so yeah, that
Speaker 1: I see the appeal there. But if we're like, like Lauren,
Speaker 1: you're an editor, if you're editing an article. You can't
Speaker 1: imagine like having to gesture all the way through so
Speaker 1: that you can pan through an article and highlight a
Speaker 1: section that needs notes. I mean, that would be crazy.
Speaker 1: I I already vastly dislike working with word documents, not
Speaker 1: necessarily microsoftware documents, but just just text documents on my
Speaker 1: smartphone or on anything that does not have a keyboard
Speaker 1: and mouse set up, because it's I mean, partially it's
Speaker 1: because I'm an old person and and and the touch
Speaker 1: screen interface is a little bit less intuitive for me
Speaker 1: than a keyboard and else I know better how to
Speaker 1: get around something with a keyboard and mouse. But also
Speaker 1: just the functionality of touchscreen at this current moment, it's
Speaker 1: not such that it's caught up to that keyboard and mouse, right,
Speaker 1: And that's the that's the kind of we're transitioning a
Speaker 1: little bit, not just with the criticism of just your
Speaker 1: controls in general and the and the UI and Minority report,
Speaker 1: but also just the idea of what is the future
Speaker 1: of interfaces because the keyboard and mouse has been around
Speaker 1: since the early Macintosh days. Before then, it was just
Speaker 1: keyboards unless you were at Xerox's Park facility but Apple
Speaker 1: with the Macintosh really popularized the mouse and keyboard combo,
Speaker 1: which then became the standard for home computers. Right, And
Speaker 1: it has remained that for decades now, and it works
Speaker 1: really well. It is a learned behavior, I mean, typing
Speaker 1: on keys and using a mouse. That's not a natural
Speaker 1: behavior either, but it's something that most people pick up
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. It's a prizing to me that has remained
Speaker 1: such a strong user interface, such such a dominant one.
Speaker 1: I mean just the keyboard itself, of course, goes all
Speaker 1: the way back to the typewriter. So the fact that
Speaker 1: this has remained largely unchanged since it first debuted is
Speaker 1: really surprising considering the rest of the technology has advanced
Speaker 1: so far. So is the future of a user interface
Speaker 1: with a computer is it? Is it locked down to
Speaker 1: that keyboard and mouse? Or are we going to see
Speaker 1: some other interface come into play and be the really
Speaker 1: new way of interacting with computers. Well, there's there's practical
Speaker 1: evidence of that as well, Right, Jonathan. You have a
Speaker 1: note in here about Xbox one sales as they relate
Speaker 1: to the connect. Yeah, So Xbox One when it originally
Speaker 1: came out, the connect was bundled with it right, and
Speaker 1: then at Microsoft announced that they were going to put
Speaker 1: on a cheaper Xbox One going on sale. You know,
Speaker 1: there was already this this big story about how Xbox
Speaker 1: One sales were lagging behind the PS four, and everyone
Speaker 1: got excited did and it was revealed that the reason
Speaker 1: for the one hundred dollar discount was largely due to
Speaker 1: the fact that they would not bundle the Xbox One
Speaker 1: Connect with that version of the console. So this answered
Speaker 1: two things that a lot of gamers were really uh
Speaker 1: hoping to hear, One that it would be cheaper, and
Speaker 1: two that they weren't going to be forced to have
Speaker 1: the connect because they just didn't see any value in
Speaker 1: that particular peripheral. And sales as a result doubled. So
Speaker 1: part of that is because it's cheaper. Part of that
Speaker 1: is because people were more excited about getting the console
Speaker 1: they wanted, as opposed to a console plus a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff they weren't necessarily excited about. Of course,
Speaker 1: one might be able to come back and say that
Speaker 1: people might be more interested in gesture based interfaces if
Speaker 1: they were just better and and yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: think there's two things you need to have a really
Speaker 1: mature technology so that it's just like virtual environment. You
Speaker 1: need a really mature technology so that people are getting
Speaker 1: what they expect, you know, because the expectation of virtual
Speaker 1: reality back in the nineties was well beyond what it
Speaker 1: could actually deliver at the time. And then also on
Speaker 1: top of that, you need really compelling applications that take
Speaker 1: advantage of it. Yeah, uh you know. Okay, So so
Speaker 1: addressing kind of the first half of this, I think
Speaker 1: that part of it is right now is that the
Speaker 1: sensors and software that are required to make light based
Speaker 1: just your control, like the connect work are are still
Speaker 1: really clunky and require these very carefully calibrated bits that
Speaker 1: are usually stationary, which limits the ways that you can
Speaker 1: use them pretty drastically. Um. That is starting to change
Speaker 1: with some upcoming devices, like, for example, that the Meo
Speaker 1: arm band, which you guys might have heard about. It.
