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 in the future and says, I sing
Speaker 1: the Body Electric. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Voca, and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And guys, this just did di di
Speaker 1: di di di di did I'm sorry it's porky pick
Speaker 1: Laura similar no, no, no breaking news. We got a
Speaker 1: tweet on Twitter from one Chris Newcomb who said, in
Speaker 1: case your listeners didn't know concrete ships, and he provided
Speaker 1: a link and and said, hey, local kids swim around
Speaker 1: this thing for fun. And the link is to a
Speaker 1: wiki entry for the s S. Palo Alto, which is
Speaker 1: a concrete tanker ship from World War World War One.
Speaker 1: Why are we bringing this up? Is it because in
Speaker 1: a recent episode we made jokes about concrete ships. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what we did. In our Building Materials episode,
Speaker 1: which came out a couple of weeks ago or so,
Speaker 1: we all had a really good lull about how concrete
Speaker 1: ships are completely ludicrous idea that no one would ever
Speaker 1: possibly put into use. I think specifically what happened was
Speaker 1: we were talking about what you should make out of concrete,
Speaker 1: and I said, obviously boats. Yeah, I had no idea
Speaker 1: that this was a real thing, in my defense, because
Speaker 1: I was the person who immediately struck that down. This
Speaker 1: ship was retired like in nineteen nine and then it
Speaker 1: broke in half. So but there are totally ships that
Speaker 1: are made to this day with pharaoh cement, which is
Speaker 1: a type of concrete that's reinforced with like mession rebar
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Uh so, so that happens, and
Speaker 1: I just wanted to wanted to update you guys important
Speaker 1: news updates. Well, thank you for the info, Chris. I
Speaker 1: I feel much more educated than I was before. And
Speaker 1: I also now feel like I have a magic power
Speaker 1: to make unlikely seeming things real by laughing at them.
Speaker 1: So what if there was a boat made out of uranium?
Speaker 1: You know what. As as funny as that is and
Speaker 1: as much as I would love to dwell on it,
Speaker 1: I I did. I did a little bit of research
Speaker 1: on a totally different topic. Uh yeah. Yeah. First of all,
Speaker 1: thanks again Chris for sending that message. And we we
Speaker 1: really love hearing from you guys, and it was awesome
Speaker 1: learning something that we thought was ridiculous. Up today, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about something else that at times comes across
Speaker 1: as a little ridiculous, which is the idea of what
Speaker 1: is the future of the kind of the interface that
Speaker 1: we use between us and our technology. Specifically, what happens
Speaker 1: when we turn ourselves into that interface. Yes, but in
Speaker 1: your face is what happens. I guess that kind of is.
Speaker 1: I wanted to do you guys have any like really
Speaker 1: good terror will interface stories? Well, I mean, just here,
Speaker 1: did you have a favorite terrible interface? To me, it's
Speaker 1: it's not so much a terrible interface as it was
Speaker 1: a frustrating process of learning how to use it. I'm
Speaker 1: left handed, and I'm old enough to remember personal computers
Speaker 1: before the mouse, and when the mouse came along, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly the mouse was absolutely required in order for
Speaker 1: you to be able to to navigate through software, it
Speaker 1: became very difficult for me. Like other folks were picking
Speaker 1: up on it very quickly, for me, it was more
Speaker 1: work because I didn't have that kind of fine tuned
Speaker 1: precision with my right hand the way I do with
Speaker 1: my left hand, and they didn't have left handed mice,
Speaker 1: and and by the time they did, I was so
Speaker 1: used to using my right hand. For that, I couldn't
Speaker 1: use a mouse left handed. I mean I it felt
Speaker 1: wrong and and nonintuitive because I had trained myself how
Speaker 1: to use it with my right hand. But for me,
Speaker 1: that interface initially at any rate, was not great. But
Speaker 1: that was again due to my own personal uh, left handedness,
Speaker 1: my sinister state of being. You know, I think you've
Speaker 1: probably had experiences with other maybe awkward interfaces. What about
Speaker 1: Google Glass? Yeah, Google Glass. Actually I was all right
Speaker 1: with Google Glass because I knew going into it what
Speaker 1: the interface was going to be like. But in general,
Speaker 1: actually Google is a great example. Just in general, Google,
Speaker 1: uh is a company that is clearly populated by engineers
Speaker 1: who have a very specific idea of how to solve
Speaker 1: a problem which may or may not translate to any
Speaker 1: other human beings experience. And so when you use a
Speaker 1: Google product, you have to kind of learn how to
Speaker 1: think in the way the engineers were thinking when they
Speaker 1: designed it, and then it works. But initially it can
Speaker 1: be very difficult to kind of suss out what you're
Speaker 1: supposed to do or how you're supposed to get your
Speaker 1: technology to do the thing you wanted to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll show I mean there's a learning curve to any
Speaker 1: kind of interface that you use to to to use technology.
Speaker 1: I'm still completely mystified by the N sixty four controller
Speaker 1: designed for someone with three hands. I just speak about it.
Speaker 1: It just makes me frustrated. It just makes me feel
Speaker 1: like I'm about to lose and get a turtle shell, right,
Speaker 1: Or the old or the very old Microsoft Xbox Duke controller,
Speaker 1: which was roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle like
Speaker 1: some of those, or you'll think about some of the
Speaker 1: really frustrating interfaces that were meant to be groundbreaking, like
Speaker 1: the power glove. I mean, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: guys might be too young to appreciate what a terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible product that was. I never I never owned one.
Speaker 1: I don't think I even knew anyone who had heard
Speaker 1: tales I played with one and it was you would
Speaker 1: rapidly go from this looks so cool on me too,
Speaker 1: this is completely are useless if I want to actually
Speaker 1: play a game. Um. Yeah, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: examples of interfaces out there that got in the way,
Speaker 1: and really what we're trying trying to talk about today
Speaker 1: is the attempt to get the interface out of the
Speaker 1: way to have a seamless interaction between us and the
Speaker 1: technology that we depend upon and want to use. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so I guess we should do a quick bit of
Speaker 1: definition just in case you haven't been following us so
Speaker 1: much so far. You probably have, but just to be clear,
Speaker 1: what is an interface. It's a system that controls in
Speaker 1: putting output. It's the interaction between a human and a computer.
Speaker 1: And so this can be hardware or software. The hardware
Speaker 1: would be things like a screen where you see what's
Speaker 1: coming out of the computer. You can know what the
Speaker 1: computer is doing for you. And hardware input like a
Speaker 1: mouse or keyboard. Uh. And sometimes you can combine input
Speaker 1: and output into a single device, for example a touch screen.
Speaker 1: Classic example in putting output in the same object. But
Speaker 1: interfaces can also be software. So the classic example is
Speaker 1: the graphical user interface. Like when you go and use
Speaker 1: Microsoft Windows, you're interacting with memory in the computer through pictures.
Speaker 1: You know, you move files around into different folders. Really
Speaker 1: that's data coded to different locations in the memory, but
Speaker 1: there's a graphical representation of it for to make it
Speaker 1: easier for you. You're also executing programs that are represented
Speaker 1: as a some sort of graphic Uh. You know, of course,
Speaker 1: if you were using computers before goo ease became a
Speaker 1: big thing, then you were typing all those commands out
Speaker 1: and you had to remember what all the different commands
Speaker 1: were in order for you to do things like navigate
Speaker 1: to the right directory file directory to execute a file.
