Here’s my interview with Rylan Pozniak Daniels, Futurist and AR/VR Developer, that was conducted on Wednesday, May 29, 2019 at Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara, CA. See more context in the rough transcript below.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.458] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling, and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So continue my series of looking at AWE, past and present. Today, I'm going back to Augmented World Expo 2019, where I had a chance to talk to Ryland Paznack-Daniels, who at the time was still in high school, and he had quite an early beginning coming into the XR community. He was actually awarded an Extent Award for the Virtual World Society that year in 2019, which is also the same year that I got an Extent Award from Tom Fermez and a lot of the work that I was doing within the context of ethics. So Ryan's been doing lots of development for AR and VR since a very early age. And I had a chance to catch up with him again this year at Augmented World Expo 2025 just to get an update as to his journey into the space. So he's Quite an interesting person within the context of XR just because he's collaborated and met with lots of different key legendary figures within the context of the field of XR. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Ryland happened on Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 at Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara, California. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:27.034] Rylan Daniels: I'm Rylan Daniels and I am a futurist and also VR AR developer. I'm also a high school student and I'm very interested in creating content and using storytelling that can not only teach people about different concepts, but inspire creativity and imagination. So I started a VR AR club at my school. And through there, I try to encourage the development of content. And me, myself, I also create content. So for example, I create apps for healthcare and education. So for example, I created an app that takes you on a journey through the human brain. And it follows a narrative that engages you in a choose-your-own-adventure experience in VR, but at the same time immerses you in a way to learn about the different parts of the brain in a more fun way that cannot be achieved in regular types of media. Yeah.
[00:02:21.537] Kent Bye: Yeah, can you tell me a bit about your journey into VR, like the steps that you took in order to get into VR?
[00:02:28.402] Rylan Daniels: So I think it started about four years ago when I found out about the HoloLens from Microsoft. And also, even before that, when I was very little, I won a national competition to be a kid reporter for Time for Kids magazine. And that gave me the ability to do journalism and interview people I admire, these tech visionaries. like Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, and Bobak Ferdowsi, who worked on the NASA Curiosity Rover, that inspired me, you know, that now that I can meet these different people and get inspired by the words that they have to say, you know, what would it be like to share that information with people and also to create my own apps? So I started with an AR card game that's very similar to, say, Pokemon or Magic the Gathering, but uses AR or augmented reality and your phone. to create a multi-user experience of play. And from there, I've been able to showcase that project to various schools around my local community in Los Angeles. And from there, I've also developed further stories that follow a non-linear format. And I also continue to do my journalism for the Los Angeles Times High School Insider, where I continue to discover new things about this new exciting industry of VR and AR. But I guess my angle is about not only predicting the future, but about creating and inventing the future. And I am trying to kind of give a younger voice and perspective on this exciting industry.
[00:03:59.704] Kent Bye: Can you talk a bit about the first time that you had either an AR or VR experience?
[00:04:04.066] Rylan Daniels: Sure. So one of the first times I tried VR was through the Vive headset. And it was interesting. I was not sure what to think about it at first, because I saw a video of it online of people painting in a program called Tilt Brush. And I was thinking, you know, it's very interesting to paint in 3D. It seems kind of like Photoshop. But then I got to try it for the first time, and I was like, Wow, so suddenly the mind actually connected to painting with physical motions and how that is replicated into the virtual world. And I thought, you know, if it's so easy to create like that and it has so much opportunity, I felt that I'm able to replicate that experience into my own app development as well. And also to share this experience with others. So I'm also trying to promote the VR and AR technology. And part of what I do as being a futurist is to create apps that can have a place in society as well.
[00:04:58.481] Kent Bye: And so maybe you could talk about showing VR to your friends for the first time, and what was that like?
[00:05:03.467] Rylan Daniels: Yeah, so I get to do presentations on my apps and also speak about VR and AR technology throughout LA to the various schools in my community. And I think that something that is very interesting is that when you talk about VR, AR to someone who has never tried it before, when they try it, they are definitely transformed and they can see the potential. Because suddenly it's not just seeing how it looks, but you actually believe that it's something that you enjoy. So what I try to promote is the opportunity of creativity, imagination, and learning throughout the various apps that I create. So it is a true honor to be able to present on the various apps that I create to various schools in my community and to share that experience with people all over the world.
[00:05:53.018] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so maybe talk a bit about how it came about that you're going to be talking on a panel here at Augmented World Expo with Tom Furness, who has been doing VR for the last 50 plus years now.
[00:06:03.402] Rylan Daniels: Yeah, so I very much am inspired by Tom's work for many years and what he's done with the Virtual World Society. And I felt that his mission actually aligned very much with my mission to kind of showcase VR and AR for a brighter future and for the next generation, which is me. So our goals kind of aligned in the sense that he was trying to promote VR and AR for the next generation, and I am kind of the next generation. So he approached me for this panel to get the perspective of the next generation into how content works, especially in terms of how youth can create content, how youth can have a voice. in creating what the future of VR and AR will look like. And especially since VR, AR is a very spatial and immersive medium, it lends itself very well to what youth and students, they want to create. So on the panel, I'll be talking with Tom about some of the different VR, AR apps I've made and how the development of those apps, they form a hybrid of capabilities, including the combination of art, music, and the nonlinear storytelling as well, and how those different capabilities create an experience for not only learning, but engaging storytelling as well. So that is what I'll be talking about.
