WEBVTT - Did Minority Report Shape User Interfaces? 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.200 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:14.880 Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the 0:00:15.000 --> 0:00:18.320 podcast that looks at the future and says, charge it, pointed, 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:21.599 zoom it, press it, snap it, work it, quick erase it. 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:26.799 I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick. So hey guys, Hey, Joe, 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:29.920 do you remember when last week we did a podcast 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:34.159 about consumer technology? You know, a week seems like an 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:38.199 eternity now, well, especially when that week includes dragon Con. Yes, 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:42.000 must just got back from and they're a little bit crazy. 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:44.360 You might you might be able to detect My voice 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:49.000 is not what it usually is because of dragon Con. Yeah, 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:52.000 we we both sound like more like Tom Waits than usual. 0:00:52.159 --> 0:00:56.480 That's right. Yes, the uh, the hosts have not been drinking, 0:00:56.840 --> 0:01:02.080 just the microphones. Okay, is the future of dragons? You know? Uh? 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:07.320 You would? Yeah, I'm pretty sure, but but no, what 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:09.640 was your what was your Yes? We did, we did 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:12.520 consumer technology. I do remember this and whether or not 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:14.679 it will be as awkward in the future as it 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:18.080 is now, and how that's portrayed in science fiction films, right, 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:21.320 that maybe the idea that in science fiction and the movies. 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:24.000 When we see the technology of the future, it's just 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:28.560 too nice, it just works too well, it's unrealistic, right. 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:31.640 And one of the touchstones we referenced there was the 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:36.320 movie Minority Report, which very often comes up in discussions 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:40.160 about future consumer technology because, let's face it, it has 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:44.520 informed a lot of the post two thousand aesthetic about 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:48.080 future technology. Right. In fact, you could say that it 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:53.120 was predictive of many different technologies. Uh, we're specifically going 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:55.800 to be talking about user interfaces today, but that's not 0:01:55.880 --> 0:02:00.200 the only one in Minority Report that has become kind 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:04.720 of a if not a household term and emerging technology. Sure. 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:08.120 Some of the other things include their interesting strange weapons 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:11.160 in the movie. They've got these little non lethal sticks 0:02:11.240 --> 0:02:15.200 they use the jet packs. They've got robotic cars, self 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:18.320 driving cars that sort of hook onto these weird tracks. 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:21.280 They have the big data and Internet of things the 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:24.680 world that responds to you as you move through it. So, 0:02:25.000 --> 0:02:28.799 for example, the personalized advertisements, that kind of thing. These 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:30.560 are all this is all stuff that we're seeing in 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:33.280 some form or another today. Yeah, and all of this 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:36.080 came out in a movie that premiered in two thousand 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:39.760 and two. That's what like five years before the iPhone. Yes, yeah, so, 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:42.440 I mean even those user interfaces that we now like 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:45.920 when you when you see John Enderton Tom Cruise's character 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:48.800 moving his hands all willy nilly in order to sort 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:51.800 through different stuff, and you think that kind of is 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:54.880 how we deal with technology today, except we're actually touching 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:57.000 a screen most of the time, not you know, putting 0:02:57.000 --> 0:03:00.520 on gloves or whatever. Um, you might think this this 0:03:00.560 --> 0:03:04.359 movie it was incredibly prescient, although if you look into 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:05.919 it you realize that there was a lot of work 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:07.720 going on behind the scenes. But we'll get to that 0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:10.240 in a minute. Well, yeah, let's start with talking about 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:13.560 Minority Report itself. So we don't need to discuss the 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:15.880 plot of the movie too much because maybe even if 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:18.760 you haven't seen it, it's something you should experience as 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:21.960 a surprise for the first time. But it's a sort 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:25.320 of futuristic crime related thriller that deals with issues of 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:28.920 free will and and things like that. But the technology 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:32.000 of the movie is what we're focusing on today, and 0:03:32.560 --> 0:03:37.480 specifically the technology of how Tom Cruise and other characters 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:42.440 in the movie manipulate virtual objects and data. Yes, yeah, 0:03:42.480 --> 0:03:45.360 we want to look at that and how has that 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:48.320 shaped our user interfaces today and what might it be 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:51.160 in the future. Okay, so when Tom Cruise sits down 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.360 or not sit does not sit down? When Tom Cruise 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:58.200 stands up at his computer, yes, movie, what's it look like? 