Speaker 1: But the the graphic user interface ends up simplifying that
Speaker 1: by creating this visually oriented approach to interfacing with the computer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so if you look at the history of computing,
Speaker 1: it's clear that interfaces are always changing, but not necessarily
Speaker 1: at a constant rate, not like at the rate that
Speaker 1: processing power seems to steadily multiply over time. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is another great example. We've talked about this when
Speaker 1: we mentioned Kurt's Wild and Kurt's Wild's look at things
Speaker 1: like Moore's law, and you start to try and uh
Speaker 1: and and draw conclusions about what the future is going
Speaker 1: to be like when by using Moore's law as your
Speaker 1: starting point. But that is really deceptive because, like you're saying, Joe,
Speaker 1: not everything and not everything progresses at that same speed,
Speaker 1: right well, and and that speed in particular is a
Speaker 1: little bit uh what's the word self? Oh, there's self fulfilling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a self fulfilling prophecy, because no engineer wants to
Speaker 1: be in the generation that let Moore's Law die, you know, Like, no,
Speaker 1: we've got to figure out another way to double the
Speaker 1: processing power of this computer within the next eight to
Speaker 1: twenty four months. Yeah, but but no one has figured
Speaker 1: out how to double the mouse. Right, Hey, guys, I
Speaker 1: came up with it, a taped a mouse on top
Speaker 1: of another mouse. It's double mouse. Doesn't really work that way.
Speaker 1: So early computers didn't have a monitor or display, right,
Speaker 1: You would get your output in some other format, Like
Speaker 1: it could be punch cards. You could get a series
Speaker 1: of punch cards. You've run your your program through. Your
Speaker 1: input was punch cards, your output is a different set
Speaker 1: of punch cards, and that's your compiled program. That kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Or you might get like a printer that
Speaker 1: prints along along uh strip of paper like it like
Speaker 1: tape essentially is what it ends up looking like. Actually,
Speaker 1: a friend of mine, Richard Garriott, he's known as he's
Speaker 1: a game designer. His first game that he ever designed
Speaker 1: printed on tape like that. So every move you made
Speaker 1: in his little dungeon based crawler, it would print out
Speaker 1: what that looked like. It was just a very simplified
Speaker 1: representation of a dungeon, and when you would make a move,
Speaker 1: it would have to print another sheet out to show
Speaker 1: you what had happened. The rich the whole idea of
Speaker 1: the interface of the universal touring machine was a strip
Speaker 1: of paper and which in which calculations would be done
Speaker 1: one at a time, printed on a long strip of paper. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So eventually we of all beyond that. We got monitors
Speaker 1: and displays. Uh, we got keyboards, which were much easier
Speaker 1: to use as an interface with a computer as opposed
Speaker 1: to just a collection of punch cards. Later on we
Speaker 1: got the mouse UM. Xerox ended up Xerox's Park department
Speaker 1: figured out the mouse and the graphics user interface, although
Speaker 1: of course it was Apple that took great advantage of
Speaker 1: that with the McIntosh UM, and so that became like
Speaker 1: the standard interface for computers and the mouse and keyboard
Speaker 1: for a really long time. Was that was the input? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you would you had some other like fringe
Speaker 1: input systems, things like light pens and stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but the enjoy besides the joystick, the general public really
Speaker 1: didn't interact dance Revolution pad Yeah, Now these days, we
Speaker 1: we've gotten to a point where we're seeing a real revolution,
Speaker 1: interfaces revolution, right, It's weird that we think of that
Speaker 1: we think of like keyboards and mice, mice, mouses, whichever
Speaker 1: it is. Um, this is standard, the standard way to
Speaker 1: control input right now. Screens are still pretty much paramount.
Speaker 1: But i'd say that, you know, I bet the majority
Speaker 1: of our web traffic comes from touch screen devices, not
Speaker 1: mouse and keyboard driven devices. That's absolutely correct, and you
Speaker 1: can see it by looking at the metrics. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're getting tons of traffic through mobile, and mobile in
Speaker 1: general is using touch screens. Now, you could also use
Speaker 1: voice commands for a lot of that mobile stuff if
Speaker 1: you were so inclined, just your commands to say, okay, Google,
Speaker 1: how stuff works? Dot Com. I apologize. If you're listening
Speaker 1: to this on an Android device and you have the
Speaker 1: speaker active, oh, you could do just your control through
Speaker 1: an Xbox Cannet Act or something like that, and they're
Speaker 1: the leap controller for PCs. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: the examples of that. We'll talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about gest your controls in a bit, but but once
Speaker 1: you get into gest your control, you're entering a new
Speaker 1: kind of territory, aren't you, Because they're the issue is uh, well,
Speaker 1: think about it like this. You're you're using the body
Speaker 1: itself as part of an interface with a machine. So
Speaker 1: using the bodies an interface. It's an interesting and kind
Speaker 1: of counterintuitive idea, since an interface is supposed to be
Speaker 1: the bridge between the computer and the power of the
Speaker 1: computer and you, the user, what you're getting out of it.
Speaker 1: But if you think about it, we've been bridging this
Speaker 1: gap for so long with physical devices that are connected
Speaker 1: to the computer. Why not flip the script and build
Speaker 1: a bridge in a place that's physically connected to the user.
Speaker 1: And we've seen some some examples of that as well.
Speaker 1: You could argue that the ore headsets are are getting
Speaker 1: into that where you are are wearing the computer device
Speaker 1: and your physical motions are what allow you to experience
Speaker 1: that computer power in the way it was intended. Sure,
Speaker 1: or the aforementioned connect sensors, You're you're using your body
Speaker 1: to interact, Yeah, exactly. So, uh, you know, we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk a lot about that stuff in more detail a
Speaker 1: little bit later. We're also going to talk about not
Speaker 1: just ways where you are interacting, you know, in order
Speaker 1: to create input into a device, but also how you
Speaker 1: experience the output from that device. Right yeah, uh, so
Speaker 1: you know we should mention some basic ideas in what
Speaker 1: what what's on offer here in terms of the body
Speaker 1: is an interface, so the input is probably the more
Speaker 1: obvious one with input, Instead of pressing buttons on external device,
Speaker 1: moving a mouse or whatever, you might simply perform an
Speaker 1: independent action by and of your own body. So this
Speaker 1: could be gestures, movements, poking yourself, wiggling a part of
Speaker 1: your body, wiggling multiple parts of your body, parts of
Speaker 1: other people's bodies. No, see, then it wouldn't be it
Speaker 1: wouldn't That wouldn't quite meet the criteria. I think, well,
Speaker 1: it's still be a body interface, it just wouldn't be
Speaker 1: your body advocated. Have a dead body. I should have
Speaker 1: a Bernie device that reminds me of a movie that's
Speaker 1: coming out the go ahead. I think a complicated system
Speaker 1: of shrugs would be really good, right yeah, right, so
Speaker 1: you never have to lose your cool while you're controlling
Speaker 1: your phone. I meant to, I meant to do the
Speaker 1: the please tell me more shrug, but it turned out
Speaker 1: I just did the shrug or a combination of side
Speaker 1: eye and shrug. Anyway, the key ideas that you don't
Speaker 1: have to touch or manipulate anything except your own body.
Speaker 1: You've got it with you all the time. So there
Speaker 1: you go. And it's not this This idea isn't super
Speaker 1: weird to us because we're already familiar with stuff like
Speaker 1: the connect and gest your controls to some extent. Then
Speaker 1: if they're not super awesome yet, but then you've also
Speaker 1: got output. So instead of having to look at a
Speaker 1: screen that's attached to an external device, which would cover
Speaker 1: the vast majority of output today, I'm having trouble even
Speaker 1: thinking of a standard device that has a very different
Speaker 1: way of doing it than this. Well, I mean there's
Speaker 1: a growing list of devices that now are using audio,
Speaker 1: so things like Amazon's Echo, right that that would be Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good example. But but I get what you're saying. Yes,
Speaker 1: the vast majority, I would say, are are visually oriented.
Speaker 1: So yeah, instead of that, information about your computing task
Speaker 1: is made available directly to your body. The classic sci
Speaker 1: fi example of this would be this internal retina display.
