Evolve 2018: AR, VR, & the Future of Work

hello thank you so much for having me here I as was just mentioned I'm a futurist and immersive technologist I work primarily in augmented and virtual reality I have two main drivers one I want to democratize knowledge and information the other I want to break apart this brain body binary that we inherited from our greco-roman ancestors and put us back in our bodies what do I mean by that democratize knowledge and information I grew up in a small town in West Texas four hours from the nearest airport or mall so small it is literally classified as frontier and does not have a stoplight today I consult with Fortune 500 companies around the globe to help them bring the future of immersive computing into their business units I am a VR AR faculty member at a think-tank in Silicon Valley singularity University I've been an executive in San Francisco bringing the new design paradigms of VR and AR to market and I have helped to lead Design Thinking transformation globally for IBM I know how hard that journey was and I think our world will be a much better place if we can democratize access for more people so I do my part to democratize information and knowledge bust apart the brain body binary what do I mean by that I was a dancer and choreographer for a decade before coming into my crazy tech life I believe deeply in putting people into their bodies I believe we learn best when we're in our bodies I believe that we can actually collaborate most effectively when we have embodied interactive ways of sharing information and knowledge and so I work in this technology because I believe that is what's going to make that possible at scale but enough about me I want to know about you guys real quick raise your hand if you work in healthcare anything that touches healthcare where's your hand if you work in manufacturing raise your hand if you do anything with the military raise your hand if you work in entertainment or sports in any way raise your hand if you are doing software support for some company in any of these domains okay so all of these fields are going to be to corrupted by this technology has anyone tried virtual reality who's tried it raise your hand okay so I'd say about half of us who's tried augmented reality maybe the hololens a few less maybe a third to a quarter those of you who've tried it I want you to vote if you loved it raise the roof if you hated it your hands stay down if you weren't quite sure it's right here ready on three one two three vote all right so we have some believers we have some people who are not so sure you have good reason to be not so sure why it's expensive the technology is still getting small enough to be portable and useful you look kind of like an idiot when you wear those things on your face there are a lot of reasons why we have not yet seen mass consumer adoption but we're gonna discuss what that future is going to look like so if you guys have questions you can ping me on my Twitter handle at any point I'll get back to you I promise I want us to talk about why this technology is regularly cited as a top 10 trend in every analysts report Gartner Forrester IDC Deloitte's I want us to talk about why every leading technology company is vying for technological leadership in this domain Google Facebook Intel Microsoft Adobe what is this about what makes this technology so potentially disruptive so potentially valuable and why should you care to deploy this tech what kind of problems gonna help you solve I want us to start with the human side I'm gonna take you in this talk through a why how and a what we're gonna get down into nitty gritty use cases at the end but first we're gonna talk about why this matters for people what problems can we solve because this technology is going to be the immersive technology platform of our future it's going to be the connective tissue of AI robotics all of these other technologies that you are charged to bring to your enterprises so the first big value add is the ability to harness attention with augmented in virtual reality we live in a world where we are swimming in a hyper-connected sea of data and we know that power is connected to your ability to access deploy model and digest this information so how do we navigate this hyper connected ocean of data in the best possible way here's a quick history of how we've ingested information thus far so it starts here on your left the savanna of our ancestors everything is deeply physical spacious then we move to the storefront of our grandparents time more compact still physicalized now we move to the GUI of today where every physical object can be abstracted demonetised democratize digitized and put in our phone alarm clock it's in our phone calendar it's in our phone you guys remember when these were concrete objects I know so what happens when we do this as information density increases multitasking increases new interaction paradigms have to be learned which of course increases cognitive load what does this mean for your daily experience information overload right yeah I see nodding heads okay so how do you manage that what is scarce in a world where information is rich American Nobel prize-winning economist sociologist and computer scientist Herbert Simon predicted this a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention what you all are so generously giving me right now is your most important resource it is also your business's most important resource because it's your talent it's your talents ability to have impact if you do nothing else if you take nothing else away from this talk please recognize your attention is your scarcest and most valuable resource use it wisely so in a time when we've abstracted so much of life and been inundated with information wouldn't it be nice if we had a technology well-suited to create a sense of physical presence and full immersive attention we're gonna see examples of that the second big impact of this tech is that it revolutionizes