Here’s my interview with Tom Emrich from June 17, 2018 when he was still a partner of Super Ventures, co-producer of Augmented World Expo. This is part 1 of 2 of my conversations with Emrich, you can see part 2 from 2025 here. 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 continuing my series of looking at AWE past and present, today's episode is with Tom Emmerich. And this is actually a vaulted, unpublished interview that I did with Tom Backed, VRTO. That's the Virtual Reality Toronto conference that was happening way back in 2018. So again, you know, in 2018 and 2019, I was going to like 15 to 20 different events each of those years, basically on the pace of like once every three weeks, I was going to all these different events and then the pandemic hit. And then I was like, how do I cover what's even happening with this industry? And so essentially I was like recording like dozens and hundreds of these interviews that I have in my backlog that I haven't published, but I still think they're actually quite interesting, not only historically, but also like sometimes very prescient in terms of like naming the things that were going to come to pass like many years later. So yeah, I guess that's what you get when you are talking to all these futurist thinkers, because the types of trends that they're looking at end up being these deeper philosophical principles that you can start to look at them later. And sometimes actually looking at them later, you start to gain a little bit more of an appreciation of people who were kind of naming a lot of the core patterns that end up continue to play out. So at the time, Tom was a part of SuperVentures, which was an investment firm that was investing in all these different companies. And as I go back and listen to this conversation, actually, I think the most interesting thing is as he kind of lays out the taxonomy of all the different types of investment things that he's looking at. And my mind was in a completely different space at that time. I kind of latched on to the ethics and privacy thing and kind of steered the conversation into that very singular focus and then there's a part of me that was like oh man there's all these other things that he was talking about that are also interesting but i guess that's the thing around like having these speculative conversations was that ar to me was still kind of abstract or not real certainly not as real as it is today where you have much closer to having what's happening in enterprise spaces and crossing the chasm into doing some of these more consumer launches and so tom is somebody who's been thinking about augmented reality for a long long long long time doing with super ventures also as a journalist and a blogger doing all these deep dive analysis. He at the time was also like a co-producer of augmented world expo. So he was helping to facilitate the production of these community gatherings and really tapped into what was happening into the community. And then after that, he kind of went off onto his career and was working at eighth wall slash Niantic and then, you know, into meta. And so basically putting a lot of these theories into practice, both directing where the products are going, but also starting to kind of develop some of his thinking and ideas around augmented reality as a tool for marketing and business growth which is a book that he just released called the next dimension how to use augmented reality for business growth in the era of spatial computing so in the next episode i'll be diving into a little bit more of like his journey into ar after this check-in from 2018 but also digging into some of his insights and case studies and what he wanted to really share in terms of how to use ar within the context of marketing So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Tom happened on Sunday, June 17th, 2018 at the Virtual Reality Toronto Conference, VRTO, within Toronto, Canada. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:03:24.011] Tom Emrich: So my name is Tom Emmerich. I'm a partner at SuperVentures. We're a fund dedicated to augmented reality. And I'm also the co-producer of Augmented World Expo, or AWE, which is a world's leading XR event series with conference and expos in Silicon Valley, Europe, Asia, and meetups around North America as well.
[00:03:41.940] Kent Bye: Great. Yeah, so I know just a couple weeks ago you had your latest AWE. I happened to be in Montreal at the Symposium IX, so I didn't get a chance to be there. I would have really loved to be there, but maybe you could fill me in as to what were the big takeaways from Augmented World Expo this year?
[00:03:57.068] Tom Emrich: Sure, I think the big message that we were trying to convey is that now is the time for everybody to be involved in XR. And so we had this, Ori and I, Ori Imbar, the founder of AWE, we had this message that it's time to go XR, go extinct, which really means that If you are a big player and you aren't starting to pilot or do some R&D in the spatial computing, you're going to be left behind. And I think anybody that's been through the dot com age or the mobile wave, they're feeling the burn if they weren't there in time. And so we really wanted to convey that sense of urgency, which is really being reflected, I think, right now in the industry where we're seeing the Apples and the Facebooks and the Amazons and the Snaps all jumping on board this new wave. So I think that was like the big takeaway, as well as I think if you looked at the expo floor, you saw that from a smart glasses perspective, there were a ton of smart glass devices and the majority of those were oriented towards an enterprise use case. And so RealWear with their HMT-1 was a really great example of this. They actually launched at AWE a ruggedized version of their device to be used in oil and mining. So we're definitely starting to see these devices be refined for potential use within the enterprise for specific verticals like AEC or mining or construction or field work. And that's an exciting signal in the market because as we've seen with past waves, technology usually moves from academia to military, military to work or enterprise. And then from there it gets to the consumer sphere. So starting to see a lot of the big guys like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, NASA, Caterpillar, all starting to use AR in their processes to realize ROI is a big, big, big, big success for augmented reality in particular.
[00:05:42.927] Kent Bye: Yeah, I've had a chance to go to Microsoft Build for the last couple of years and actually have about a dozen interviews that I've done with AR developers that I haven't had a chance to release yet, but hopefully coming soon. But my sense is that a lot of the enterprise market has been with HoloLens and Microsoft and that there's a certain amount of institutionalized. We know that Microsoft's going to be around in a year or two. So if anybody is deciding whether or not to go and use an augmented reality, Why would they want to use it from maybe some smaller company that may not still exist? Or is this sort of an environment where because it takes a lot of money to produce hardware in this way. And so are they able to find that sweet spot of being able to operate at small scales and still be profitable? Or do you see that a lot of the larger vibe is that some of these companies are just expecting to have an exit by getting bought out by one of the big major companies?