Speaker 1: The screen is projected directly onto your retina. But I
Speaker 1: mean that's a little crazy. We probably won't have anything
Speaker 1: like that for a long time. If ever. Now we
Speaker 1: have some other examples that we'll talk about when we
Speaker 1: get to a haptics because that's one of the other
Speaker 1: methods of getting back from a computer that can be meaningful.
Speaker 1: It's just not visual. Yeah. So I would say the
Speaker 1: middle step between standard input and output devices, standard interfaces
Speaker 1: and this your own body as an interface would be
Speaker 1: wearables because that's it's getting close to your own body,
Speaker 1: but it's not quite your own body yet. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: could be something that is unobtrusive where you might not
Speaker 1: even think about it consciously after a while after wearing it. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: like a like a fitbit or the pieces of jewelry
Speaker 1: that they're coming out with something like that. Absolutely, that
Speaker 1: was a great example, and fitbit is in fact a
Speaker 1: fantastic example because so much of that interface is invisible
Speaker 1: to you. That again it's the idea of removing that barrier.
Speaker 1: So a fitbit is going to be tracking your steps.
Speaker 1: You might have other wearables that are doing things like
Speaker 1: tracking your heart rate, uh, that sort of stuff, where
Speaker 1: the data is going to some form of cloud based
Speaker 1: solution or or potentially just being beamed to a local
Speaker 1: UM advice. Like a smartphone or tablet, you're still usually
Speaker 1: dependent upon that other device in order to be able
Speaker 1: to consume the data in some way. It's presented to
Speaker 1: you in some way, so it's not like it's directly
Speaker 1: getting that data to you through the device itself. You're
Speaker 1: you might have a display on the device that gives
Speaker 1: you some of the basic information, but your body is
Speaker 1: not acting as the display, right, it's still the device. UM.
Speaker 1: It does allow us to have other means of interacting
Speaker 1: with our technology. Some wearables, you could argue, like the
Speaker 1: Nintendo Power Glove was a wearable, particularly good one, but
Speaker 1: it was a wearable. It was not not unobtrusive, not
Speaker 1: you know, it was definitely you knew someone was wearing one.
Speaker 1: But it allowed well that was part of the point, right,
Speaker 1: You wanted to show off that you were playing with
Speaker 1: power Yeah, exactly, and you had a glove to p
Speaker 1: and you looked a little bit like Michael Jackson in
Speaker 1: that air a little bit, yeah, which at the time
Speaker 1: is really importantly Yeah, because if we couldn't get the jacket,
Speaker 1: we could at least get the power glove. But the
Speaker 1: the all remember the nightmare on Elm Street movie where
Speaker 1: Freddie wears the power Glove. I remember seeing it, don't
Speaker 1: from my mind? I okay, definitely. Oh god, I was
Speaker 1: so worried about myself for a second there. Okay, Now
Speaker 1: everything's gonna be fine. You guys late at six though,
Speaker 1: I think that probably are on four. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: I get what you're saying. Um. Yeah, So so one
Speaker 1: of the things I wanted to talk about this is
Speaker 1: kind of a This is looking ahead at wearables. So
Speaker 1: you could have wearables that are are something that you
Speaker 1: don't interface with directly at all. It could be you know,
Speaker 1: we've we've talked about the possibility of things like r
Speaker 1: F I D chips that have a profile. This is
Speaker 1: sort of the sort of thing that Bill Gates was
Speaker 1: putting in his house where you would get a little
Speaker 1: r F I D D badge that would have a
Speaker 1: profile programmed into it that's personalized to you, and then
Speaker 1: you're experience as you walk through his house would be
Speaker 1: to see the kind of art that you like, to
Speaker 1: hear the kind of music you like. The lighting condition
Speaker 1: would be to your preference. Uh, it would be dependent
Speaker 1: upon that profile. We've since reached a point where we
Speaker 1: can get a little more advanced than that. You don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to have a wearable anymore for that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. But that was one implementation. Another however, is this, uh,
Speaker 1: this this haptics feedback solution that I had been talking about,
Speaker 1: so being having to do with your sense of touch exactly.
Speaker 1: So we already are familiar with technology that has haptic feedback.
Speaker 1: Here's one you're very likely to be familiar with. If
Speaker 1: you ever played a video game where the controller buzzes
Speaker 1: in your hand when you do something right. That's the
Speaker 1: old rumble pack, right. Those have been around for for
Speaker 1: a couple of generations of video game consoles and also
Speaker 1: for PC controllers, and generally speaking, you you want to
Speaker 1: have a controller that enhances the experience of playing a game,
Speaker 1: so it might be a great example would be a
Speaker 1: stealth based game where you're you're skulking around in the
Speaker 1: shadows and your controller might start to vibrate to indicate
Speaker 1: that perhaps you are visible or potentially visible to an enemy,
Speaker 1: so you need to get back into cover. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: a vibration being being like your Spidey sense going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Or if you're if you're playing a horror game and
Speaker 1: your your life starts getting too low and you start
Speaker 1: feeling your heartbeat through the controller, and that lets you
Speaker 1: know that you need to drink a health potion or
Speaker 1: you know, just to spell whatever it is, right, or
Speaker 1: unplug the game and going to the corner. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: if pyramid Head is coming around the corner, you just
Speaker 1: want to, like, I just I just need to go
Speaker 1: and read a happy book for a while. Uh. Or
Speaker 1: you know. Another one that everyone is probably familiar with
Speaker 1: are the vibrating motors in uh, in smartphones or cell phones. Yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: And that's a very simple Yeah. Yeah. They maybe they
Speaker 1: vibrate when you're doing an input, or they vibrate to
Speaker 1: alert you that a call is coming in. But that's
Speaker 1: that's the happy feedback, very basic application of haptic feedback.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever had the experience of
Speaker 1: getting so used to this that it's weird when it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. I've had this experience with my phone where
Speaker 1: I don't even notice anymore that when I punch a
Speaker 1: key to like enter, you know, to enter a letter
Speaker 1: on a text message or something like that, the phone
Speaker 1: vibrates a little to register like, yeah, I got that,
Speaker 1: I got that. Letter uh. And if the it's on
Speaker 1: very low battery and you go into energy saver mode,
Speaker 1: it'll stop vibrating when you enter keys, and it feels
Speaker 1: very weird. You keep wondering like, wait, did that keep?
Speaker 1: Did that press? Did it take? In my old phone,
Speaker 1: I actually turned that off because the the it was
Speaker 1: reminding me of that episode of the I T. Crowd
Speaker 1: where they soup up Roy's vibrating motor in his cell phone.
Speaker 1: Because every time I would type in a letter, it
Speaker 1: made a really loud, like eat noise, to the point
Speaker 1: where if I wanted to check something out and my
Speaker 1: wife was napping, I would wake her up. So I
Speaker 1: finally turned it off. My current phone much more subtle,
Speaker 1: so I'm all right with it. I've never had a
Speaker 1: phone that did that. Although it did, it did scare
Speaker 1: me every time I was I used to I used
Speaker 1: to have a fitbit that I would wear constantly, and
Speaker 1: whenever I went over ten thousand steps in the day,
Speaker 1: it would it would do this like buzz buzz buzz. Yeah,
Speaker 1: party times and You're thinking, I'm having a heart attack.
Speaker 1: Make what's going on? Sometimes sometimes the acclamation period takes
Speaker 1: a little longer for certain types of technology than others. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the things I wanted to talk about, and
Speaker 1: in fact, this was one of the stories that kind
Speaker 1: of prompted the this entire episode was this research project.