the way we train and learn have you ever noticed that the half-life of skills seems to be diminishing in this future of work we're educational systems are actually having a hard time adjusting to the current work ecosystem and even training your employees onto new technology quickly enough can actually be a challenge cognitive psychologists are now catching up to what dancers have always known that cognitive ecology is defined through and by the body knowledge exists in mind body world systems what does that mean that means that we use our bodies and our physical environment to offload information and storage if anyone has ever crossed their fingers to remember something maybe to remember two things you are using your body to offload storage cognition is also inactive meaning that thought is shaped by our interactions not just by the way we inhabit our bodies for example if any of you were holding a warm cup right now like this guys probably weren't holding a warm cup you're more likely to be friendly if you're holding a warm cup than if you're holding a cold cup that is how much impact your body has on shaping your thoughts convicts are more likely to be acquitted after lunch when their judge's blood sugar is higher than before lunch this is real talk about like big data and like encoded bias we're gonna have to start tracking these things right so anyway our bodies shape the way that we learn the way that we think in massive ways but this isn't new dancers have known this for ages that's why we mark when we're doing choreography we move through space to literally encode information and education is known this for a while as well this is the cone of learning that Edgar Dale created in the early 1900's Maria Montessori did something very similar if you're familiar with embodied education through Montessori notice this after two weeks we tend to remember 10% of what we read and 20% of what we hear whereas we remember 90% of what we say and do how strange that our education system is based on the former what if it were to look something more like this I have worked with the National Head Start Association to bring augmented reality into early childhood education classrooms this purpose because it exponentially increases the rate at which young children learn but it's not just young children numerous studies have been done that show if you are interacting you retain 40 to 60 percent more information you learn more quickly and it doesn't work if you're just looking at the the reality if you're looking at a video for example let's say you put on a VR headset Columbia University did a study if you're observing the manipulation of a structure and virtual reality not a big difference but if you actually are using in active cognition interacting with that information and knowledge massive increase in the amount that we retain and the speed at which we learn have any of you ever tried to renovate a home before what do you use when you're trying to figure out how to do the thing that you need to do what do you use YouTube says everyone yes Lowe's knows that so they decided to do a study to compare YouTube versus VR they saw a 40% increase in learning measured on people's ability to recall the steps they also had a really cool interesting marketing opportunity here but that's a little bit gimmicky I want us to stay focused on the actual value add the third big value add touching new worlds you'll be able to pick it up this is the British Museum I saw this at South by it's one of my favorite interactive pieces it allows you to touch objects you would never otherwise have the opportunity to touch and understand them contextually in a way that you would never be able to understand them because a bone which you would never be able to touch because it's a rare object can literally become the creature that it used to be what an amazing way to learn here's the other big thing guys the history of great ideas isn't a history of ideas it's a history of representations of ideas what does that mean that means that every idea is actually created through a form that scales you sir can have the best idea of anyone the rest of this conference if you can't tell it to him it doesn't matter you have to be able to share and scale your idea William Playfair the man who created this is one of my favorite examples he was writing a book on trade between Britain Great Britain and other countries and the way that data was represented them was columns of numbers he decided what if I conflate the map with columns of numbers and instead of right and left being east and west it would be high numbers and low numbers he gave birth to the data plot where do we use the data plot what about all of mathematics all of engineering he revolutionized science because he found a new way to represent information and knowledge and every representation needs a medium to live inside like music or print which we went all-in on the printing press revolutionized access to information and knowledge powerful but mediums empower us and they also disempower us we are still working with this print based paradigm today look familiar there are beautiful things about this but they are relegating us to understanding the world in a very minut array our body has been equipped by evolution to make sense of information and knowledge in myriad ways we are not leveraging the majority of them for example you can understand music many ways you can understand it through your ears through oral experience spatially like an orchestra represented in a symphony tactilely playing the piano or guitar visually the representation of musical notes kinesthetically with your body all of these ways are ways that we understand music the more of them that you combine the more deeply you can understand something the more quickly you can understand something we try to do this now by bringing design thinking into our companies right you're laughing because you know about this what if with VR you could place people inside