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:02.240 What's going on? So it so a big semi circular 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:04.760 screen that he's working on, right, that's it's kind of 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:07.520 giving him a panoramic view of lots and lots of 0:04:07.600 --> 0:04:09.600 data all at once. Well, there's one thing I'd like 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:12.720 to add to that, which is that it's a clear screen. 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:15.680 Something I'm going to focus on later. But yes, a 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:21.599 big semicircular, clear, transparent pain of glass. And what happens 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:24.600 on that glass, Well, that's where all this data gets projected, 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:28.720 including video, text, lots of different stuff going on at once. 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:31.200 And in order to sort through this, instead of using 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:34.320 say a keyboard and mouse, he dawns these kind of 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:38.680 electronic gloves, right, and those gloves are acting as his 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:41.560 link to the data that's on the screen. Moving his 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:46.200 hands around, he can select specific pieces of data, he 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:48.680 can resize it, he can swipe it out of the 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:50.960 way if he's done with it. One of the things 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:54.440 it's often compared to is that it looks supposedly like 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:58.039 he's conducting an orchestra. I think that's even something the director, 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:01.240 Steven Spielberg was going for when they went into it. 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:04.600 He wanted it to look like Tom Cruise was standing 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:07.760 there conducting all of his data as you would the 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:11.120 different instruments in an orchestra as they come in and out, 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:13.960 and and he's so he's he's got his arms going 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:17.000 all over the place. It's really all about how would 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:20.560 you physically manipulate the thing you're seeing on the screen, 0:05:20.640 --> 0:05:23.640 knowing that you can't actually touch it, right, you know, 0:05:23.720 --> 0:05:26.600 you can't touch the video that's playing on the screen, 0:05:26.640 --> 0:05:28.720 So how would you if you wanted to make it bigger? 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:30.360 How would you make it bigger? And you think, well, 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:32.839 if it was like, you know, silly putty something like that, 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:35.960 that I could physically have my hands it stretch it out. Yea, yeah, 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:38.400 you take the corners an you kind of stretch yep. Uh. 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:41.039 So some other screens in the movie, one thing I've 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:45.320 noticed is that they're also often clear screens, so they're transparent, 0:05:45.400 --> 0:05:47.919 but they have data facing one way on them and 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:51.920 their multi touch displays right, so they are touch screens 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:55.400 like your iPhone would be. But many historical touch screens 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:58.240 could only deal with one contact point at a time, 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:01.159 or maybe one or two contact points at a time, 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:03.719 but but not interactively with each other. It was more 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:06.080 like I can press this button or I can press 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:09.719 this button kind of issue. Yeah, Um, minority report shows 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:13.680 screens and hovering touch based interfaces that accept multiple points 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:17.559 of contact simultaneously, which we actually do have in super 0:06:17.600 --> 0:06:20.240 technology now. Yeah, And the back in the day, it 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:23.080 used to be where if you had a capacitive touch screen, 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:26.719 that's the kind where it's detecting. It has a very 0:06:26.880 --> 0:06:29.680 weak electric field that goes across the screen. When your 0:06:29.760 --> 0:06:35.520 finger or really anything that's conductive touches against well, it 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:37.960 has to be a special stylus for a capacitive but 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:40.560 if it if it is a conductive material and it 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:44.839 makes contact, then that interrupts the electric field. And in 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:47.200 the old days, really you could only get the one 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:50.880 point of contact. And just think of the the think 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:54.400 of like an invisible grid that's laying across that screen, 0:06:54.960 --> 0:06:57.320 and when you press against it, you are interrupting some 0:06:57.400 --> 0:06:59.360 of the lines on that grid, and that's how the 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:03.280 computer knows where you are touching on the display. There 0:07:03.320 --> 0:07:06.839 are other types of displays that rely on pressure, which 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:09.680 originally you could get multi touch displays that did that 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:14.320 that that could detect several different uh actual pressure points. 