[00:06:31.156] Tom Emrich: Right. That's a really good question. I think in the enterprise might be a little different, right? So if you go into particular verticals like oil and mining, it's not every device there is purchased from Microsoft, right? The helmets aren't purchased from Microsoft or, you know, like the vests aren't purchased from Microsoft. So I think you need to see this as both technology as well as a tool in a way. That being said, of course, you know, industry is not necessarily going to want to invest in something that's going to disappear overnight. But luckily, there have been many companies that have been around for many years, like Vuzix or ODG or Google with Google Glass and HoloLens and even Meta. These companies have been around for many years now, and they have second, even third generation products that are now starting to be moved out of the pilot phase into potential full rollouts. So that's on the smart glasses side. So RealWear is actually kind of a surprising win. They're doing really well in the enterprise. They're a new entrant. We don't see a lot of new entrants on the full smart glasses side of things. That being said, smart glasses are one form factor that are being used in the enterprise. I think It would be a miss to not talk about what's happening with mobile and AR, especially with the use of Vuforia, for example. Mobile and tablet devices are ubiquitous right now in use in many enterprise use cases, and now they're being doubly purposed for augmented reality. And then the third area that's not talked a lot about, and it's just starting to bubble up, is the use of projection mapping within factory work and other enterprise verticals, which allow for guided tasks and also the use of computer vision to ensure that you almost have another set of eyes on the parts that are going through a quality assurance line, for example, to almost pair up with the worker so that it reduces the number of products that go out with errors. So I think we're going to start to hear a little bit more on the projection mapping and the non-mobile, non-smart glass AR setups within the enterprise. But they're just starting to bubble up, I would say. They're not primary examples.
[00:08:33.630] Kent Bye: I've had a chance to visit Dynamic Land in Oakland with Kabebo, Isaac Cohen, who's been volunteering there and actually did an interview with him about that recently as well. Dynamic Land has got these projectors and it's basically trying to transform your environment into spatial computing. They're taking a very interesting philosophical foundation for what that means for them to be able to have spatial computing all the way down to the operating system. That's really interesting that we're starting to see projection mapping within these contexts because you're basically painting the world with data, as Charlie Fink says, but you're able to actually overlay a layer of metadata. Or I would say, from the way I think about it, is that if there are these platonic realms of ideal forms, we're in some ways overlaying this platonic realm of reality onto our reality. empirical reality and that we're able to somehow use that data as a symbolic portal into a deeper insight into what that means. And so we're able to give some sort of symbolic representation about signifiers, about what is happening in your empirical reality, but allowing you to make some sort of choice or decision. And so what kind of choices or decisions are being made? Like in the use of projection mapping, you mean? Or just in general, yeah, with what type of things that, like the use cases, I guess, for why people would want or need to be able to have this information data layer overlaid onto reality.
[00:09:52.135] Tom Emrich: I see. Well, I think there's many different use cases depending on the end user. So from an enterprise perspective, I think the most common use case that we're seeing is basically task assistance, like turning an amateur worker into a professional worker overnight. So Canadian company ScopeAR, for example, has the remote AR and work link platforms that uses devices like ODG or Google Glass to be able to provide contextual information like labeling of parts, for example, or even showing step-by-step process of how to do your job. So that would allow for somebody who hasn't never done this before to actually perform the job or just ensures that the level of errors and emissions is reduced significantly. So I think that's kind of like one thing, but we're actually seeing this also being used from a training perspective. This is a little bit of an older example, but I remember seeing the use of Google Glass, for example, being used to teach a kid how to make a sub in a subway shop. So I loved that because it wasn't a factory job, but actually really showed how you could train somebody without having to watch a video and as we saw from a recent article related to VR, the recall gets increased a lot more when you're actually physically doing things and seeing information at the same time. And so I think we're going to see training really be bumped up a level with the use of this contextual information overlaid on the objects in the scene that you're trying to get familiar with when you're on the job. So that's like a really obvious example. I think like on the consumer side, on the consumer side, it's about just discoverability and almost like augmented memory in a way. I think this is what we're going to start to utilize augmented data for. So, you know, as scary as it may seem for me, one of the killer applications for augmented reality will be the use of facial recognition to be able to put people's names above their heads. which it doesn't sound too far off if you consider that I can look up who you are on LinkedIn or Facebook or, you know, on Google search today. So being able to look into a crowd, especially someone that interfaces with a lot of people and forgets their names, but not their faces and see above their head data that's painted above them using either a mobile device or a pair of smart glasses could really augment my memory so that it takes out that social awkwardness of me not knowing who you are. therefore allowing for me to have a meaningful conversation with you that I may have missed because I did not have this assistive technology at hand.
[00:12:18.209] Kent Bye: that's interesting i sort of make a living going to conferences and i feel like there's a certain amount of serendipitous interactions that i have that i don't think i could ever sort of replicate with the technology i like when you said that everybody's going to be walking around with ar glasses on they're never going to take them off i was like i actually don't think i want to wear ar glasses Because I think that the trade-off is, you know, painting the world with data actually could make me more dissociated to different dimensions of reality that I could miss by just receiving the world as it is. And this is, I want to tell this little story that would happen because I think this is an important point is that I was at this rhododendron garden with my wife and I was looking at these bushes of these flowers. And I was, I said, wouldn't it be amazing if someone came in here with photogrammetry and like, came in here like every day for a month or a year and basically created the life cycle of this very bush. And that I could sit here and watch the evolution of the cycles of this bush and how it would change over the year. And she looked at me and said, no, no, because you doing that and you into this disconnected world is actually going to make my experience of this garden worse. And I think she's right. And when she said that, I was like, OK, now what is the context under which we're going to be doing this? And I think that there's a sociological dimension here of wearing glasses. And also, Philip Rosedale was giving a talk just yesterday. And he said, look, everybody's wearing glasses. Wouldn't it be amazing that if during this talk right now you could read your email on the wall, And I was like, no, no, it wouldn't be amazing because like if I'm in an audience talking to people as a speaker, I absolutely don't want them to be looking. And if they are looking at their phone, I would actually prefer that they're looking down at their phone because it gives me a social signal that they're not paying attention. So there's this dimension here of augmented reality and the social dimensions where you're creating this dissociative going out into like, what is that metadata telling you rather than what is actually emerging with you right now?