a new experience and show them macular degeneration for example or equip entire workforces to be more productive cybersecurity is something that is actually quite difficult to train we just heard a bit about this you need to be provisioned in Python scripts a gating log files understanding forensic analysis what if it were gamified and it became a spatial experiment this is an actual real offering that is produced by a company in Colorado called protect wise where a cyber security specialists can navigate their entire infrastructure as a game so why does this matter harness attention revolutionize learning and touch new worlds when is this going to happen it's a one hundred and seven billion dollar industry at kolduny according to Goldman Sachs by the year 2025 I think it's gonna be bigger than that why now the ubiquity and quality of mobile devices essentially powering these experiences VR is the majority of the ecosystem now with smartphones as the brain but this technology is evolving the cost is going down and the technology quality is going up resolving issues like nausea and form-factor cell phones used to be like briefcases VR and AR in a similar phrase right now this is why by the way unity can raise 400 million in its 207 2017 private equity round in fact they received three times the amount of term sheets that they wanted because this is the operating system of the future they are the OS of the future game engines and if you aren't starting to think about this your industry is not going to be able to keep up with these new ways of operating here is Intel's form factor very nice looks exactly like a pair of glasses you don't feel like an idiot when you wear it so here's an example of augmented reality versus virtual reality notice that while virtual reality is 90 percent of the market now augmented reality will increasingly capture the market and disrupt multiple rket working ecosystems pokemons go for example disrupting all kinds of places this is Torchy's tacos that had a 16x increase in its sales because of pokemons go users or for example Second Life which creates an entire economy for people in a digital world right now people have made the cover of Businessweek because they've become millionaires through selling actual virtual world the Second Life economy into an sixteen was half a billion dollars anyone know about this even Spielberg's ready player one this stuff is happening it's becoming mainstream and technology adoption is increasing in its rate of acceleration look at this curve on the far right adoption is changing and you all are heralding that process you are the keepers of that transition so how do we how do we deal with this there are two paths to innovation there's linear incremental and then there's exponential quick lesson incremental 30 steps linear steps if I were to take 30 exponential steps how far would I go yes 26 times around the earth we are not equipped to think in this way but this is the world that we live in so how do you function in a world like this how do you know if you are behind the curve if you're failing or if you're investing in the right thing if you're investing in these exponential technologies you often ask this question why the slow start the trough of disillusionment after the hype cycle which of e RNA are recently coming out of then will it ever catch up when is this going to happen finally which path are we on how do we know that we're actually on the exponential curve and then chaos an amazement the massive sharp increase in the hockey stick growth this is what technological advancement looks like these days so in order to lead you need vision and courage you need patience and unlearning I need to empower and connect and this is an entire talk that we could give about network systems the best way to predict the future is to invent it so this is the next computing paradigm VR reigns now AR is next we'll have exponential use cases for AR as the technology proliferates and VR - so I'm going to run through some really quick use cases because we're super short on time the total addressable market is actually about the problems you can solve it's a tool what can you use to not make this mistake please don't make this mistake the gimmick is an issue guys let's get past the gimmick I want you to remember Delta you want to create change I want you to do it through design this is a phone app you can download right now that allows you to create spatialized representations here are architects working with meta technology and 3d space to collaborate this is a cave automation system that I was in a few weeks ago at rolls-royce where they've actually been able to reduce their design times by from a week to two hours by getting everyone into this cave system here is designing a space in a virtual world you can even design things like molecules pharmaceutical design and partner with AI to run all the possible legand connections expertise and education Delta bringing in knowledge on how to put together an Ikea desk or a very complex Mis of machinery scaling that out to your team especially if they are remote and in the field and you have a hands-free application where you can actually bring an expert in to help you in real-time logistics this is huge DHL is already applying augmented reality to logistics GE saw a 64 percent decrease in time when they implemented Google glass this is also useful for a disaster relief for example where you actually need to come in with an augmented reality headset to understand the infrastructure of the space the try before you buy experience all over the place right now you can also download this on your phone IKEA or is allowing you partnering with Apple to try things out in your home this is the early consumer adopter marketplace recruitment this is another interesting form of try before you buy the British army saw a 66% increase in signups when they gave people immersive experiences Siemens and Autodesk offered a personalized experience we're gonna skip