Speaker 1: Some people at the University of Sussex, with funding from
Speaker 1: a couple of different companies and organizations, have developed something
Speaker 1: they call skin haptics, and this is a device that
Speaker 1: gives haptic feedback but does so without a moving, vibrating
Speaker 1: type of motor having direct contact with your skin. It
Speaker 1: actually does it through ultrasonic frequencies. Crazy, right, So I
Speaker 1: did a how Stuff Works Now piece on this How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works Now for those who do not know. That's
Speaker 1: where we at how stuff works post stories that are
Speaker 1: happening right now, the kind of newsy type of stuff,
Speaker 1: and it tends to be science and technology focus, but
Speaker 1: not necessarily. We've done some other things that are outside
Speaker 1: of the realm of that, but I tend to focus
Speaker 1: on science technology. A lot of them do since it's
Speaker 1: a since it's research that's just coming out right now
Speaker 1: and so so a lot of that has to do
Speaker 1: with technology and science. Yeah, So this particular one, they're
Speaker 1: using ultrasonic waves that you have a little emitter that
Speaker 1: would go on the back of your hand. So you
Speaker 1: would put this emitter down and it would be facing
Speaker 1: down towards your palm, you know, through your hand, and
Speaker 1: it would admit ultrasonic frequencies. They would move through your hand,
Speaker 1: through your very flesh and bones, and concentrate on points
Speaker 1: on the other side, so that it would feel as
Speaker 1: if something was making contact with the home of your
Speaker 1: hand with like with like focal points on your Okay, okay, sure,
Speaker 1: so imagine that. Imagine that you have a screen projected
Speaker 1: on your hand and it's a number pad, and when
Speaker 1: you press, not only do you get the feeling of
Speaker 1: where your finger touches your hand, you then get a
Speaker 1: confirmation through this ultrasonic frequency saying yeah, yeah, you totally
Speaker 1: you totally touch the one that button worked. Or you're
Speaker 1: playing let's say, you know, you're we're really looking in
Speaker 1: the future here. You're playing angry Birds on your hand
Speaker 1: and you pull your little your little bird back and
Speaker 1: you let go and the bird collides with a pig
Speaker 1: and then your your hand vibrates right at the point
Speaker 1: where the bird and pig collided. That kind of stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: that's the idea behind it. Now, this is just the
Speaker 1: haptic feedback part, not the display. Your beautiful far future
Speaker 1: definitely still includes angry birds. I don't I can't imagine
Speaker 1: a future without it, and I don't want to. Uh,
Speaker 1: But I was thinking that this, this same technology could
Speaker 1: be used for stuff where you don't have a display
Speaker 1: element at all. So imagine, if you will, a a
Speaker 1: bicycle or a car that has sensors on it that
Speaker 1: can detect potential obstacles, dangerous collisions, that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and you're you're using this device, and it alerts you
Speaker 1: by creating pressure on your hand through this mirror, and
Speaker 1: perhaps is even telling you almost radar like where that
Speaker 1: threat could be coming from, so that you have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to react and avoid it. In other words, you
Speaker 1: have spiky sense. You could even do this on a
Speaker 1: personal level if you don't mind wearing a super dorky
Speaker 1: helmet that's got sensors all over it. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can't really think of any implementation where you would be
Speaker 1: able to have sensors mounted in such a way that
Speaker 1: you didn't look completely weird, as long as it's modeled
Speaker 1: after visually modeled after the calendar that Rick Morani swears
Speaker 1: and Ghostbusters right, uh, yeah, the as the the was
Speaker 1: he was he the key Master? Was he the gate keeper?
Speaker 1: He was the key makey master. Yeah, he's Vince Claro,
Speaker 1: key Master of Gozer right yeah. So uh, if you
Speaker 1: for that important research, if you want to tell him
Speaker 1: about the Twinkie. So if you want the if you
Speaker 1: want the key master look and you don't mind it
Speaker 1: and you want to have Spidey sense, then we could
Speaker 1: probably work something up once the University of Sussex guys
Speaker 1: get this completely ready to go, like ready for prime time.
Speaker 1: But it's a really cool idea again of using that
Speaker 1: touch feedback where the body itself becomes the the method
Speaker 1: for you to uh to experience this technology, and you've
Speaker 1: stripped away anything else, like you don't have a screen
Speaker 1: or anything that you're dependent upon. You're just feeling this. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's no way to to leave the device behind
Speaker 1: because it's attached to you. Yeah. Now we could go
Speaker 1: the next step, which is where our largest organ the skin,
Speaker 1: becomes an interactive surface something that you use to interface
Speaker 1: with technology like the touch screen on your phone. And
Speaker 1: so today if you want to read or send a
Speaker 1: text message, you'll usually hold your phone in your hand
Speaker 1: and read the text off the screen or type on
Speaker 1: the screen by pressing letter buttons with your fingers. I've
Speaker 1: actually slowly started to move to voice to text, but
Speaker 1: that obviously only works in special situations where you know.
Speaker 1: It's really annoying when you keep doing that in meetings,
Speaker 1: I don't. Yeah, I can't do that anymore in in
Speaker 1: meetings or generally in public. But like, if I'm on
Speaker 1: my own, if I'm walking my dog and I need
Speaker 1: to send a quick text to my wife, I often
Speaker 1: will use voice to text. Um, and then people just
Speaker 1: think that I'm married to my dog, which because they're
Speaker 1: like because because of the messages, Hey honey, do you
Speaker 1: mind picking something up on your way home? And I
Speaker 1: don't think that dog is gonna be at all cooperative that.
Speaker 1: It's great when you hear people saying I love you,
Speaker 1: babe to a lamp post ye, look, don't judge. Okay,
Speaker 1: you don't know their love. I saw the brave little
Speaker 1: toaster and that lamp was adorable at any rate. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so, so we've got a device in the way here.
Speaker 1: Before we can get to Jonathan's uh perfect Angry Bird's future,
Speaker 1: we need to take away that screen in front of
Speaker 1: that physical device. So imagine that same experience sitting there
Speaker 1: with your phone in your hand, type in a text
Speaker 1: message on it, or reading a text message off of it,
Speaker 1: but without the phone there. And there's where you get
Speaker 1: this concept. One implementation I saw of this was a
Speaker 1: thing that was from the Hasso Plotner Institute called the
Speaker 1: Imaginary Phone, which was a project by Sean Gustafsson, Christian
Speaker 1: Holtz and Patrick Bowdish. And Imaginary Phone. It sounds great
Speaker 1: on one hand because it's like an April fool's Frankly,
Speaker 1: you give somebody a gift, it's oh, it's your new iPhone.
Speaker 1: It's an imaginary you think. Yeah. But so the last
Speaker 1: I heard of this project was some media coverage in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven. I don't I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: still in the works, but the idea, at least it
Speaker 1: is interesting enough that you could continue it to be
Speaker 1: adapted with new hardware. And here's the basic way it works.
Speaker 1: And you wear a depth sensitive camera on your chest
Speaker 1: um and then you hold out your hand in front
Speaker 1: of you, palm side up, and then you interact with
Speaker 1: your own hand the same way you'd interact with the
Speaker 1: phone screen, you know, you press parts of it and
Speaker 1: the camera tracks your movements and sends them to your
Speaker 1: phone or other device as input commands. So different places
Speaker 1: on your hand correspond to different inputs on a phone screen.
Speaker 1: To swipe across, your fingers will swipe the screen. You
Speaker 1: can dial numbers by pressing different parts of your palm. Um,
Speaker 1: And that's interesting in terms of input, but obviously if
Speaker 1: you're just looking at your hand, that sounds like a
Speaker 1: kind of annoying thing to learn to do. Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a really hard time typing texts out when
Speaker 1: I can see the letters on the screen, so I'm
Speaker 1: picturing that that wouldn't go very well for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so what about the You basically need a corresponding display. Uh.