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:17.240 But the problem with those is that it uh they 0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:19.520 can wear down pretty quickly because you're actually having to 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:22.000 push against the screen, it's not just gently touching. And 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:24.840 then of course there are other ones that use cameras 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:28.040 to actually detect where your fingers are. Now, these would 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:31.280 have to have either a top facing camera, you know, 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:33.480 top down camera so you're thinking of like a table, 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:37.560 or it would be actually cameras mounted underneath the screen 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:41.760 pointing up that are probably using infrared, something that's not 0:07:41.760 --> 0:07:44.400 going to interfere with us when we're looking at the display, 0:07:45.040 --> 0:07:47.480 so they can detect where the points of contact just 0:07:47.640 --> 0:07:50.280 secretly shining into your eyes and making you blind over 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:53.320 many decades, you know. But but on the flip side, 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:55.240 you can use all your fingers when you're trying to 0:07:55.280 --> 0:07:58.840 manipulate datas. I'm just kidding that. I don't think they 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:02.520 do know now, but there are lots of different implementations 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:06.640 to achieve this particular outcome. Yeah, And so then we 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:10.320 also can look at the specific gestures that are involved 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:13.920 in the gesture UI in Minority report, and some of 0:08:13.920 --> 0:08:17.240 them are ones that are very common now, like swiping, 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:21.200 or they pinching or stretching for zooming in and out 0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:25.240 of images. I mean that's practically universal. So, and it's 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:28.640 a little problematic because you have companies that have patented 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:33.440 certain gestures and saying that they essentially owned those, and 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:38.959 that's caused some tension in the touch Screen World book. Yeah, 0:08:39.160 --> 0:08:41.880 hold on a second. You can patent the idea that 0:08:41.920 --> 0:08:44.960 you swipe something to get rid of it. Currently, Yes, 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:47.400 you can. You or you can at least submit a 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:49.280 patent to the Yeah, you can submit a patent to 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:53.320 the patent office, and if the patent office is feeling 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:55.800 in a capricious mood, they may very well awarded to you. 0:08:56.240 --> 0:08:59.320 Has happened If Lauren hands me a piece of her 0:08:59.360 --> 0:09:02.079 fan fix and puts it on my desk and I 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:04.719 swipe it off into the trash, Am I going to 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:07.640 get sued? No? But if Lauren writes a piece of 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:10.960 fan fiction and electronic format, and you design a program 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:14.360 specifically designed to allow you to read fan fiction, and 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:17.680 that program includes the swipe to remove command that you 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:22.760 have programmed yourself. You have probably uh interfered with that 0:09:22.840 --> 0:09:25.320 you would need to pay a license. It's it's chrono 0:09:25.360 --> 0:09:28.240 trigger fan fiction. By the way, I'm glad we I'm 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:30.439 glad we got to the bottom of it. Thanks Joe. 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:35.920 That's a relatively okay, thanks for fan fiction about I think. Okay, 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:39.240 let's tell the story of Minority Report. Where did all 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:41.920 these ideas come from? Well, that's the thing is that 0:09:42.040 --> 0:09:45.600 it's not like they just invented the ideas out of 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:48.640 whole cloth. That what happened was Steven Spielberg who really 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:52.520 wanted to have a vision of the future that would 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:57.520 be believable. Yeah, something where you feel, yeah, based upon 0:09:57.600 --> 0:09:59.680 the way the world is right now, I could see 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:02.760 the kind of technology existing, and I believe the Year 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:06.520 of the movies somewheround. Yeah. Yeah, I think originally it 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:09.719 was meant to be got pushed back right, right, so 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:14.040 push forward? Well, I guess it all depends upon your 0:10:14.040 --> 0:10:16.679 point of view. But yeah, it's it's um at either 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:19.520 at any rate. What's interesting is not just that the 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:23.080 technologies have started to appear, but they have appeared much 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:25.480 more quickly than you would anticipate, given the fact that 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:27.520 the movie is based in twenty fifty, we would we 0:10:27.559 --> 0:10:30.839 would now think that the technologies of Minority Report are 0:10:30.880 --> 0:10:34.040 probably a little too conservative based upon where we are 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:36.840 right now with a lot of those technologies, even if 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:38.839 they're in their infancy, by twenty fifty, they're going to 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:44.160 be much further along well ye years sorry, yeah, singularity. 