[00:14:13.064] Tom Emrich: Right. I think that's interesting. I'd argue that you're already wearing a form of augmented reality glasses that we may not really have an understanding of as a form of technology. And I just mean about real life eyes and that the use of philosophy and spirituality allows you to see past that if you wish. Right. We see past the real world. the materialism of this world, some of the things that you don't like about this world. That's the whole notion of what spirituality and philosophy is about. And so if we were to enter a time where we had glasses that provides us with a reality 2.0, you would still hopefully have the choice to be able to see past that or take them off. Or perhaps it involves the notion of philosophy and spirituality at the same magnitude to be able to take on that challenge of going past the data to have a much more deeper you know meaningful experience and I think like what your wife said about it's my experience versus your experience you know you wanted the photogrammetry evolution she just wanted to be present in that moment I think that hopefully as we adopt these glasses we will not be forced we'll still have that choice
[00:15:19.482] Kent Bye: Well, I think her point was that by me doing that, it actually takes away from her experience of the relationship of being in harmony with that nature. So imagine going around in nature and people playing Pokemon Go. I think this is something that also someone brought up in the session of like, and this is something that Mark Pesce has talked about with the mixed reality service, which is like, we're going to have like kind of this battle that i see between the first amendment right to be able to augment any dimension of public spaces versus if people want to actually restrain those rights and i think playing pokemon go at the holocaust sites is one example where it could actually be really culturally insensitive to be dissociated in playing a video game and something that actually has a deeper history and context that is kind of inappropriate that actually would be taking away of the experience of being in that place by other people that are there and i think that is recognizing that there's a collective relationship between space and people and that as people are running around with augmented reality glasses, like there's a cost there that could be impacting other people's experiences.
[00:16:17.006] Tom Emrich: Yeah, I really like this conversation. I don't think I have the answers there. I think these are the questions we need to be asking. But at the same time, augmented reality is just as much as about what we can see as what we can't see. And so don't forget that these same glasses can censor and remove things as much as they can add things to your line of sight. So, not to say this is the easy fix, but if your wife didn't want you to be seen scanning these bushes on a regular basis, she could censor you completely out of that picture and still just enjoy those flowers as if you were not there. That would be under her control. So, I mean, I'm not saying that's the answer. I think that's possible. I think that's definitely possible. It's one of my favorite Black Mirror episodes with Jon Hamm, the Christmas special, where He's actually censored from society. And I've talked about it quite a bit. It could actually be a new form of discrimination if you think about it. Me not wanting to see specific people as I walk down the street. Or maybe I don't censor you completely. Maybe I just change you into the people I want to see as I walk down. the streets of Toronto or San Francisco. So, you know, we're playing with perception. That's really what we're doing. Perception is reality. And so one of the things that we have to talk about are what are the new rules of this spatial computing as we alter perception, especially from an ethical perspective and a cultural perspective. And I don't know if we've even really scratched the surface on that because we're so busy focusing on the hardware and the software and the tools and just wrapping our minds around What does it even mean to place a Pikachu in a space? You know what I mean? But I'm glad that folks like you are raising and calling attention to the fact that we need to be digging deeper in here because augmented reality is going to rip apart the fabric of humanity as we know it. And if we don't start asking these big questions, we could go in a direction that we just don't want or need to go.
[00:18:06.641] Kent Bye: What does that mean to have augmented reality rip apart the fabric of humanity? What does that look like? Or what do you imagine that looks like? I mean, there's always going to be exalted and amazing potentials of technology, but also like things that are like the negative aspects. So when you say that it is going to happen, that it's going to rip apart the fabric, what do you mean by that specifically?
[00:18:23.595] Tom Emrich: Yeah, I mean, like, you know, we heard the term that software is going to eat the world, and it has. It's completely changed everything that we do from work, life, and play. Augmented reality is that disruptive of a technology, but I think it's actually going to go beyond what software was capable of doing because software is being contained behind a screen. It's still 2D technology. Whether we feel we're addicted to a smartphone or a computer, you can still walk away from it. It is not a part of us. And it's this shift. One of the big shifts is spatial, you know, 2D to 3D, but the other is making technology a part of us. And once you start becoming bionic or a cyborg or whatever you want to call it, it changes who you are as a human. You can't go back from that. And so that's why I say that augmented reality is going to rip apart who we are as humans because of things like what you're talking about with me today is when you change perception, the way that we see the world, the way that we see the world is our humanity. And so once I put those glasses on and I don't need to be in Toronto, I don't need to see certain people, I don't need to feel like I'm poor, I don't. have any weight within the material world because I just need white walls and one chair in my room and I could live in the lap of luxury. We're starting to tear apart what it means to be human. We're seeing the death of death, the death of materialism, the death of fixed identity. All of these things are going to be coming and they're going to be challenging what it means today to be human. The humans of tomorrow, we're not going to recognize who they are because of this technology. That's what I mean about it ripping out the fabric of who we are.
[00:19:56.476] Kent Bye: Yeah, that's interesting. And I go back to this use case that you have, like the killer app of being able to identify people's faces. I'm just wondering if you could maybe flesh that out a little bit more, maybe project yourself out into the future and imagine that you're in this world. What type of experiences would that enable for you? Or maybe you sort of describe to me whatever type of experiences that you want to have in AR. Right.
[00:20:16.644] Tom Emrich: Well, first of all, I want to say that the killer, the real killer app today for mobile consumer applications is democratization of special effects. It's remixing reality. And Snapchat is doing a great job of that. All of these lenses and filters are doing a great job of this. But Nicole Lazaro, who I really respect, she's one of the very first app store developers. She said that we're giving designers and creators a new crayon on the crayon box. And I love that because I think that is the first initial baby step for everybody. We're telling a lot of stories, whether they're podcasts or whether they're on Instagram or on any social network. And now we're going to take all of these ordinary moments and make them extraordinary. And we're going to add magic to the world. And believe me, we need that right now. And augmented reality is going to give that magical element. For me, though, like I said, the augmentation of memory, which is what we're doing already with Google and the Internet, let's be honest, you don't need to learn anything anymore. In the future, there is no education. There's only simulation. There's no need to learn facts and figures and information. Right now, there's actually not any need because you can go to Google to look at it. I would disagree.