Speaker 1: The appeal of the touch screen is that you you
Speaker 1: can see what you're interacting with and perform your interactions
Speaker 1: in the same place. And that that brings us to
Speaker 1: this idea of projected displays on skin, which inherently isn't
Speaker 1: There's no real problem with that except that it just
Speaker 1: requires some good, non invasive, comfortable design and some good engineering,
Speaker 1: I guess. So one project I came across that was
Speaker 1: trying to do something like this was the secret Bracelet
Speaker 1: projects secret c I C R E T. I didn't
Speaker 1: Maybe you're supposed to keep it secret, keep it safe. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there was some coverage of this project back and the
Speaker 1: idea is it's a bracelet. It looks kind of like
Speaker 1: a jawbonu up. You know, it's a bracelet that has
Speaker 1: a low angle projector on it that projects a display
Speaker 1: onto the surface of your forearms. So you wear it
Speaker 1: on your wrist and it projects at a low angle
Speaker 1: up onto your skin on your arm. And if you
Speaker 1: go watch the the original video promo for the project,
Speaker 1: you will see animations that are I mean and obviously
Speaker 1: that they are animations because it was before the thing
Speaker 1: was made, just trying to say here's the concept, well,
Speaker 1: probably just a concept, here's the concept of And you
Speaker 1: could see that people were mad that it was. It
Speaker 1: was making it look like these displays would be incredibly
Speaker 1: sharp and beautiful looking. Um and that's probably not going
Speaker 1: to be the case, especially early on, and they might
Speaker 1: have been optimistic. But now there are prototypes, I've seen
Speaker 1: videos of them being used, and the image quality in
Speaker 1: the real world it might not be amazing, but also
Speaker 1: it's not too bad, And that also might not be
Speaker 1: that big of a deal, because what if you're not
Speaker 1: really planning on watching movies on your arm, But what
Speaker 1: if you just wanted to be able to use your
Speaker 1: arm to send a text message or something without having
Speaker 1: to mess with a device, get a device out of
Speaker 1: your pocket and deal with it. Um, yeah, it's an
Speaker 1: interesting idea. It's one of those where a lot of
Speaker 1: the ones we're talking about now you still have to
Speaker 1: pair it with another device. Right, So then the question
Speaker 1: is is the benefit of whatever this body interface is
Speaker 1: that benefit greater than the frustration you might have of
Speaker 1: just taking your phone out and doing these things. One
Speaker 1: of the things I was first thinking about when you're
Speaker 1: talking about typing stuff on your palm with the earlier implementation,
Speaker 1: was well, what if you wanted to make a phone call,
Speaker 1: you would still have to get your phone out? And
Speaker 1: then I thought, wait, no, you're making a rookie mistake, Jonathan.
Speaker 1: No one uses their phones to make phone calls anymore.
Speaker 1: So I don't even know why that crossed my mind,
Speaker 1: because I'm a dinosaur, is really what I'm getting at.
Speaker 1: But another haven't had a good job at an age
Speaker 1: choke in a really long time. Well, we haven't. We
Speaker 1: haven't ever had a good Jonathan age, Joe. I think
Speaker 1: I think Jonathan made some get off my lawn jokes
Speaker 1: just last week. Okay, to be fair, I also talked
Speaker 1: about acid rain in the episode we recorded immediately before this,
Speaker 1: and talked about growing up the eighties and being afraid
Speaker 1: of communists. So, which, by the way, was a product
Speaker 1: of the time. Um So, one of the other things
Speaker 1: I want to talk about about bodies and interfaces doesn't
Speaker 1: have to do with displays. We talked about the haptic feedback,
Speaker 1: We talked about visual feedback. What about audible feedback? Using
Speaker 1: your body to make sounds and not in like a
Speaker 1: middle school kind of way where you're you're showing your
Speaker 1: friends how hilarious you are by utilizing your body to
Speaker 1: make various fart noises. That's not what I'm talking about. Sure,
Speaker 1: And I mean and I mean we we're making sounds
Speaker 1: with our bodies right this very much. Sure, But what
Speaker 1: if we could it's a relatively easy system, what if
Speaker 1: we could make that that whole process more convoluted and
Speaker 1: creepy like instead of instead of just talking to you
Speaker 1: like a human be ng I. You and I would
Speaker 1: still have to be in the same space for this
Speaker 1: to work, but then we make it super creepy. And
Speaker 1: by creepy I mean creepy. Well, I'll explain what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, and you tell me if I'm off base
Speaker 1: calling this creepy. The system I'm talking about is called
Speaker 1: inshin denshin um and this was a a concept out
Speaker 1: of Disney research actually, and it is all about turning
Speaker 1: your body into a transmitter um and it's pretty wacky.
Speaker 1: So think of one person being the transmitter. This would
Speaker 1: be someone who's like the speaker, as in the person speaking,
Speaker 1: not not a speaker in the electronics sense, and the
Speaker 1: other person, yeah, the other person is the receiver or
Speaker 1: the listener, and together you end up creating a speaker
Speaker 1: in the sense of electronics. So the transmitter person speaks
Speaker 1: into a microphone, and presumably they're saying something quiet enough
Speaker 1: so that the other person isn't hearing it, So they
Speaker 1: might be whispering something like a like a I want
Speaker 1: to go to lunch today, and you whisper it into
Speaker 1: your microphone. The microphone transmits that that sound wave. It
Speaker 1: actually transforms it into a high frequency low power electrical
Speaker 1: signal which your body can carry because our bodies actually
Speaker 1: can conduct electricity. So then yeah, yeah too well in
Speaker 1: some cases, which is you know, that's why you've got
Speaker 1: to be real careful around electricity, but one of the
Speaker 1: many reasons you should be. But let's say, all right,
Speaker 1: you've got this microphone. You've just whispered something into it.
Speaker 1: It's now transmitting a low power, high frequency electrical signal
Speaker 1: through your body. You then walk up to the person
Speaker 1: who is the receiver, and then you just casually reach
Speaker 1: out and put your finger on that person's ear. This
Speaker 1: is the part where I think it's kind of creepy.
Speaker 1: And then the connection that you make with that other
Speaker 1: person connection, that's what allows this area to suddenly become
Speaker 1: like a speak and the person whose ear you're touching
Speaker 1: will be able to hear the thing you've whispered into
Speaker 1: the microphone. Uh So, it's also interesting in that you
Speaker 1: can extend this by having multiple people involved. It's almost
Speaker 1: like playing a game of telephone that you could whisper
Speaker 1: something into the microphone, put your hand on someone's shoulder,
Speaker 1: they put their hand on the next person's shoulder, and
Speaker 1: the next person and then that person puts their finger
Speaker 1: to the recipient's ear, they would hear what you had
Speaker 1: originally whispered into the microphone. I don't know that there
Speaker 1: is any practical application of this technology. It's just another
Speaker 1: weird way of turning the body into an actual interface.
Speaker 1: You know. I do try to keep an open mind,
Speaker 1: but uh, but burn all this with fire. I don't
Speaker 1: really like it when people touch my ears. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: I I like. I like listening to a s MR
Speaker 1: videos in which there is an ear massage element going on.
Speaker 1: But the actual thought of someone physically coming up and
Speaker 1: touching my ears squeegs me out a little. I feel
Speaker 1: like that's a violation of personal space that I'm not
Speaker 1: ready to deal with casually. That's something that should be
Speaker 1: left up to U two con alright with people exactly.
Speaker 1: This is CLF of five. I mean, I could I
Speaker 1: could see it being used in uh, in some other
Speaker 1: way of transmitting information. Um well, it could be an
Speaker 1: interesting way of being able to transmit information quietly, but
Speaker 1: you still have to speak into the microphone the first time. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, if it wasn't using if it wasn't using
Speaker 1: sound waves, if if something, if if you could hook
Speaker 1: yourself up to some kind of device that would read that,
Speaker 1: not not literally out loud in your ear, but that
Speaker 1: would that would read the information and be able to
Speaker 1: I don't know, uh, yeah, I don't know it later.