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:46.400 I mean, the fact this movie exists is even just 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:49.800 it's it's just a pure fantasy. But at any rate, 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:51.920 the he what he wanted to do was he wanted 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:55.200 to say, all right, what's the Steven Spielberg. Uh. What 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:58.439 he wanted to do was get the some some really 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:02.320 smart people who are working in various fields trying to 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:05.040 develop cutting edge technology. We're talking about stuff that's in 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:09.160 the concept stage, not even necessarily practicable, or if it were, 0:11:09.240 --> 0:11:12.520 it was something that was just a prototype. He wanted 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:15.400 to get them together and talk about what the future 0:11:15.480 --> 0:11:19.960 might look like, assuming that these concepts and prototypes bear fruit, 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:23.520 that they actually do become a viable means of doing 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:28.280 whatever it happens to be. So the big surprises, he said, Now, 0:11:28.360 --> 0:11:31.079 let's not just have some writers dream up some stuff. 0:11:31.440 --> 0:11:34.680 Let's talk to actual technologists and scientists and see what 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:40.680 they have. Yeah. Yeah, and so in he held a meeting. 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:46.000 He had a two day meeting with several people, including 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:48.160 the folks who were involved in the movie, as well 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:52.720 as experts in various fields. We're talking everything from computer scientists, 0:11:53.080 --> 0:11:58.560 automotive designers, architects, all sorts of different disciplines to kind 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:01.520 of come together and say, all right, what will the 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:05.040 city of eighty or the car of twenty eight or 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:07.920 the computer of ty what will it look like, how 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:10.320 will it perform? How will it be different from the 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:12.440 way it is today? Yeah, And they all basically just 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:16.000 hold up in a in a hotel in Santa Monica. Yeah. 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:18.760 One of the I read one of the participants said, 0:12:18.800 --> 0:12:21.760 I think it was Jarren Lanier said that they went 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:26.640 under the guise of being a dental technicians conference. Yeah, 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:29.400 something as boring as they possibly could manage so that 0:12:29.440 --> 0:12:31.920 no one would bug them. And yeah. The guest list 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:36.440 included Jarren Lanier, Neil Gershenfeld, who was head of m 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:39.280 I t S Center for Bits and Atoms, which is 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:43.600 the best name for an organization ever. Uh, the automotive 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:48.960 designer Harold Belker, Sean Jones, who worked in DARPA's Unconventional 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:53.839 counter Measures laboratory. That sounds like a good lab. Yeah, 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:56.600 John under Koffler, who was the He was a member 0:12:56.640 --> 0:12:58.400 of the m i T Media Lab at the time. 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:00.640 There are actually quite a few video of the m 0:13:00.720 --> 0:13:03.839 I T Media Lab showing off an interface that looks 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:08.160 essentially like the one you see in the movie, including 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:11.719 the gloves, using the gloves to be the the uh, 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:15.040 the point of connection between the user and the computer uh, 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:18.160 and a lot more besides that. So there were some 0:13:18.320 --> 0:13:22.720 really important people in the in the space of design 0:13:23.040 --> 0:13:26.080 and engineering and science and they all kind of just 0:13:26.440 --> 0:13:29.080 sat and hashed out ideas. I love some of the 0:13:29.120 --> 0:13:31.880 stories from that, Like they came up with this concept 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:35.120 for a car that had essentially just a seat and 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:37.400 like you could sit down and just relax and then 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:39.040 the car would take you everywhere you needed to go. 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:43.080 And Spielbridge reaction was, well, where where are all the controls? 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:44.880 And they said, well, it's all voice controled, you don't 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:46.760 you don't need it in controls. And then the spiel 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:50.319 brig said, Okay, where the actors supposed to do when 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:54.160 they're just sitting in a car, And they yeah, you 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:57.040 gotta show them doing stuff. This is why I think 0:13:57.080 --> 0:14:00.560 we also see we mentioned this and in the episode 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:03.240 two in Star Trek, you would think by the time 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:05.520 we get to the world of Star Trek, everything would 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:08.000 be Yeah, you wouldn't need buttons, you wouldn't. I like 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:10.319 that you're doing the flailing button pressing. Oh. I was 0:14:10.320 --> 0:14:13.000 gonna get around to saying it eventually, Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:15.559 it's all the actors in Star Trek are either pressing 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:19.040 one single button very effectively, or ninety million buttons all 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:21.920 at the same time. Go yeah, yeah. The whole thing 0:14:21.920 --> 0:14:24.360 being that if you don't have buttons to press, you're 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:27.840 really just a bunch of people sitting around. So it's 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:30.680 a Star Trek economy. You gotta come up with jobs somehow. 