[00:21:20.941] Kent Bye: Just to interrupt. Because here's the thing. I think that our memory is actually being atrophied by Google. I've moved away from looking... When I do interviews with people, I'm embodied. I go to these different places. I've created this massive memory palace of over 1,500 interviews I've done in my lifetime that I can recall different dimensions of conversations and where I was. And there's something about being able to recite poetry, being able to actually embody things. So I think that... there's a certain dimension of analogical reasoning that like we learn by metaphor. So we actually have to learn those metaphors in order to understand reality. But there's a certain dimension of I think that if anything, there's going to be a spatialization of memory so that we're going to be creating memory palaces so that we may be able to create symbolic meaning within our space and be able to place objects there. But I think the fact that we don't need to learn things is sort of going the wrong direction. It's more of like really trying to learn the thing, but then also using the spatial computing to be able to amplify both, be able to spatialize things for our memory, but also to do this level of embodied cognition to be able to really deeply integrate it. So the fact that we look up things online is actually destroying memory.
[00:22:27.731] Tom Emrich: Okay, I think we're talking about the same thing, except what I would say first about the atrophy of memory is who cares about that? I know that that's a really bold statement to make, but we're now tapping into a universal memory that's bigger than ourselves, which is the internet. And as we make that more a part of ourselves, it's going to change what we need to memorize. And what I meant about the shift from education to simulation actually taps into what you just mentioned. I don't see a time where you need to sit and learn things from a book. and memorize formulas and memorize facts. But I do see a time where you are put within a space, which is spatial computing, and you experience history, you experience literature, you experience math or whatever it might be. We're already seeing that with VR. That's what VR is doing to education. So that's what I meant about the death of education. It's not that we will never learn. That's what we're here to do. We're here to tell stories. We're here to learn. That's like some of the things that we're expected to do as humans. It's the way that we're learning today. There'll be no place for that. The classroom of tomorrow doesn't have textbooks. It has holodecks. And that's going to allow for better recall. And as you mentioned, it's going to be more meaningful. And it's probably going to create a whole generation of philosophers and artists and mathematicians at a greater magnitude than we've ever seen before. And in fact, I would almost dare to say that the Aristotle's of tomorrow are probably going to come from that generation, just as the Aristotle's of the past came from that generation. And so that's what's really exciting to me. So yes, we will still learn, just not in the same manner. But when it comes to this facial recognition, coming back to your question, that's where I meant about the augmentation of memory. So it's not like I don't have to remember you. I still need to know you. But what I love about this idea of using technology to help me get past what I call social awkwardness. You know, when you go to an event or a conference or just enter a room, I don't know, maybe it's just me, so I'm just going to own up to it. Maybe this is my killer app, so I'm going to talk about it myself. But I meet so many people and I'm really bad with names. And sometimes when you're really bad with a name, it stunts that conversation. Or if you have never met them before, you know, I'm one of those people that will go into a room and if I don't know anybody, it does take me a while to warm up. If I had three things to say to you, Kent, and I walked in and there was just three bullet points that were publicly available, making this very clear on Facebook, LinkedIn, you know, your public social networks. And I knew that we were both into UFOs. Then when I bump into you, I have that little piece of information to break the ice. And I feel like we're not connecting because we're not actually tapping into the plethora of information we're divulging about ourselves online. to the real world and I love that ability to bridge and I'm going to bring one step further because in San Francisco there's a company called Sensory that Kristen has created a mood sweater and she calls this extimacy taking what's internal your internal feelings and bringing it out and putting it on the external extimacy So this is going to get a little wacky, perhaps for some people, and they may get a little scared. But this mood sweater, which uses GSR sensors, it basically tells the world when you're happy, sad, calm, or scared. And I've been obsessed with this for many years because I feel like we're just about to see another new trend or a new revolution within the digital sphere, which is the digitization of emotions. This is part of augmented human. And so what I would love is not just a facial recognition app that gives me your name and three things about who you are but I'd love to be able to see how I am making you feel and I'd love for you to see how you're making me feel which will hopefully hold us to a level of accountability so if I know I'm making you feel uncomfortable how do I not make you feel uncomfortable how do I make you feel happy or you Obviously, you're probably going to ask me about the dystopic view, which could potentially happen. But if we're here to truthfully be of service to other people, how are we really going to know that until they tell us how they feel, right? That's what hugging is all about. You know, that's what gratitude and words of expression are all about. That's what greeting cards are about. I feel like technology could play a role to really help us divulge our innermost thoughts and feelings. And that is when I feel like we will really be able to connect as humans.
[00:26:42.776] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's really interesting. I definitely see both the amazing potentials, but also the scary parts. And what I would say is that going back to the name, in High Fidelity, Philip Rosedale has said that the exchange of a name is a social ritual that we do in a way that is kind of establishing, it's like a ritual that we go through. And as we do that ritual, if we've already met, then it's sort of like, I think people already kind of assume that you might forget. And sort of a reintroduction can be scary for people. But But I guess the larger point is this process of making data available is going to create new social rituals. It's going to create new possibilities. But there also could be stuff that's lost. Now, the thing I would say about the broadcasting of private data. So this is what I want to say about this. OK. So I think that as a culture, we've lost the balance between our outward energy and our inward energy, the yang and the yin, the stuff that we're expressing outward versus what we're really having inward. And I think that metaphorically, as a whole entire world and culture, we are afraid of the dark. We are afraid of the night, which means that we have all these lights are on at night, which metaphorically means that we're so stuck in our egos that we have lost that connection to that undifferentiated consciousness of benefits that come with that receptive yin element of the night. So as a culture, we're out of relationship to the earth. We're already out of relationship. To then further sort of externalize our internal states is a further process of being so stuck in our egos that we don't necessarily recognize the benefit of having a private. So that's a metaphor. Now, what I want to say in terms of what that means in terms of the Constitution, we have the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment. and there's an important relationship there which is we don't have the first amendment unless we have the fourth amendment the fourth amendment says that we have the rights to privacy now you know there's a black mirror episode of called nosedive that basically says that any interaction that you have you start to rate people on an objective scale of the stars which means that you have this process by which that you have this fake inauthenticness of your interactions and being because any interaction is now public and it's now lost that dimension of ephemerality. So there's a certain amount of our emotional being that should be ephemeral, that should be private, should be intimate, should be a part of our own ways of knowing where we are. So I understand that there's certain contexts that this is important and there's some benefits, but I'm really cautious of like not recognizing how out of balance we already are. And to use the technology to further amplify this disconnection that we have and like not really understanding how by eliminating the Fourth Amendment of privacy, we eliminate the First Amendment because then we are no longer likely to really say what we think because now it's on the public record forever. So I think there's a benefit to not recording things. And I think that to say that we're in a post-private reality, I think is amazing. Bullshit.