Speaker 1: You couldn't because you couldn't do it to yourself because
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be creating a full connection. You have to
Speaker 1: be touching somebody else. So I mean some something like
Speaker 1: like oh, here's my business card hand shape. I could
Speaker 1: see some game elements in there too. But again it's
Speaker 1: a little little wacky and little weird, but it was
Speaker 1: an interesting way of looking at turning the body into
Speaker 1: an interface if you wanted to go the next step,
Speaker 1: like let's say we've gotten past the wearable stage. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people are imagining the body as
Speaker 1: interface with embedded technology, stuff that would be incorporated into
Speaker 1: us if you're really desirous of surgery. Yeah. Uh. And
Speaker 1: according to Repo the Genetic Opera, there is totally a
Speaker 1: group that's in there. Um. But yeah, this would be
Speaker 1: where you would actually have some sort of technology is
Speaker 1: embedded in you. And obviously, at this point we're talking
Speaker 1: pure speculation. There's not examples of this beyond stuff that
Speaker 1: bio hackers are doing. And even in that case, they
Speaker 1: tend to be incredibly primitive applications of technology. Uh, and
Speaker 1: it may be that we won't see this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff for quite some time for lots of re Now,
Speaker 1: we do have examples of embeddable technology biotechnology generally speaking,
Speaker 1: though they are designed to address a problem. Like let's
Speaker 1: say that someone wishes to they have a visual impairment
Speaker 1: that they want to overcome, that there might be technology
Speaker 1: they use in order to supplement their eyesight or their
Speaker 1: hearing with like cochlear implants, that kind of thing. Now
Speaker 1: we've got examples of that, while we don't really have
Speaker 1: our examples of attempts to enhance already quote quote normal
Speaker 1: or within the norm kind of of human capabilities. And
Speaker 1: I hate using that phrase, but that's the way it
Speaker 1: tends to be free. I mean well, and medically speaking,
Speaker 1: there is there is there is an average or normal,
Speaker 1: and it's and it's not meant to but absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1: And and the and of course that the problem there
Speaker 1: is is that any responsible medical person isn't going to
Speaker 1: recommend I mean, I mean, surgery is always dangerous. Getting
Speaker 1: an implant of any kind is always is going to
Speaker 1: carry an element of of you could get an infection
Speaker 1: and can go terribly wrong. Your body could could reject
Speaker 1: whatever it was that was implanted. Yeah, yeah, it could
Speaker 1: script your immune system for that reason. Lots of things
Speaker 1: like that. So therefore, and we talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about this in our Hacking your Body episode back when. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there are other things obviously that you have to
Speaker 1: keep in mind, things like the technology's battery life. How
Speaker 1: do you recharge a battery? What is it? Is it
Speaker 1: drawing power from the person in some way? How can
Speaker 1: you create something that you make sure that it'll it'll
Speaker 1: work within the body and not breakdown or otherwise end
Speaker 1: up falling apart within a certain amount of time because
Speaker 1: the body, I don't know, if you know, this not
Speaker 1: the most hospitable environment for technology. Yeah, yeah, it's there's
Speaker 1: there's that rest thing that we were talking about oxidizing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a that's an issue, right, Yeah, you know, bad
Speaker 1: guacamole in the bloodstream. That's not something we want to
Speaker 1: mess around with, right, And there are there are lots
Speaker 1: of researchers who are working on ways to to get
Speaker 1: that to be better. Yes, you know, specifically for things
Speaker 1: like like a like a heart monitors and and and whatever.
Speaker 1: But but it may be quite some time. Even if
Speaker 1: we get to a point where the technology is reliable,
Speaker 1: where it's safe, where where the the potential for complications
Speaker 1: is as low as we can possibly make it, there's
Speaker 1: still going to be a barrier there where the medical
Speaker 1: profession in general may see it an ethical issue of
Speaker 1: do I do I do this? Uh cosmetic it would
Speaker 1: essentially be akin to cosmetic surgery, but possibly with far
Speaker 1: greater uh ethical concerns than your average cosmetic surgery. Is
Speaker 1: it ethical for me to perform this? Am I going
Speaker 1: to risk my my livelihood if I were to do this?
Speaker 1: And then you might eventually get to a point where
Speaker 1: socially it's more accepted, But there's probably gonna be a
Speaker 1: lag between when people are actively advocating to get this
Speaker 1: done to themselves and when it becomes socially acceptable in general,
Speaker 1: And and that period is going to be interesting to
Speaker 1: watch and find out, like how it'll it'll almost help
Speaker 1: determine how long it takes to adopt that as uh
Speaker 1: a perfectly standard kind of practice. Um, then there comes
Speaker 1: a question of hals versus have nots? There are other
Speaker 1: conversations that happen further down that line, which fall more
Speaker 1: into that singularity conversation we've had multiple times in this show. Now,
Speaker 1: the cool thing I think is that you could argue
Speaker 1: a lot of the technologies we're seeing right now are
Speaker 1: negating the need for surgery in the first place, and
Speaker 1: it's largely through things like machine learning, artificial intelligence, predictive technologies,
Speaker 1: very simple sensors working on very complicated algorithm to respond
Speaker 1: to our needs in a way where we we become
Speaker 1: unaware that our environments are adjusting to us without our
Speaker 1: direct command. So a very simple example of this would
Speaker 1: be something like a nest thermostat or some other smart thermostat,
Speaker 1: where it starts to learn quote unquote what you like,
Speaker 1: what your preferences are that maybe you like it pretty
Speaker 1: chilly at night, but you like to wake up to
Speaker 1: a nice, warm, toasty house, or or it's recognizing when
Speaker 1: you are home versus when you are not home and
Speaker 1: thus adjust the temperature so that you are being uh,
Speaker 1: you're conserving energy whenever you're not in the house, and
Speaker 1: you're not just wasting electricity, although that that is still
Speaker 1: through through the pairing of a device yeah, it's pair well,
Speaker 1: it's pairing a device through a WiFi network. You don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to have it paired to, uh, like a
Speaker 1: smartphone or anything. But then interesting thing is it is
Speaker 1: detecting when you are there. It's detecting what you want,
Speaker 1: and it's responding without you having to make a direct command.
Speaker 1: Although there's an acclamation period at the beginning where you
Speaker 1: are making those commands. Otherwise it doesn't know. It's not
Speaker 1: like the thermostat takes a look and like, uh, this
Speaker 1: bald guy, he's gonna want its seventy degrees. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead, and no, I gotta tell it that
Speaker 1: I wanted seventy degrees first. So I think what you're
Speaker 1: saying is we're all going to get thermostats implanted in
Speaker 1: our bodies so we can be seventy degrees on the inside.
Speaker 1: That that's not what I was suggesting. But it always
Speaker 1: is interesting to get an insight into your thought process.
Speaker 1: Joe Um. Yeah. So, but my point think how much
Speaker 1: energy you'd say if you didn't have to make the
Speaker 1: whole house seventy degrees it's just your own body. And
Speaker 1: my point being that we are seeing some technologies come
Speaker 1: into play where our bodies are in a way becoming
Speaker 1: an interface. But it's through it's not through a conscious
Speaker 1: effort for us to control that technology. The technology is
Speaker 1: responding to us, and if we see that increase in
Speaker 1: other ways, it may turn out that the more invasive
Speaker 1: approach becomes moot. We don't need it because we're able
Speaker 1: to compensate with other technologies that are able to do
Speaker 1: these things through machine learning. Well. When yeah, when you
Speaker 1: speak of the ways our the ways technology is adapting
Speaker 1: and learning from us without our knowledge, I mean I
Speaker 1: wonder about, you know, as Facebook going to get to
Speaker 1: the point where it uses the camera on my computer
Speaker 1: to look at my face and see what disgusts me
Speaker 1: and show me more of that because I'm more likely
Speaker 1: to click on it. Yeah, I mean, there are certainly
Speaker 1: privacy concerns with this, this particular approach, and and we've
Speaker 1: already whether whether or not it's a privacy concern. Let's
Speaker 1: say I authorized them to do it. I mean, either way,
Speaker 1: that they're responding to your unconscious cues that you give
Speaker 1: with your face and your eyes and everything like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's something that I'm sure there are
Speaker 1: people looking into I mean one the next thing we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about where our micro expressions. Micro expressions
Speaker 1: being these these very tiny gestures you can make sometimes unconsciously,
Speaker 1: and how people are hoping to turn those micro expressions
Speaker 1: into a way to interface with technology, largely because I
Speaker 1: think most of us don't want to have to make
Speaker 1: big gestures on our bodies in order to control technology.