Speaker 1: It's a stretchy band that you wear over your upper
Speaker 1: forearm and it reads the electrical activity in your muscles
Speaker 1: to determine what gesture you're making with your hand, which
Speaker 1: is just so cool, I think. Um. It also has
Speaker 1: this nine axis inertial measurement unit sensor system, which is
Speaker 1: what we classically like macroscopically referred to as being gyroscopic sensors,
Speaker 1: but that's not really they're they're all they're all little
Speaker 1: bits and bobs at any rate. Um. Yeah, those those
Speaker 1: will measure that the motion and rotations of your entire arm.
Speaker 1: So instead of it just being these broad gestures like
Speaker 1: these sweep your arm left or sweep your arm right,
Speaker 1: this now can be something much more precise. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can tell when you're wiggling your pinky finger versus when
Speaker 1: you're wiggling your index finger in which in which way
Speaker 1: you're wiggling it. That's really smart. I hadn't even thought
Speaker 1: about that. It's sort of like taking the mouse concept
Speaker 1: and applying it to your gestures. Oh sure. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: a lot of people seem to think that the MEO
Speaker 1: is going to change just your control and you know,
Speaker 1: of course, any any following technology that repeats it. Uh.
Speaker 1: The MIOS creators that Dalamic Labs have partnered with several
Speaker 1: smart glass companies, including Google, as well as software developers
Speaker 1: for everything from like construction work to bike couriers to healthcare. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can see this being a a good advance to
Speaker 1: the the approach. I don't know if again, I think
Speaker 1: it will be something that will be really useful for
Speaker 1: specific applications, and beyond that it may be more of
Speaker 1: a curiosity. But I'm I remember playing a game on
Speaker 1: the Xbox three sixty Connect, so the previous generation of
Speaker 1: the Connect in which you were able to control a
Speaker 1: tank like a vehicle by you know, you'd put both
Speaker 1: arms forward to be moving forward, you pull one arm
Speaker 1: back to make a turn, you pull both arms back
Speaker 1: to reverse, that kind of thing. But they had to
Speaker 1: be really big, dramatic gestures, which meant they look like
Speaker 1: you're wrestling with somebody in front of you in order
Speaker 1: to do this right. But but it's very it's also
Speaker 1: very similar to kind of the gestures you would see
Speaker 1: for someone who had to try and let's say they're
Speaker 1: presented with a digital image that seemingly has three dimensions.