[00:29:29.684] Tom Emrich: I agree. I 100% agree. And some of my ideas that I'm talking about are very, obviously very utopic, and they would require a lot of changes just across the board in terms of how our government is run, whether or not there is a government, you know, how close are we to that Star Trek The Next Generation kind of utopic culture and society. So... I agree with you. I'm just going to say I agree with you. I agree with you from a logical perspective. But I don't know. For me, technology has always been a path into spirituality. And I really do believe that there's something there in bringing people together and showing us. Ironically, I feel like the ability to show how we feel and the ability to see and know everybody around us, I hope could potentially... allow for people to see how connected we are and you know social media has that capability and it has in some way is a double-edged sword right in some way it's been able to amplify stories to allow us to see how connected we are how much we have in common which has helped the LGBTQ movement and a lot of marginalized individuals be connected to people that have a lot of privilege and vice versa. But at the same time, it can create an echo chamber and social havoc and really just cause a lot of harm as we've seen. And so I think like overall, yes, I think we need to tread carefully as we start rolling out these solutions and these technologies. But at the end of the day, I hope and my overall feel is that if we lean into technology's ability to show us how connected we are and how less of an individual we are in this world, it could elevate us as a human, as a society, to unlock our next level and you know and i have this theory that like the shift from 2d to 3d and computing is going to propel us from 3d to 5d as a human right and in the spiritual world they're talking a lot about the ascension and this huge evolutionary spiritual shift that's on its way and i think we need to connect that somehow to the technology shifts that are happening i think they're related in some way and i know it sounds really out there and perhaps not something that you would expect somebody in technology to be talking about. But that's kind of a little bit why I'm in this is because I see technology's job and technology's role in connecting us. And I think it could, as I've said, rip that fabric of humanity down to the point that we see exactly who we are. And then what happens at that point? I don't know. Then that's the next challenge. But it could go all wrong and we could become imprisoned and become even more enslaved to powers that be that use all this data and that use all this information against us in ways that I think we've already started to draw those conclusions to in a show like Black Mirror. I'm just not a very dystopic guy. So if you want to talk about dystopia, I'm not the right guy to go and do that with. I understand it. And by the way, I don't want to come off as somebody that just does not understand where the dystopic endpoint could be. So we need to be careful about that. But I'd like to see the glass half full.
[00:32:29.359] Kent Bye: Yeah, no, I think balance, I think, is the key in terms of having a way that we have balance between all of the different dimensions of our being. And specifically that there's this outward yang energy of really focusing on your own expression of your path of what you want to do in this world. And to some extent, it's the myth of the individual that we all have to find the way that we're going to individuate as an individual. But then there's also a component of the yin component, which is the way that we're actually interdependent and interconnected to everybody else. And I think that We have to find this balance between the ways that we want to individuate, but also be in relationship to other people. And I think that's the challenge. And I agree that when I think about the ultimate potential of all these technologies, I do say that it's to become more connected to ourselves, more connected to each other and more connected to the planet. Now, the thing that I would say is that I'm cautious about some of these technological engineered solutions about trying to make these different connections is that We can just look at Facebook as a use case as to how they're trying to scale out some of these technological solutions to be able to mediate these different types of social interactions. Well, their approach is like, well, they have to have a terms of service. They have to create these safe online spaces, which means that it comes at a cost of the loss of intimacy and privacy in the way that everything that happens in these online mediated environments is now recorded. And now they're going to have AI moderators that are going through all these different interactions looking for any sort of terms of service violations that can then sort of banish us from these different systems. I think that when you look at trying to deal with online harassment and trolling that with any type of freedom you have a certain amount of responsibility and so there's these different trade-offs between the freedom and the responsibility the freedom to be able to freely and fully express yourself and the risks that come with the trolling and that there is a tendency to want to do a technological engineered solution that is going to engineer culture. And I think that is the error that we have right now is that Silicon Valley and all these systems that are trying to scale are trying to engineer culture at a way that there's these certain rituals and these certain sociological dimensions, which is why I point out what Philip Rosedale says is that there's a social ritual that we have mediated how to handle this already. Do we need a technological solution to disrupt this social contract that we have as individuals? And what does that cost when we disrupt that in different ways? And so I think that when we look at something that's trying to operate at this huge scale like Facebook with these social VR online spaces, I'm going to be looking to see how this plays out. Because I'm actually really skeptical that these centralized solutions that are trying to take this type of approach are really going to be able to facilitate this type of really robust online interaction. So I just like there's a subtext here of what is really meant to be handled by culture and individuals collectively interacting with each other and the role of what technology can do.