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:36.520 So it's a it's a cinematic it's a cinematic uh concession. Right, 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:39.280 you have to say, all right, well, maybe in the 0:14:39.320 --> 0:14:42.040 future we'll have this wonderful technology where we won't have 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:45.160 any kind of the interface will be invisible because it 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:48.240 will be so integrated into the experience. But for the 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:51.120 purposes of a movie, we need to make some concession 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:54.240 so that there's something interesting to watch. Either that or 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:57.120 we just cut cars from the film entirely because there's 0:14:57.160 --> 0:15:00.120 no point in having someone just sit there doing nothing, 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:04.240 so then you had uh to look specifically at a 0:15:04.240 --> 0:15:08.320 couple of these people. U. Jarn Lanier is someone that 0:15:08.520 --> 0:15:12.560 we may have mentioned in previous episodes. Yeah, definitely. There 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:16.840 was one I know in December called Virtual Eventuality in 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:19.600 which we spoke at length about him, So so go 0:15:19.720 --> 0:15:20.960 check that out if you want to know a lot 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:23.400 about him. But in brief, he is the guy who 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:27.040 popularized the term virtual reality. He may have even coined it, 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:29.080 but you know who knows at this point. It's a 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:31.200 lot of people were working on it at the time. 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:35.040 But he definitely was one of the pioneers in virtual 0:15:35.040 --> 0:15:39.000 reality technology way back even in the eighties, uh, And 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:42.600 he was in that work trying to create systems where 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:47.720 a physical person can experience a virtual environment in a 0:15:47.760 --> 0:15:50.600 meaningful way. And often we see that with a big 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:54.840 head mounted displays, things that are allowing you to get 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:57.600 a full look at the world. So when you physically 0:15:57.640 --> 0:16:01.720 move around, your perspective changes within that virtual world. This 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:04.280 is something we're really pretty familiar with today. Things like 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:08.080 the Oculus Rift are taking advantage of that same idea. 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:10.280 But it means that you have to figure out, all right, well, 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:13.320 what's the interface? How do you interact with this virtual 0:16:13.400 --> 0:16:20.160 world so that the interaction doesn't feel artificial or unnatural? Right, 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:23.240 So like holding a game controller in your hands and 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:26.320 then interacting in this world. That puts up a little 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:28.960 bit of a barrier because it's not like the way 0:16:28.960 --> 0:16:32.440 you would interact within the actual real meat space. It's 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:34.920 a thing that you have to learn very specifically how 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:37.560 how to use and to fine tune how you use it, 0:16:37.800 --> 0:16:39.200 the same way that we all had to learn how 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:42.400 to type at this certain point. Right. So jarn Linear, 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:46.120 we should say, didn't just work on overhyped and mega 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:49.320 disappointing things like virtual reality. He also worked on very 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:53.360 popular things. Okay, no, that hurt a little bit, but 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:57.400 it's fair. Yeah, he actually would go on to work 0:16:57.560 --> 0:17:00.720 on things that had user interface says that we're really 0:17:00.720 --> 0:17:03.200 familiar with. Now. You if you look at Minority Report 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:05.880 and you see those gestures, it also looks a lot 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:09.760 like what you might see someone who's using a Microsoft Connect. 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:12.640 He actually worked on the Connect project, and we'll talk 0:17:12.720 --> 0:17:15.280 a little bit more about that too. So he's been 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:17.760 Although you could argue that Connect is not necessarily that 0:17:17.800 --> 0:17:21.240 popular either, because a lot of people prefer to either 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:23.439 turn it off or they went out and bought the 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:27.000 Xbox version that didn't come bundled with the Connect once that, 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:31.800 once that became available. Um, but yeah, he's he's certainly 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:35.360 one of the instrumental people behind this. In fact, according 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:40.280 to their memories, we read an article that talked about 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:43.760 this meeting in but it was you know, the article 0:17:43.840 --> 0:17:46.600 was written several years after that meeting, I mean like 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:50.040 a decade after or more. And uh, and so you 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:53.240 have to remember that people are relying on their memory 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:55.960 of the event. But he said he believes he brought 0:17:56.000 --> 0:18:00.640 a working pair of those gloves that had been they 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:02.639 you know, they've been playing with those in in various 0:18:02.640 --> 0:18:05.920 developmental labs for a while to show them off. He said, 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:07.440 you know, this way I could actually show off what 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:10.040 I was talking about instead of just having people try 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:13.200 to imagine the concept. And that, in fact, is one 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:15.359 of the things that made his way into the movie. Yeah, 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:18.440 and I've actually