Speaker 1: You know, it's on a two D screen, but maybe
Speaker 1: it's a globe, for example, and in order to turn it,
Speaker 1: you might have to, uh, put your hand out a
Speaker 1: certain way and then slowly move it to the left
Speaker 1: or right, or you might have to put both hands
Speaker 1: out with like a foot apart in space and then
Speaker 1: move one hand towards you while you're moving the other
Speaker 1: hand away to have it rotate. Something like this, you
Speaker 1: could have very precise controls where you just have two
Speaker 1: fingers out and you just very gently twist your wrist
Speaker 1: and that would be precise enough to be able to
Speaker 1: give that same sort of command that changes things dramatically
Speaker 1: when you have that precision. Yeah. I mean other companies
Speaker 1: are working on this sort of thing too, and for
Speaker 1: all kinds of different industries. There's, for example, um, there
Speaker 1: was a kickstarter on these gloves that image and Heap
Speaker 1: the musician has famously used and did a ted talk
Speaker 1: for I believe I've mentioned it before on the show
Speaker 1: The gloves that uh that that similarly can control stuff
Speaker 1: and uh. And there's a few companies that are designing
Speaker 1: infrared systems that would integrate with your car's dashboard and
Speaker 1: your smartphone to let you control your music, your A C,
Speaker 1: your maps, and and eventually possibly even like like monitor
Speaker 1: you to make sure you're not falling falling asleep at
Speaker 1: the wheel, stuff like that. That's useful. Yeah, what's it
Speaker 1: do if you start falling asleep with the wheel, you
Speaker 1: get a shock? Blair horns. I'm not sure. I am
Speaker 1: told at least that sending electricity through the body of
Speaker 1: someone who's falling asleep while operating a vehicle may not
Speaker 1: actually be the best way of making sure they wake up.
Speaker 1: Just starts playing Take Me Home Tonight. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: just it. It immediately goes to any eighties station with
Speaker 1: power ballads and things like that, and the windows roll
Speaker 1: down automatically, and yeah, the future so bright. I gotta
Speaker 1: fall asleep at the wheel. But yeah, at any rate,
Speaker 1: this gesture control issue is not the only problem with
Speaker 1: these minority reports style. Yeah, we we mentioned another one
Speaker 1: earlier in the episode, right, Joe, Yeah, how about clear screens?
Speaker 1: How about clear screens? It's certainly not just minority report.
Speaker 1: This is almost ubiquitous now. And you want to see
Speaker 1: looks high tech, right, Well, clear screen so you'll see
Speaker 1: there's a transparent glass pane somewhere and either displayed on
Speaker 1: the glass or hovering out in front of the glass
Speaker 1: because work. Yeah well, I mean this could maybe work,
Speaker 1: because you still got a screen. Basically, the beginning of
Speaker 1: this is is starting to show up. But yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: the problem is you'll see it from camera angles where
Speaker 1: it wouldn't actually show up in reality. Right, But you'll
Speaker 1: see data. You'll see data on clear glass or floating
Speaker 1: out in front. We're talking information, not necessarily the character
Speaker 1: start or you'll see visualization whatever it be. It might be.
Speaker 1: They might be watching kitten videos all right now, Obviously,
Speaker 1: transparent start watch and kting videos. I'm sorry, please continue. Obviously,
Speaker 1: transparent displays, whether they're solid screens or the hovering virtual displays,
Speaker 1: have cinematic appeal because they not only look futuristic and
Speaker 1: kind of beautiful, but they make it easier to see
Speaker 1: both the user and the data or the visualization on
Speaker 1: the screen from many different angles. You can shoot from
Speaker 1: in front or behind or wherever you want, and you
Speaker 1: can see it from all the angles. If you're looking
Speaker 1: at an actual opaque computer screen and you want to
Speaker 1: show birth both the person using it and what's on
Speaker 1: the screen at the same time, you don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of options, right, It's it's pretty much over the
Speaker 1: shoulder or some angle not too far from that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: are doing that ridiculous thing where they project the light
Speaker 1: from the screen. The character has to wear glasses so
Speaker 1: that you can see what's actually on the screen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I don't think that clear screens are going to
Speaker 1: become a big thing in the consumer technologies. Please please
Speaker 1: explain why you feel that way, Joe, Well, one of
Speaker 1: the one of the reasons is that I would think
Speaker 1: screens like this would be very sensitive to light conditions
Speaker 1: in the room, right, the just the room where you're