[00:35:07.527] Tom Emrich: Yeah, I think that's a really great point. And it's one of the reasons why in my talk at AWE, I really insisted that any startup founder or any technology organization start thinking about having a new leadership role, which is a chief futurist or an anthropologist or someone that is responsible for thinking about the human impact of ethics. Exactly. And I think that's gravely missing. And I think, you know, what happened with Facebook just recently is an opportunity to look at that and say, what would have happened if somebody would have been early in in that team to try to figure out what all those dystopic and utopic endpoints were. And so I highly suggest anybody that's listening to really consider that role. Maybe you can't afford them as a full-time member because of economics, but you could certainly afford them as a mentor and an advisor. So I hope that that's a new position that happens. The second point that I want to bring up to what you just said was perhaps this is where blockchain and the decentralization of technology comes into play. So maybe the future isn't these large monopolies. Maybe we do have these large centers of technology that provide tools, that provide platforms. But with the current technology that we have, we've shirked as individuals a lot of our responsibility to the larger entities that be. And if you look at life just in general, we've kind of just shirked our responsibility. You know, we look to the government or to our doctor or to Facebook, like those guys are all to blame. So I think there needs to be also a shift in the responsibility of the end user at the same time, which potentially blockchain like technologies could provide the transparency as well as the decentralized nature necessary to build that foundation for. I'm not saying it's only up to the individual. I think transparency from the likes of Facebook and their terms and conditions and making those a lot more readable and a lot more human is gonna be necessary. But there's two parties at play and I think if we're gonna play in this new world where technology is a part of the fabric of humanity, then we need to as users own up to our role in all of that. And I feel like if we were to go to school and we were taught a little bit more about these technology platforms and our role in that relationship, I feel like we would be grooming a whole new generation that would be taking control of that. And in fact, like if you talk to some of the younger generations, I feel like especially with Snapchat, which ironically, a lot of the older generations that I liaise with feel like younger generations are giving up a lot of their privacy. I see the complete opposite. I see them actually understanding that their stories, their data that they're putting out there is more private, which is why they're locking down their Twitters, which is why they like platforms that have explosive messages that only have a 24 hour time limit. And it could potentially be in like the Gen Zs that understand that their data is a commodity and a new form of currency, which they can then own up in terms of their responsibility in giving and not giving to entities to use at certain times. So I don't think like AR comes in and VR comes in and nothing else changes. I think that everything is going to change and it's not all going to happen at the same time, but everything has to change to get to these things. endpoints that we're talking about today and that includes private data like our private data is gold and it has already been gold in the last wave but because technology is now going to be able to infiltrate the 3d world it's going to get even more intimate and so we need to understand that that is the currency of today and so we need to own it because it's coming from us so we need to take control of it it's up to us to insist upon that
[00:38:37.387] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I know that the self-sovereign identity and being able to actually have control over our data that we're actually owning it. And I think that there are implications of the third-party doctrine as whenever we give data to somebody else, we sort of lose the rights to that reasonable expectation right to privacy to that data. Now, I had a chance to talk to Matt Meissnicks just talking about 6DAI. This is before he publicly announced that he was working on the AR cloud and He's since talking about the cloud, but being part of SuperVentures and starting to look at the ecosystem of augmented reality and making these different investments. What are the big trends that you're seeing out there? And maybe talk a bit about some of the investments that you're making that kind of reflect that.
[00:39:13.324] Tom Emrich: Yeah. So at SuperVentures, we're, as I mentioned, a fund dedicated to augmented reality. And so we have actually six pillars related to our investment thesis. And the first has a lot to do with 60 and what they're doing with mapping. So mapping and creating the AR cloud or the 3D mesh of the world is obviously a huge opportunity. Ori Imbar, my partner, has indicated that it's going to be an even bigger opportunity than Google's PageRank or the Facebook social graph, which I tend to agree. So creating that mesh, companies that are creating that 3D digitization of the world to allow for creators and developers to build upon it is a huge, significant opportunity. opportunity, as well as scanning of people, scanning of objects, semantic spatial understanding. So this is what we consider in the mapping bucket. And so 6D fits within that with their ability to create a 3D semantic mesh of the world with mono RGB cameras. that allow for persistence and multiplayer and occlusion, which are all really important words when it comes to augmented reality to create experiences that feel real and that are social that we can do together. So that's the first one. The second one is creating, and that's what we talk about in terms of world building. So this has a lot to do with providing developers and creators with tools to be able to create worlds, create 3D content, optimize 3D content, and also create new business models on top of the AR cloud. So we've invested in a couple of companies in this bucket. One of them is from here in Toronto, which is where we're having this interview. It's Quantum Capture, which has created a virtual humans platform enabled by AI. And why they're significant is because they've really brought the price down and the time and the skill set required to create highly realistic virtual humans. And I think we're seeing firsthand an avatar war kind of bubbling up between Apple and Samsung and Snapchat. And so I think the writing's on the wall at how important these avatars are going to become in the role in AR and VR today. But also in this area, we've invested in a spatial analytics company called Cognitive 3D. They're working with enterprises, especially to be able to measure their VR experiences, for example, for simulations and training and focus groups and also optimize content. As well as a UK company called Gravity Sketch, which kind of takes Tilt Brush and Quill to the next level to make it actually usable within the enterprise space. So just like we saw in mobile and we saw in the initial computing rollout, there are need for tools that are specific to spatial computing. They're going to enable the developers and the creators, as well as the marketers, for example, from a publishing perspective, to be able to create content to substantiate the space. The third area is what we call sensing and interacting. So this talks about natural input and output. So here we're looking at a lot of controllers. We invested in a VR pen called Massless, which allows for you to actually work within VR, for example, with high fidelity. They have a sub-millimeter accuracy with their spatial pen, something you're not really able to do with clunky Vive controllers. But we're also looking at output. So we talked a little bit about data. So the collection of personal data is a lot to do with augmented reality, whether it's facial scans or even body-worn sensors that are collecting you know, your heart rate, or even with GSR sensors, you know, how you're feeling from a flight or flight perspective. And so Lightwave is an emotion tech company from San Francisco that's been being able to ingest and then utilize body worn and ambient sensors to better understand the engagement of an end user and even get to the point where they can assert what emotion that user may have at the time if they understand the context of the scenario. So for example, having a group of folks wearing body-worn sensors watching a film, and then being able to pinpoint when people were happy, when they were sad, when they were scared, and then being able to use that information to edit a film, for example. So those are some of the examples that we're looking at. The fourth area is what we call bionic vision. And so it's all about seeing. And so obviously when we talk about augmented reality, that's the first thing that comes to mind. And it is the path to that ubiquitous head-worn device. This, we see areas of investment within graphical display technology like light field, also technology that untethers AR, VR devices. We invested in Nitero, which uses a 60 gigahertz bandwidth to do that. It recently got bought by AMD. And also we're looking at companies that are helping to put cameras and technology on the face of people. Because at the end of the day, it's also a cultural hurdle. And so Foresight from Australia, we invested in because they're creating smart helmets. And in the motorcycle world, having a camera on your face to be able to see things and capture things makes a lot more sense than just a regular person putting a camera on for maybe no reason. And so we definitely see how Foresight is going to help groom people to not only put cameras on their face, but see people with cameras on their face, which is really important. And then finally, to wrap things up, the last two areas that we look at are more on the content side. We see major opportunities in communication, collaboration, and social, because we saw major opportunities within the mobile and the computer wave. So this has to do with telepresence, especially. The evolution of video conferencing is something that we're really interested in, as well as what I call spatial expression. So the ability to evolve text messaging or GIFs, or what does social media look like in the social space? And so this has a lot to do with the democratization of special effects, which I mentioned, and remixing reality right now. And so we're seeing a lot of applications in the consumer sphere that are playing around with this. And so we're really looking for founders and team members that are thinking outside the box, thinking AR first, that will really show us what the next Facebook might be or what the new text message might be within a 3D form factor. And then finally, the last area is called upgrading. So it's all about super intelligence. And this has a lot to do with presenting of contextual information within the space. We already talked about this earlier in the interview about scope AR, for example, providing information about parts of a machine so that an amateur worker can feel like they're a professional worker overnight. So it's that augmentation of memory, the augmentation of intelligence. We really feel like that productivity, whether it's in work or life, is going to be a very fruitful investment opportunity, and we're actively searching for those. So those are our six pillars of investments that we're looking at today.