[00:07:25.680] Kent Bye: Yeah, and just past May 2019 was the 10-year anniversary of Minecraft, and I was just struck by how there's been a decade now of the Z generation that has been involved in living within these virtual worlds through a 2D screen, but involved in both making and building things in these virtual worlds. I'm just curious if you have played Minecraft and if there's any sort of influence of someone who may have been growing up with Minecraft What do you think that is going to do in terms of your generation's perspective on virtual worlds and living and participating and building virtual worlds?
[00:07:59.130] Rylan Daniels: So it's very interesting. So Minecraft has been actually a very big influence for me because I love to kind of build worlds and partake in world building. And when I play my own games and play different people's games to get inspired by them, I also enjoy making my own characters and spending hours just kind of fine tuning how the world will look and how the different characters and different events in the world will look. And actually Minecraft, it was one of the things that got me interested in game design and world building in the first place and into VRAR. And not only that, but Minecraft also has a VR version that even more spatially and more immersively creates that experience of creativity and imagination in this kind of a limitless sandbox. I think that Mycroft, it showed the world for the first time how far your creativity can go in a digital medium. It's kind of the first step that society kind of saw towards where the potential of creativity, particularly within VR, AR, and XR can go. So I think that going forward in the future, there'll be kind of a connected kind of spatial VR, AR experience in society where people will interface together and create together in the world as well, kind of like how it was shown in Minecraft earlier. It'll almost be like an AR Minecraft, per se, where people can interface with each other and connect with each other and interact with each other and learn from each other as well. So this is part of the future that I also hope to build and create and showcase to the world as well in my future app development projects.
[00:09:39.988] Kent Bye: Yeah, I know that Microsoft, on the 10-year anniversary of Minecraft, announced Minecraft Earth, which is just very that. It's an augmented reality version of Minecraft where you can go around and build different things. Are you excited for the Minecraft Earth and to be able to play around with that?
[00:09:54.147] Rylan Daniels: I am incredibly excited for Minecraft Earth. I signed up for the beta already and I think it will present a very interesting opportunity for people to start to collaborate and create together in a way that hasn't been done before in a shared and networked AR experience. And I think it will be one of the next turning points really in how people communicate. And I think there will be a series of subsequent apps as well that will encourage not only how people relate to each other, but how they experience their daily lives as well, and also to create their own apps. So I think that Minecraft Earth, it also shows the possibility or the opportunity for kind of mass app development. And so that's something that I also try to partake in myself in trying to create these multiplayer and networked shared experiences that also are fun, engaging, and also inspire others to also be creative as well. Great.
[00:10:58.530] Kent Bye: So for you, what are some of the either biggest open questions you're trying to answer or biggest problems you're trying to solve?
[00:11:05.406] Rylan Daniels: I guess the questions I would have is, what people are ready for in terms of the AR space and how quickly they will adopt the new technology. But what I'm most excited to see is what people will create with the new technology. And particularly for the next generation of innovators, CEOs, creators, and artists, and designers, and even composers, how they will shape the future. And that is something that I'm also personally excited about. like what skill sets and what tools will be available so that I have the ability to make an impact on the future and particularly within the spatial medium of VR AR. So I'm very excited to pursue this goal of trying to determine and have a say on how the future will look like and be able to contribute to invent that as well.
[00:11:57.878] Kent Bye: Great. And finally, what do you think the ultimate potential of spatial computing is and what it might be able to enable?
[00:12:06.325] Rylan Daniels: That's a great question. I think the grand potential and goal of spatial computing and XR is really to create a whole new dimension, a whole new metaverse, if you will, that is overlaid on top of what we already know as daily life. But it almost sets a whole new reality in terms of the fact that Now data will be everywhere, and everywhere will have data that not only you can take advantage of and respond to this kind of data that's augmented on all buildings, all institutions, all people even, but that the data will respond to your actions and your creativity as well. And I'm very excited to see the apps that people will make for this kind of shared, vast, and connected AR cloud. And I also think that in the future, that more people will actually create their own experiences and not just be passive consumers, but be active developers in the VR, AR. And that is also what I hope to achieve in my own creation of VR and AR apps. And so I'm just so excited about the future technologies.
[00:13:22.650] Kent Bye: Great. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the immersive community?
[00:13:28.038] Rylan Daniels: Well, I'm just so excited about what the community of VR and AR developers and creators will create. I'll say that I've spent already a few years in the process of developing apps. And I'll say that from that, I kind of learned that putting a user in an experience in VR, AR, it will not only transform their future, but it'll transform how they impact the future. And as a creator, you have a magical superpower. So a VR, AR creator has a magical superpower to have an impact on how they perceive the future. So that's why I'm excited about the future.
[00:14:11.166] Kent Bye: All right, great. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. So thank you. Thank you so much, Kent. Thanks again for listening to this episode of the voices of your podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast and please do spread the word, tell your friends and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a, this is part of podcast. And so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