Speaker 1: using it, much more so than the screens of today.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can have a bad enough problem even
Speaker 1: with the highly optimized opaque screens we have with glare right,
Speaker 1: if there's the sun behind you, or you know, you're
Speaker 1: sitting next to a window. If you're looking at a
Speaker 1: clear screen, that just seems like it opens up even
Speaker 1: more potential problems for not being able to see exactly
Speaker 1: what you're supposed to be able to look at. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you don't have an opaque back and a source
Speaker 1: of light is on the other side of the screen,
Speaker 1: and that's going to interfere with anything you're looking at
Speaker 1: on that transparent screen. Yeah, So in that case, it
Speaker 1: seems like it would only be useful if it were
Speaker 1: a stationary transparent screen in a fixed place where the
Speaker 1: conditions behind it don't change, so like it's in front
Speaker 1: of a wall or something, in which case, what's the point. Yeah, sure, sure,
Speaker 1: I mean, furthermore, how obnoxious what it be if you're
Speaker 1: trying to get work done and and you have a
Speaker 1: clear screen, so your coworkers behind you or I don't know,
Speaker 1: like doing a little dancer goofing off or whatever it
Speaker 1: is that they do. That's often what we do on
Speaker 1: my aisle. You guys are on the other aisle over
Speaker 1: My aisle is the Josh and Chuck aisle where Party
Speaker 1: USA every day. He's on the crazy aisle. Lauren and
Speaker 1: I are on the boring eye. That's the way that
Speaker 1: we like it. I think that's fine with me. I'm
Speaker 1: an extrovert. I I did my aisle okay. So here's
Speaker 1: another problem with clear displays. As of now, they tend
Speaker 1: to force the viewer into very narrow viewing angles, so
Speaker 1: it's hard to see if you're looking obliquely. This wouldn't
Speaker 1: be that big a problem for one user if you're
Speaker 1: looking dead on, but it's harder to share screens that way.
Speaker 1: If you want to have somebody look next to you,
Speaker 1: it gets harder and harder. It starts to be a
Speaker 1: personal space issue at that point, right, it might be
Speaker 1: difficult to discern the intended relative depth of objects in
Speaker 1: a field of vision when there's a transparent screen, or
Speaker 1: you could just have mistakes, right, you could have trouble
Speaker 1: telling what you're seeing through the screen versus what's on
Speaker 1: the screen. Uh. Another thing is systems like this today
Speaker 1: tend to be very expensive and hard to produce. Uh. Though,
Speaker 1: just this year, one thing I did want to point
Speaker 1: out is that researchers said an m I T Lab
Speaker 1: announced they had been developing a new method for producing
Speaker 1: C through displays based on nanoparticles that react different colors
Speaker 1: of projected light, producing images on clear glass. So this
Speaker 1: new method would, according to them, be relatively cheap and simple,
Speaker 1: and it would offer a wider viewing angle. In a demonstration,
Speaker 1: they used silver nanoparticles which produce these blue images, these
Speaker 1: blue visualizations on the screen, and they said that other
Speaker 1: particles could be used to attain a full color effect.
Speaker 1: And even eventually, they said, you might be able to
Speaker 1: turn this stuff into basically just a plastic film that
Speaker 1: you could spray over the top of any clear pane
Speaker 1: of glass. That would be amazing, So you could have
Speaker 1: like smart windows that way. Yeah. Now I can see
Speaker 1: places where this might actually be useful. Say, if you
Speaker 1: want to have a heads up display on the windshield
Speaker 1: of a vehicle, right, okay, Or if you're talking about
Speaker 1: a device that's optimized for augmented reality, like uh, like
Speaker 1: smart glasses or a window of some kind. I don't
Speaker 1: know what purpose it would really serve on a window
Speaker 1: that wasn't on a vehicle, but maybe there's something I
Speaker 1: haven't thought of. Well, I mean there's there's things like
Speaker 1: I've seen for smart windows, things like, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: up to date weather predictions things of that nature. Is
Speaker 1: just stuff that you're looking at the window, you're maybe
Speaker 1: you want to control, uh, the how dark the window is,
Speaker 1: because that would that could be incorporated with an LED
Speaker 1: kind of set up. Also just other stuff like you know,
Speaker 1: like stock tickers. It tends to be all the sort
Speaker 1: of widgets that they tried to force on our televisions
Speaker 1: about seven or eight years ago, they're now trying to
Speaker 1: force on our windows. Yeah. Yeah, And so I can
Speaker 1: also see it if you've just got some kind of
Speaker 1: general device in the future that's for augmented reality. It's
Speaker 1: a tablet that you're supposed to hold up to the
Speaker 1: world and see through with data added or something like that.