[00:45:38.183] Kent Bye: That's really fascinating. And as I hear you talk about that, the one question that comes up is biometric data and biometric data privacy. And I think that to a certain extent, biometric data could result in all this amazing information that gives us incredible insights about ourselves, patterns about ourselves that we never knew. And I think the risk is that this biometric data is like, where is it going and who owns it and what are they doing with it? Because to a certain extent, it could be like the risotto stone to our unconscious psyche so that, you know, whoever has access to that data could start to not only predict our behavior, but then the line between prediction and control manipulation, I think it's really blurred. So to me, I see that there's some amazing possibilities of having all this data available, what we can do with it, but where's that data and who owns it? So like, how do you see this topic of biometric data privacy?
[00:46:25.629] Tom Emrich: Yeah, I think these are this is such a good conversation to have. Ultimately, the individual needs to own their biometric data. That's where it's coming from. Is that happening today? I think that like the likes of Fitbit, you know, for example, they're being very cautious about privacy as they should. But ultimately, we're you know, we're starting with steps right now. And so it's kind of like a really easy biometric data point to give away because what can people do with steps? They could actually do quite a bit with a step if you really think about it. So I think it's connected to GPS and where you're at. Yeah. Well, listen, like I mean, there's a murder trial that's happening right now that the Apple Watch is being involved in that could set a precedent for the use of biometric information.
[00:47:06.432] Kent Bye: Well, here's but here's the thing. Any data you give to a third party by the third party doctrine has, quote, no reasonable expectation for privacy. So that's already been set. That's already a precedent. So that's why I'm saying any data you give to any company already fits within this standard, which is to say that you've already decided that it's not private because you've decided to share it to a third party. So that's a legal precedent. That's why I'm saying who are we giving this data to?
[00:47:33.427] Tom Emrich: Well, right now we're giving the data to Fitbit and Apple and Google, just like we have been with our online browser history and our likes and our thumbs up and thumbs downs.
[00:47:43.673] Kent Bye: Those are also conscious decisions that we're making through our behaviors. We're talking about unconscious data that's coming from our body, which is qualitatively different because we're talking about stuff that is unconscious. It's stuff that isn't coming from your conscious actions. And so it's a different... class that I would say would be categorized in the United States under HIPAA or something that's medical information, but it's got a different weight that comes with it because it represents aspects of our being that are incredibly intimate, but also in the wrong hands. I think that's the other issue is that anything that's stored on these third parties could leak. So it's not just like us trusting these companies, it's us like putting this data that could be decades of biometric information that could be used to do information warfare on a grand scale.
[00:48:29.147] Tom Emrich: Yes, yes, yes. And I think I did a presentation two years ago where I said like huge data breach of biometric information is definitely we're going to see in our lifetime. Look, like at the end of the day, I think we're seeing that, unfortunately, like it or not, the consumers aren't thinking about this or they kind of don't care. I don't know what it is. They should care. It's kind of what I meant about like taking more responsibility as an individual. You did make a conscious effort when you either opened up that gift or went to the store to buy a smartwatch. That was the conscious effort and that was the conscious decision. And when you strapped it on and actually every day that you strap that on your wrist or that you continue to keep it on your wrist, that's your conscious choice to collect that information. If you're not thinking about where that's going, then yes, it's half the responsibility of the big company that's gathering that data and facilitating that platform. But it's also you as an owner of that device to think about where that's going and how it can be utilized. Do I think that we're starting to veer within more of like a HIPAA medical type of sphere? Yes, I agree. Like it's biometric information. It's health information. We're democratizing health devices that we typically would not be putting on unless we were in a hospital, right? And that's a great thing because we're already seeing some really fantastic stories about folks that have caught murmurs or conditions and they feel like their life was saved because of a device like Apple Watch. So it's kind of like going back to what the dance me and you have been having about The yin and the yang, let's put it that way, because in one way, like what Apple's doing with Parkinson's and some of the major health concerns by crowdsourcing data through Apple HealthKit and being able to get loads of data points that even clinics or academia haven't been able to do on a wide scale. It's going to change the face of health. We could see the cure of many diseases because we're all wearing these devices. But like you just said, it could incriminate you in a murder case. Or eventually, with these cashless, cashierless stores, we could find that based on my condition of diabetes, I'm not allowed entrance to a fast food store or a grocery store. This could be like a severe case of discrimination based not only on my skin color or my sexual orientation, but what my body is saying, or as we were talking about, like what my thoughts or my feelings are. So you are right. Like we could be going really down a really scary rabbit hole. So it's like, do we want to have the chance to cure cancer or do we want to shut it all down because we're worried about the latter? I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. I just know that right now when people are buying a watch, they're not thinking about this just in the same way that they think that Gmail is just free. It's the same way of thinking. We're not changing the conversation on privacy. And frankly speaking, you know, when we have big scandals like we just saw with Cambridge Analytica, it hits the news and then it goes away. Ask anybody. Ask anybody right now if they're really worried about.
[00:51:24.152] Kent Bye: I'm the wrong person to ask because I keep talking about it. So I think the conversation is still going.