Speaker 1: Would be better to do very subtle things. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: has to be some kind of happy medium between having
Speaker 1: to make flag symaphore motions that you're connect and uh
Speaker 1: and having a brain implant. That's that's directly reading please now,
Speaker 1: chicken dance d answer this phone call right right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so many great comedy sketches that could be a
Speaker 1: result of this conversation. But uh, there was a piece
Speaker 1: that was written in Fast Code Design. Andy Goodman and
Speaker 1: Marco Reghetto wrote by there that that design company your yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, and we'll come back to that towards the
Speaker 1: end of it too. But it's they were arguing that
Speaker 1: the motions we make with body interfaces should be minimalistic
Speaker 1: and that there's already precedent for this. When you are
Speaker 1: moving a mouse. This is one of those problems that
Speaker 1: I had when I was learning how to use a
Speaker 1: mouse with my right hand. Uh, the small motions you
Speaker 1: make are translated into larger motions among on screen. Right,
Speaker 1: So when you when you move the cursor on your screen,
Speaker 1: you don't have to move the mouse the same distance
Speaker 1: on your desk as what you're seeing on your screen
Speaker 1: at right. If you are there's a problem, you need
Speaker 1: to change some settings. But generally speaking, like you might
Speaker 1: move your mouse over an inch, but you are moving
Speaker 1: the equivalent of like five inches on the screen. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, do you do you remember when the Nintendo
Speaker 1: we came out and how long it took people not
Speaker 1: that long to figure out that all these games that
Speaker 1: were supposedly about like doing big motions and getting exercise,
Speaker 1: you could actually just sit right there on the couch
Speaker 1: and kind of flick the controller to accomplish the same thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a specific flick of the wrist. There was
Speaker 1: a game, an arcade game. It was a boxing game
Speaker 1: where the controllers were like two big boxing gloves, and
Speaker 1: it could detect when it had motion sensors cameras essentially
Speaker 1: mounted on the top of a frame looking down so
Speaker 1: you can tell when you were ducking or moving left
Speaker 1: or right. And then the controllers actually had most most
Speaker 1: accelerometers in them to tell when you were punching. But
Speaker 1: turned out that if you just stood there and just
Speaker 1: bang the gloves together, it counted it as a punch,
Speaker 1: so you wouldn't get tired very quickly, and you could
Speaker 1: just you could play longer. Yeah, you could wipe out
Speaker 1: like the first five or six guys on that on
Speaker 1: that yeah, just doing that. I did not learn that
Speaker 1: until after I had actually hurt my back playing an
Speaker 1: arcade game, and that's the first time I ever felt old. Um. Alright,
Speaker 1: so Jonathan's coolest anecdote. Yeah, I mean, I've gotten to
Speaker 1: the point where I just have to I have to
Speaker 1: own it, right, I just got to own it. So
Speaker 1: they thought the writers of this piece thought that those
Speaker 1: minimalistic kind of movements that you would see with a
Speaker 1: mouse should be the same sort of things you would
Speaker 1: see with a body interface, so that you could do
Speaker 1: very subtle things to control your devices, as opposed to
Speaker 1: doing things like swiping up and down your forearm in
Speaker 1: order for you to just say the volume of music
Speaker 1: being played on your device or the lights in your
Speaker 1: home dimming or getting brighter. I think God. One of
Speaker 1: the examples they did is about like putting your thumb
Speaker 1: on one of your your tongue on one of your teeth.
Speaker 1: I have a quote, so don't jump ahead. Yes, so
Speaker 1: specifically I in the sections that the description can get
Speaker 1: a little creepy. So this is this is a paragraph
Speaker 1: that Joe was just referring to in this piece. This
Speaker 1: is uh. Think about this scenario. You see someone at
Speaker 1: a party you like. His social profile is immediately projected
Speaker 1: onto your retina. Great a match. By staring at him
Speaker 1: for two seconds, you trigger a pairing protocol. He knows
Speaker 1: you want to pair because you are now glowing slightly
Speaker 1: red in his retina screen. Then you slide your tongue
Speaker 1: over to your left incisor and press gently. This makes
Speaker 1: his left incisor tingle slightly. He responds by touching it.
Speaker 1: The pairing protocol is completed. Horrifying. Yeah. The next piece
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about this is describing a party
Speaker 1: hook up in terms of like the stuff you would
Speaker 1: do too. I don't know, initiate trading in a massive
Speaker 1: I think what I think what they were looking at
Speaker 1: was they were like, you know, tinder is great, but
Speaker 1: not nearly creepy enough. Yeah, we we don't touch our
Speaker 1: teeth at all during tinder, right, and we need to
Speaker 1: We need to really get some tongue to tooth action
Speaker 1: going finger it too, because otherwise how will he know
Speaker 1: that you're interested in him? So No, I'm confused about
Speaker 1: the part where it says his his incisors starts to tingle.
Speaker 1: He responds by touching it. Does that mean with his
Speaker 1: tongue or with another part of his body or with
Speaker 1: someone else's tongue. Who's to say? The world is full
Speaker 1: of amazing possibilities. It's funny that you read. I read
Speaker 1: this exact same piece, and I did not decide to
Speaker 1: include any of it because I found it off putting. Well,
Speaker 1: the reason specifically I decided to keep to include it
Speaker 1: was because, to kind of conclude this conversation, there are
Speaker 1: people who are saying, do we even want our bodies
Speaker 1: to be a technological interface in the first place? Right?
Speaker 1: There was there was a really good piece written more
Speaker 1: or less directly in response to to that piece, Yes,
Speaker 1: to the Technology Review, Right, that by John Pavlis, who
Speaker 1: wrote his piece was titled Your Body does not want
Speaker 1: to be an interface, which pretty much tells you what
Speaker 1: the argument is going to be. It's a very well
Speaker 1: written piece and it's it's very interesting thing. Um. And
Speaker 1: he first argues that turning bodily experiences or motions into
Speaker 1: a command issued to technology would make it feel unnatural
Speaker 1: an alien, which is the opposite of the intention, right.
Speaker 1: The intent is to remove that barrier between you and
Speaker 1: technology so that a natural motion gets interpreted as a
Speaker 1: command and the technology response. But he says, if you're
Speaker 1: doing this quote unquote natural motion in order to issue
Speaker 1: a command, you're not really being natural by definition, because
Speaker 1: you are you are issuing a command to technology something
Speaker 1: that is not a natural thing for us. It might
Speaker 1: become something that ends up being second nature after doing
Speaker 1: it enough times, but in itself it becomes this alien
Speaker 1: task because now you're you're trying to do something in
Speaker 1: order to make a command. I can easily understand what
Speaker 1: he's saying, because if you've ever worked with a voice
Speaker 1: command system and you have to issue commands in a
Speaker 1: specific way in order to get results, it feels very
Speaker 1: unnatural because you're having to preface what you say with
Speaker 1: some sort of command, or you have to word it
Speaker 1: in a specific way for it to understand what you're saying.