Speaker 1: But if you're talking about normal laptops, tablets, phones, things
Speaker 1: where you're just mainly going to want to be using
Speaker 1: the internet, checking email, composing documents. I really don't see
Speaker 1: the appeal of clear screens. I tell you one thing
Speaker 1: I would love to see in a clear screen uh
Speaker 1: implementation in the movies. I think it would be both
Speaker 1: funny and and amazing at the same time, which is
Speaker 1: that if you're viewing it from the angle of the user,
Speaker 1: you get whatever the supposed whatever you're supposed to see,
Speaker 1: but if you go around the other side, you get
Speaker 1: the backside of that. So if it's a video of
Speaker 1: someone talking and you go around the back back of
Speaker 1: their head, yeah, I was like, that would be funny,
Speaker 1: it would be pointless. But because that's the source, that
Speaker 1: wouldn't actually work. But I mean, unless you went to
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble, right, It's essentially the same idea
Speaker 1: as the freestanding hologram, except in this case it's on
Speaker 1: a screen. You know, the idea being that you can
Speaker 1: walk six degrees around the projected thing and see it
Speaker 1: from all angles, except in this case, because it's on
Speaker 1: a screen, you would only be able to see the front.
Speaker 1: And like if you're watching a YouTube video, you literally
Speaker 1: have to have a companion video filmed from the opposite angle,
Speaker 1: which is why I think it'd be hilarious. You just
Speaker 1: you never bother explaining how this was ever achieved. It is.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good. Okay, I want to talk about another
Speaker 1: thing in Minority Report. Okay, voice controls. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: something that we've seen a lot of work done over
Speaker 1: the decades. I mean, even a futurist rate Cartswile worked
Speaker 1: quite a bit in voice controls. Yeah, but basically they
Speaker 1: were one of the first well not voice controls necessarily,
Speaker 1: but voice recognition was one of the first things that
Speaker 1: computer programmers like Kurtswile started working on way back in
Speaker 1: the day. Yeah. And uh, it's tricky stuff, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: you you have a lot of different variables to contend with,
Speaker 1: but in general, old we've seen a lot of progress.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of difference between simple voice control
Speaker 1: and voice recognition and speech control which implies natural language processing.
Speaker 1: Those are two totally different things, but we made a
Speaker 1: lot of progress in both, uh, and and so it's
Speaker 1: been really interesting to see that. However, even seeing that
Speaker 1: that progress, I'm curious this one's definitely more anecdotal for
Speaker 1: me because I don't have any surveys that back up anything.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious how many people really regularly use voice
Speaker 1: control for their various devices, whether it's a smartphone or
Speaker 1: a tablet or the Xbox one Connect also has voice controls.
Speaker 1: Xbox turn off. Yes, now, if you are still listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast, you are not listening it to it
Speaker 1: on an Xbox, nor are you uh, or you have
Speaker 1: disabled the voiceover controls, and if you're not listening to
Speaker 1: you just turned it off. I don't personally know anyone
Speaker 1: who uses a lot of voice control options, at least
Speaker 1: around me. Maybe it's one of those things that they
Speaker 1: feel kind of foolish doing, and so they only do
Speaker 1: it when when they're kind of hanging out by themselves.
Speaker 1: I thought people mostly only did it in the company
Speaker 1: of others because it was funny yeah or that thing.
Speaker 1: Or they might do it in the car, right they might.