seen a video of people using gloves 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:20.920 like that in action. It was I think a two 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:24.640 thousand ten TED talk with John under Koffler. Yeah, another 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:27.800 person who was on that list. This guy is the 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:29.600 one who was the former member of the M I 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:33.760 T Media lab Um and has worked in various companies, 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:38.239 one of the big I would say, evangelists of this 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:43.879 sort of user interface. Yeah, definitely, And he apparently was 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:47.400 the person who really worked to create the the gesture 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:52.000 language used by Tom Cruise's character in the film uh 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:55.200 To to sort through different data and select things, and 0:18:55.200 --> 0:18:58.480 and was definitely working with Spielberg to make it look 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:03.560 like this kind of VERTU will Orchestra conducting experience. So yeah, 0:19:03.600 --> 0:19:05.320 he has a ted talk that you can watch where 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:08.080 he goes through all of this. And again, if you 0:19:08.160 --> 0:19:12.360 have ever used any sort of touch screen or a 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:16.480 connect or any other motion controlled UH interface that's kind 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:20.119 of like that, it's gonna look very familiar to you. Okay, 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:24.920 But as we mentioned earlier, Minority Report was actually very 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:28.560 prescient in a lot of ways of real technology that 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:32.600 came later. I mean, did it basically predict how we 0:19:32.720 --> 0:19:36.960 use touch screens today? I think Minority Report, well, I 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:39.760 think it was predictive, but I don't necessarily think that 0:19:40.240 --> 0:19:45.479 the people behind the user interfaces were would necessarily cite 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:48.840 Minority Report as the inspiration because this work. As we 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:52.160 said in I mean, the whole reason why there were 0:19:52.200 --> 0:19:54.400 these discussions in the first places, because there were people 0:19:54.440 --> 0:19:58.919 working in media labs who were already kind of designing 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:02.439 this sort of interface. So what if Minority Report had 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:04.720 never happened, if the movie had never been made, I 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:08.040 think we would still be in that gesture controlled world. 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:11.399 It's just that we wouldn't have the cultural touchstone of 0:20:11.480 --> 0:20:14.240 Minority Report to refer back to, right, And it might 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:17.840 have been until uh later films like for example, Iron 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:19.560 Man or something like that, that we might have seen 0:20:19.600 --> 0:20:22.000 that sci fi vision of the clear screens and all that. 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:23.880 You know, it would have been up to whichever production 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:26.520 designer on whichever film came up with the idea of, hey, 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:28.840 if we put images and text right in front of 0:20:28.840 --> 0:20:31.080 the actor's face, it's a really easy way to make 0:20:31.119 --> 0:20:34.640 it visually interesting while they're really just typing on a computer. Right, yeah, 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:38.440 yeah yeah. And in fact, if you ever there's there's 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:42.160 there are people out there designers out there for actual 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:48.639 uh software and hardware who lament the existence of such 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:52.440 science fiction films, particularly Minority Report, but also Iron Man 0:20:52.480 --> 0:20:56.520 is an excellent example where they'll be told by the 0:20:56.560 --> 0:21:00.240 business side, Hey can you make this look like such 0:21:00.280 --> 0:21:03.439 and such, And they'll say, all right, yeah, what works 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:06.960 really well on screen may not necessarily translate into a 0:21:07.520 --> 0:21:11.800 usable system in real space. But we'll talk about some 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:16.960 criticisms too, But the certainly the the hand gestures, a 0:21:17.000 --> 0:21:20.920 lot of that language did in fact translate over into 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:25.320 real uses. And maybe some of that wash was actually 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:28.919 attributable to the the depiction in minority reports, So that 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:34.159 whole uh swiping and pinching to zoom, that kind of stuff, 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:37.159 those sort of things I think may very well have 0:21:37.320 --> 0:21:40.639 become popular because people saw that in the movie and 0:21:40.680 --> 0:21:43.639 they responded positively. They thought, Wow, that's such a cool 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:48.320 way to interact a lot of sense, let's do that. Yeah, yeah, 0:21:48.800 --> 0:21:51.680 what you know, whenever I have like if I imagine 0:21:51.720 --> 0:21:53.560 I have multiple screens in front of me and there's 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:56.240 something on one and I wanted directly in front of 0:21:56.240 --> 0:21:58.479 my eyes, I love the idea of being able to 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:01.359 just reach out and grab it and pull it exactly. So, 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:03.600 So it definitely was one of those that I think 0:22:03.640 --> 0:22:07.000 a lot of us intuitively felt this would make using 0:22:07.000 --> 0:22:12.160 computers so much easier for this specific use case. That's 0:22:12.200 --> 0:22:15.320 an important note to make. So um, you know, and 0:22:15.680 --> 0:22:18.640 like I said, you had people who worked on Minority 0:22:18.680 --> 0:22:22.400 Report or at least helped with this brainstorming session who 0:22:22.400 --> 0:22:25.320