Speaker 1: It is not a natural thing, um. And so he
Speaker 1: says that we would make ourselves kind of hyper aware
Speaker 1: of how weird it is to like run our fingers
Speaker 1: along the inside of our forearms to adjust the dimness
Speaker 1: of the lights in our house or whatever. And Pablus
Speaker 1: refers to a computer scientist named Paul Dorish or Dowrish,
Speaker 1: who in turn took inspiration from a philosopher, Martin Hidegger.
Speaker 1: Hidegger Hidegger was a boozy beggar, according to Monty Python,
Speaker 1: and uh, it was all about differentiating two general types
Speaker 1: of tools. The first type was is called the ready
Speaker 1: to hand technologies. Those are things that feel like they're
Speaker 1: an extension of our bodies. Uh. And so think of
Speaker 1: a hammer when you're hammering a nail, he says, that
Speaker 1: would be a very very brute version, or in my
Speaker 1: case for this weekend, the rapier. I've been working with
Speaker 1: one for a while, so it feels like an extension
Speaker 1: of my arm when I first picked it up. That
Speaker 1: was not the case. It would fall into the second
Speaker 1: category of tools, which, uh, you know that one is
Speaker 1: the present at hand type so ready to hand type.
Speaker 1: That's the kind where as you're using it, you're not
Speaker 1: even really thinking of the tool as a separate thing
Speaker 1: from you. It's an extension of you, right, but the
Speaker 1: present at hand, you are aware of the presence of
Speaker 1: that tool. So, for example, when I was learning to
Speaker 1: use a mouse, I was hyper aware of the mouse
Speaker 1: because it was so hard for me to learn how
Speaker 1: to use. It was something that I was absolutely conscious of.
Speaker 1: It did not feel like an extension. These days, it
Speaker 1: totally does, because I've used it enough where I've reached
Speaker 1: that level of familiarity. So things can change. Yeah, anyone
Speaker 1: who's learned how to play a musical instrument, for example,
Speaker 1: has probably gone through this. Yeah, that's a great, a
Speaker 1: great way of putting it. So any of you out
Speaker 1: there who think back to when you first started learning
Speaker 1: how to play any kind of musical instrument, think about
Speaker 1: your first day when someone first said, like, and this
Speaker 1: is a chord and you went little nope, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: Or you're like, especially with stringed instruments, where like your
Speaker 1: fingers start to hit other strings, so you're muffling some
Speaker 1: of the chord. You know that doesn't sound right? What
Speaker 1: is going on? Here, and you feel in that first
Speaker 1: stage like you're never gonna get it right, it's never
Speaker 1: gonna happen, like you have to concentrate so hard. But
Speaker 1: then eventually you start to develop a familiarity and it
Speaker 1: becomes that first type of tool where it just feels
Speaker 1: like an extension of yourself. Um. He says, the problem
Speaker 1: is if we turned our bodies into interfaces, at least
Speaker 1: for a while, they would turn into that second type
Speaker 1: of tool, that our bodies would feel weird and alien
Speaker 1: to us. He specifically took the the example of John
Speaker 1: Cusacks character and being John Malkovich trying to control John Malkovich.
Speaker 1: That's like a marionette dealing with a puppet, and and
Speaker 1: it's not you. You're not skilled yet, you don't know
Speaker 1: how to manipulate it properly. But instead of it being
Speaker 1: another person's body, it's your own body. And he says,
Speaker 1: that sounds like an awful experience. I don't want that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it enters into this, And I guess I was sort
Speaker 1: of emotionally reacting in this way when I was thinking
Speaker 1: about some of those examples, the tooth touching and whatever. Uh,
Speaker 1: it enters into this kind of Cronenbergian sort of sort
Speaker 1: of body horror area where you yourself are a foreign object. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and how do how do you deal with that? Well,
Speaker 1: you reconcile that the two and you figure that that
Speaker 1: these these interfaces are ultimately going to be designed by
Speaker 1: somebody who thought this has got to be the best way.
Speaker 1: This is the way it makes sense to do this thing, right,
Speaker 1: But that's not you. So it may be that something
Speaker 1: that seems natural to the person who designed the system
Speaker 1: is completely unnatural to you, and then you have to
Speaker 1: commit this unnatural motion in or to do something you
Speaker 1: want to do. That's not a good experience. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I I think there could totally be a Cronenberg style
Speaker 1: body horror film based upon this premise. You know, even
Speaker 1: if you're even if you're doing something that isn't on
Speaker 1: the surface horrifying, if you make it clear that it
Speaker 1: is something that doesn't feel right in order for you
Speaker 1: to get the response you want, that is a very
Speaker 1: disturbing idea. Yeah, I wonder if this is the kind
Speaker 1: of thing. There's been some research lately into common facial
Speaker 1: expressions that that people across the world all make that
Speaker 1: There was one story that came out that I think
Speaker 1: the aforementioned how stuff works now uh covered about a
Speaker 1: nope face that that apparently it's just common to too
Speaker 1: many human populations. This this like I'm disinterested and I
Speaker 1: don't want to be interested kind of kind of facial expression.
Speaker 1: And so I wonder whether further research into that kind
Speaker 1: of thing could possibly identify common, common micro gestures that
Speaker 1: are just ubiquitous that would be natural for people to use,
Speaker 1: and that technology could pick up on without us even
Speaker 1: really being having to be aware that we're making this
Speaker 1: the and and of course the challenge there also is
Speaker 1: that how do you how do you determine which ones
Speaker 1: need to be conscious decisions on the part of the
Speaker 1: person interacting with technology, Because if it's an active thing,
Speaker 1: you don't want to you don't want to accidentally activate
Speaker 1: your technology. If all you need to do is like
Speaker 1: scratch your nose or whatever whatever tiny thing it might be,
Speaker 1: or that you're blinking at a certain frequency, whatever it
Speaker 1: might be, you don't want to be activating your technology accidentally.
Speaker 1: Like like I ended up taking a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: pictures of myself when I was looking like a complete
Speaker 1: du fist because it just so happened that the thing
Speaker 1: that I was going through at that time was the
Speaker 1: same as my command, Hey take a picture now, So
Speaker 1: there are some challenges. Yeah, I think I was thinking
Speaker 1: like so far ahead, like to the like her kind
Speaker 1: of university. That the idea where you actually have this
Speaker 1: world that can anticipate things like like the nest thermostatic
Speaker 1: model but on steroids. You know, this idea of we
Speaker 1: we talked about this in our our Internet of Things
Speaker 1: episode where he said, you know, you extend this idea
Speaker 1: outward far enough. It's a an environment that anticipates everything
Speaker 1: you need before you even are able to consciously think
Speaker 1: of what those needs might be. That's that's kind of
Speaker 1: the end destination that people really hope to get to.
Speaker 1: But the question is what is the actual pathway we
Speaker 1: take to get there. Is it something where we've turned
Speaker 1: our body into an interface. Is it something where all
Speaker 1: the interfaces blend into the environment, but our bodies just
Speaker 1: become the way we interact with it. They our bodies
Speaker 1: don't become like a control system, like we're not necessarily
Speaker 1: using our body to to dial up the volume or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: But it could be some combination of the two. We
Speaker 1: don't know yet obviously, and it may be that in
Speaker 1: a generation or two these sort of things will be
Speaker 1: so second nature to people that they'll think it was
Speaker 1: weird that we thought it was weird. Who knows, but
Speaker 1: it was fun to look into this. So guys, if
Speaker 1: you have any thoughts on this particular topic, or you
Speaker 1: have requests for things that we should cover in the future,
Speaker 1: please get in touch with us. Let us know what
Speaker 1: you think. Our email address is f W Thinking at
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com, or you can always drop
Speaker 1: us a line on social media. Over on Twitter, we
Speaker 1: are f W Thinking. If you go to Facebook and
Speaker 1: search f W Thinking, our profile will pop right up.
Speaker 1: You can leave us a message there and we will
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: topic in the future of technology, visit forward Thinking dot com,
Speaker 1: brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,