[00:51:29.515] Tom Emrich: It's going, but it's going. But if you ask, I guess if you ask like the average consumer, if they heard about it, they may have heard about it. But I don't know if necessarily it reverberated as strongly as it needed to with them.
[00:51:41.462] Kent Bye: I think that there is a general discussion about ethics that we're seeing that the metaphor that I've heard is that just as when physicists created the nuclear weapon or chemists created biological weapons, there is this new ethical and moral dimension to the work. And I think that as computer scientists that in universities, ethics courses are going way up. I think there is a deeper awareness of what is the larger ecosystem of what we're creating and what are the ethical obligations of what we're doing, especially when we talk about virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence. All of these are experiential technologies that are actually creating new ethical dilemmas that as we organize ourselves and with the structures of capital, What does it mean to have a few major players that are controlling the consciousness of billions of people? I think that there are actually huge discussions that are still continuing. To say that they're going away, I would disagree with because I think that they're only accelerating from my perspective of the people that are still thinking about the trade-offs between the centralization and decentralization in that you have these different ways of the self-sovereign identity and these movements that are actually trying to use the blockchain technology to be able to create entirely new ecosystems that are built on these decentralized systems rather than the downfalls of these centralized systems.
[00:52:52.874] Tom Emrich: I agree in certain circles, but Jay-Z and Beyonce's album just hit yesterday, and that's what the average individual is worried about right now. I'm not even joking. That's what I mean. Facebook is a technology that's being used by many people. We need a large amount of those people to really be upset about the way that they are doing their business. I don't mean to pick on Facebook, by the way. I just mean social media in general. I really thought that when we saw that scandal hit, that this was an opportunity to really change the platform. And I don't doubt that Facebook in particular is making changes. I don't doubt that there's conversations and now a lot more people have ethics on their radar. And this is why I suggested like a chief anthropologist at the seat of the table. But when it comes to the average consumer, I think it's just a blip on their busy everyday radar. And that's what needs to change. How do we drive the conversation further down the chain so it's not the folks that are so close to the platforms, but we make every single kid that's born from here on in today understand how grave of an impact these technologies have. And that they need to step up and they need to take ownership and responsibility in the conversation and impressing it. It's almost like in the same way that you kind of encourage children to take an active approach with government. And we've gotten to that same point, I think with technology, where it's like, you know, you want to, you want to make a difference in the world. You need to understand that you're part of the society and you need to have an active voice in how the society is being run. You need to have an active voice in how society is being run from a technology perspective. So that's what I meant about that conversation. I don't see it necessarily happening on the mainstream side. I wish it happened a lot more, right?
[00:54:31.995] Kent Bye: Well, and just as an example from my own experience, I've been asking Facebook to talk about privacy for over a year now. And when this happened, they talked to me. They actually gave me their chief privacy architect and wanted someone from the privacy cross-functional team and then another interview. And so I've still yet to have that same experience with Google. there's a number of reasons for that but just to say that it is changing in our conversation this what we're saying now i think that you know we're talking at a level that the people who are actually going to be out there building these systems are going to be catalyzed so i think that to say that it just went away i think it was a part of the hegelian dialectic which was a polarity point which now there's people being mobilized to create alternatives and i think that as these ecosystems develop i think that vr ar and ai will continue to bring up these ethical challenges that for me as an immersive journalist, I'm on that frontier of trying to point out some of these just in the course of this conversation, just sort of bringing out these, hey, what are we doing here? Is this what we want? We can do it. That's amazing to think about it. But what are the costs? What are the unintended consequences? And so I think that's part of I guess, a skill of embedding into people to be able to actually do some of this forethought to be able to see some of these things. And for them to actually kind of rapidly prototype all these potential futures, but also the potential costs of that. I think that there is never, as I was trained as an engineer, so I know that there's always these trade-offs that you have to balance. And I think that expanding out the social dimension, these things that you can't actually put a number on. And that's what these ethical issues are. It's the unintended social cultural impact of stuff that you can't always actually turn into a number to put into the equation. And I think that's the thing that we're now saying, okay, there's a phenomenological direct experience component to our culture that we need to take account for. And if we don't, then we're going to be creating these sort of dystopic black mirror futures.
[00:56:17.935] Tom Emrich: Yeah, and I think that that needs to become a success measurement. And I think that could be ushered in from the investment community. It could be ushered in from a board perspective. And it could also be part of the rating of any company from a consumer perspective and their decision making when they purchase or use that service. In a way that kind of we did with the environment, remember, where we're looking for those symbols or like how green that company is. I feel like maybe we need to start layering in that ethical and cultural seal of approval or rating system in some way. And I think that's a great thing. I'm glad that we're going down this path. And I hope that we continue it and that we mandate it. So I agree with you. I think it's a really good time. And it also signals that... It signals two things. It signals that we're on the cusp of a new wave because we feel like we're going to be able to catch it at the right time to make this change happen. And it also shows how grave this big wave is because we feel like if we don't discuss and make these changes now that we may be significantly screwed later on. Right.
[00:57:17.587] Kent Bye: Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. And finally, what do you think is kind of the ultimate potential of augmented reality and what it might be able to enable?
[00:57:28.086] Tom Emrich: Yeah, I think that augmented reality is an assistive technology, and I think that it's going to allow for all of us to more than realize our full potential if we allow it to. And to be able to bring wonder and magic into the world in one way, to be able to upgrade ourselves and make us superhuman with our skill set, to help us better understand the world around us, the people around us. As I mentioned, kind of throwing it in there, I really do think it's going to unlock some spiritual aspects to this world to help us evolve past this existence and maybe move into a net new one. So that's kind of what gets me out of bed when I talk about augmented reality.
[00:58:08.398] Kent Bye: Awesome. Great. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the immersive community?
[00:58:12.918] Tom Emrich: I just want to thank Kent because I feel like you're my yang to my yang. And I feel like I need to continue to walk around with you so that I'm a much more balanced individual. But thank you for this great conversation. It's been wonderful to have. Awesome.
[00:58:25.135] Kent Bye: Great. Well, thank you so much.
[00:58:26.497] Tom Emrich: Thank you.
[00:58:27.435] Kent Bye: Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage so you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