it for now and then analytics tools this is huge what would it be like to be able to represent data complex data visually and have cross team collaboration remote and present because this technology totally destroys ethic distance here's another interesting 3d representation from virtual it exceed immense in space and time you really need to try this out to understand how different it is and tomorrow in the demo dome you guys can try some of those things but why VR specifically I always like to touch on VR because people are like ah AR is awesome but VR it's glorified filming and gaming there are real use cases here how do you make it more than a roll of the dice to implement this technology remember Delta and dice guys so the dangerous great use case for VR tomorrow in the demo dome you can try walking on a ledge in VR I want you to try it and see what its gonna be like okay but this is really really practically useful think about training for interactive health and safety for an oil and gas company which is what this is mocked up an unreal game engine the impossible this is super powers to the people every little kid's favorite thing and all of you because we were all little kids at one point imagine being able to show your child the movement of nutrients in a tree imagine being able to go with them inside a Dali painting the counterproductive this is fascinating you can change people's race and gender through body transfer and VR you can also have them do things like cut down trees mock up a beautiful forest Stanford virtual reality lab did this have a machine or what is it thank you chainsaw I love my audience for this reason have a chainsaw what do people do when they see a chainsaw in a forest they cut down the trees people use less paper after they do this you don't tell them to they just do it would never make sense to make someone cut down a forest to use less paper but in VR you can do the counterproductive and the expensive valuable in so many domains so taking children on a field trip for example to see with their bodies how big a building is this is the Google cardboard which is $15 major increase in access for a ton of people or being able to bring people into a game without the expensive take three-sixty VR is making this possible this could be getting frontline tickets at a fashion show or going underwater and scuba diving but you cannot think about this technology without talking about safety and ethics research on the impact of VR and AR on brain development and kids is huge really important we haven't done a bunch on this yet and then standards around digital rights because there has never been a technology more capable of sucking up all of your data it'll know where your head is positional tracking eye tracking especially when you're projecting light into the retina for augmented reality it'll know your interaction paradigms think of user experience research for immersive worlds it will know so much about you and so what does that mean for security what does that mean in terms of the way we leverage this information what happens when we add in AI how do we combat encoded bias so we don't do things like release a Google pixel phone that recognizes black people as gorillas that is ridiculous we have to start thinking now so that we can build good products that serve our societies and make our societies better so recap the early VRA our use cases our design expertise try before you buy and data capture remember dice and don't forget safety and ethics okay so finish I can't put you all in a VR headset I wish I could go to the demo dome tomorrow you can try Ventana for holograms you can try the ledge but in the absence of that I'm gonna try to simulate the difference between immersive learning and the way that we currently share information and knowledge the the difference between now and the future of work so this is one of my all-time favorite quotes anyone know who it's by oh come on one of the best futurist of all time Buckminster Fuller if you want to teach people a new way of thinking don't bother trying to explain it to them give them a tool the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking that's what I think this technology is but I'm gonna demonstrate it with the self-portraits here you guys are right there that's you this is Earthrise taken by the Apollo 8 astronauts in 1968 here's another representation of you you saw this earlier in one of the talks you've probably seen it in your textbooks of the child the solar system habitable zone from the American Museum of Natural History in 2000 here is what's really going on reality is spiral orbital all terrestrial critical path developments inherently orbit the Sun no path can be linear all paths that were professionally modulated by remotely operated forces producing spiral linear paths makes perfect sense right yeah you all got that what do I mean this is you and the difference between what I just read and what you're viewing is the difference that new representations of knowledge can have on the way we share information the way we model and deploy information the way your children will learn the way your workplaces can scale access to information and knowledge even remotely and so the question for you all is how are you going to have that vision and courage to actually try to implement these things to create the future so what I would urge you all to do is to embrace that gray area between pragmatism and imagination because being an optimist without skepticism makes you naive but being a skeptic without optimism makes you a cynic so how do we balance those things and help us all evolve in the way that we are able to perceive and understand not only our work but also the world and each other thank you [Applause]

Channel: Evolve Conference

Views: 109,910

Keywords: Trace3, Trace3 Evolve, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, VR, AR, Mixed Reality, MR

Id: JFPB6q5mPqo

Length: 26min 27sec (1587 seconds)

Published: Thu May 31 2018