Speaker 1: They might have if they have a setup where they
Speaker 1: can a Siri what is my armpit taste like? Or
Speaker 1: or or something along text my wife, I'll be home late,
Speaker 1: the kind of thing. I do know one person who
Speaker 1: does use it um at least I've witnessed him use
Speaker 1: it a few times, U daily tech news show host
Speaker 1: Tom merritt I. So I hung out with him at
Speaker 1: dragon Con this past weekend, and he was using it
Speaker 1: in order to text people, to call people, so that
Speaker 1: way he could keep his eyes up so he wouldn't
Speaker 1: run into folks. Uh and dry and Con is an
Speaker 1: extremely congested area for pedestrians, Lots and lots of people,
Speaker 1: so add into that the fact that half of them
Speaker 1: are looking down at a screen, and you definitely have
Speaker 1: some issues where you could be bumping into people, and
Speaker 1: you've got all these costumes and everything. So he was
Speaker 1: using it because it was a way for him to
Speaker 1: navigate without, you know, putting his his gaze down on
Speaker 1: a on a screen, and it really helped him out.
Speaker 1: So I can understand that, But personally my own use,
Speaker 1: I get very um self conscious about not not so
Speaker 1: much talking to a device while people are watching. I
Speaker 1: mean there's a little bit of that too, but just
Speaker 1: how accurate is it recording what I'm saying. So I've
Speaker 1: used voice to text in order to send text messages,
Speaker 1: but then I go and I prove the message before
Speaker 1: I send it, so I make sure it's not saying
Speaker 1: something just totally ridiculous, um, I mean beyond what I
Speaker 1: tend to text people and unintentionally ridiculous. Right, And at
Speaker 1: that point, I've spent enough time initiating it, speaking into
Speaker 1: the device, reading over it, and then making any changes.
Speaker 1: I could have just typed it in that time. So
Speaker 1: maybe voice controls still are not quite at the level
Speaker 1: of sophistication where that it feels really natural. But again
Speaker 1: we run into a lot of the same issues we
Speaker 1: see with gesture control, the idea that in certain environments
Speaker 1: voice control just isn't ideal. In our situation in our
Speaker 1: office where we have writers and editors, clearly this would
Speaker 1: not be a great a great user interface because we
Speaker 1: would all be interfering with one another, not to mention
Speaker 1: driving each other up the wall with all the talking.
Speaker 1: So it's another one of those that I I love
Speaker 1: the idea, but I don't see it replacing, at least
Speaker 1: for the actual home computer experience the mouse and keyboard.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind, voice controls for PCs have been
Speaker 1: around for years. They've just recently gotten good enough for
Speaker 1: you to actually use them, but they've been around for
Speaker 1: a while well at any rate, if we don't live
Speaker 1: in a world that is dominated by the user interfaces
Speaker 1: of Minority Report, I'm sure we're still going to see
Speaker 1: examples where they will come into play. Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: hope we get to see those little spiders that crawl
Speaker 1: into the building and look for your eyeballs, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are my favorite future technology. You know, I've already
Speaker 1: had surgery performed on my eyes once. I did you
Speaker 1: get one of those things peeling up your bandages trying
Speaker 1: to peek at your eyes? No, I didn't get one
Speaker 1: of those. Um, yeah it was. It was more octopus
Speaker 1: like than spider like. But at any rate, if you
Speaker 1: guys out there have any suggestions for future episodes of
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, Maybe there's another science fiction film that has
Speaker 1: a vision of the future and you really want us
Speaker 1: to discuss it and look into it and talk about
Speaker 1: whether or not it's realistic, or if it's not realistic,
Speaker 1: why let us know, Or maybe there's just some other
Speaker 1: topic about the future you're really curious about. Send us
Speaker 1: a message. You can drop us a line on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: or Google Plus. Our handle at all three is FW thinking.
Speaker 1: We look forward to hearing from you, and you were
Speaker 1: here from us again really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: topic in the future of technology, I'll visit forward thinking
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