Monika Bielskyte is a futurist, science fiction worldbuilder, and a digital nomad who has been traveling around the world to over 80 different countries searching for where the future is headed. She’s in conversation with the bleeding edge of emerging tech culture from around the world, and trying to discern the underlying trends and catalysts for cultural transformation.
I recently had a chance to catch up with Bielskyte to talk about what types of trends that she’s seeing from around the world, why she’s interested in non-Western cultures and particularly the collaborative spirit that’s emerging in the Global South. She talks about various different decolonization efforts she’s seeing around the world, and how there’s a move towards contextual technologies and “designing with” rather than “designing for.”
Another big trend is a growing realization of the interconnectedness of all things, and how humans are fundamentally depended and connected to each other and the world we all live in. There’s also more people starting to embody the Ubuntu values of “I am because we all are,” and the old African saying of “If you want to travel fast, travel alone. If you want to travel far, travel together.”
Bielskyte also talks about how spatial and immersive computing represents moving to a regenerative economy that’s based upon the production of knowledge and experience and moving from ownership of material objects to have access to the experience. She also says that “It’s those who control the fantasy who control the future.” So she explores how science fiction world building within immersive technologies has the potential to inspire the culture to help build a future that we all want to live into.
Bielskyte is my favorite futurist as she’s got her finger on the pulse of what’s happening around the world, and so it’s always interesting to hear about her latest insights, pointers to International innovators, and where she thinks the future is headed.
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Music: Fatality
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Crédit: world design Monika Bielskyte, concept artist eliud López, collaboration between ALLFUTUREEVERYTHING & LABCDMX
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to The Voices of VR Podcast. So, Monica Billis-Guita is my favorite futurist that's out there. I mean, she's a digital nomad. She's traveling around the world pretty much nonstop for the last six years, and she's gone over to 80 different countries in conversation with what is on the bleeding edge of what's happening in cultures around the world. So Monica is a science fiction world builder. She's a futurist, and she's on this journey to try to figure out what the future is bringing us. And so I had a chance to sit down with Monica to be able to get a sense of what she's been seeing on her journeys around the world and some of the deeper trends that she's saying of where we're at and where we're going in the future, and especially the role of immersive technologies and the role of science fiction and the role of world building and being able to create these imagined futures that have a transformational effect of our culture, as well as our individual consciousness. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Monica happened when we were both in Los Angeles, California on Friday, November 2nd, 2018. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:19.352] Monika Bielskyte: Hi, I'm Monika Bielskite and I'm a future researcher, futurist and future designer. I've also been deeply involved in the immersive media technology space. As a future researcher, I travel the world trying to see and understand and discern where the futures are going. My big focus is really outside the white Western world, looking into the kind of futures that are being explored and birthed in a global South. As a futurist, I consult media companies, technology companies, and sometimes also cities, countries, governments, and help them understand where the future is going and how that applies to what they do. You know, make them think a little bit more consciously about specifically the impact and the consequences of the kind of technological tools and platforms that they're developing. And then with cities, countries, governments, it's really that combination of my understanding of emerging media technology, world design, and discerning the futures to help the cities and the governments to not just focus on immediate problems, but really think of what kind of city, what kind of country they want to be, and hence what type of policies, infrastructure decisions, and cultural initiatives they should be supporting. And then when it comes to AR, VMR, I kind of entered this space at the very beginning of the third wave, so just as Oculus was being sold to Facebook. My entry point wasn't actually 360 at all, it was volumetric capture. That's how it all started. And, you know, I had different sort of consulting positions in that space and creative direction work that I've done in the space as well. And just been really kind of following and a lot of the times with a very critical eye. So I feel that at that period when a lot of people were high-fiving and felt like we should only be exclusively enthusiastic, I was, you know, ranting about the issues that I've been seeing that will be emerging in the coming years. And then, you know, quite a few times been silenced, but these are the very problems that I think as a field we're dealing with today. You know, I don't see AR, VR, and more as something separate. For me, it's really what is sign analysis, a paradigm shift in where we're going with computation, and computation underlies really most of our activities. And I think about it from that perspective, really. Like, what interests me is what is the future of content, you know, and how content is becoming more about experience. and really how we're going to be understanding the world in the future, how we will consume information. So that's maybe a large roundup of who I am and what I do and what I think.
[00:04:15.630] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, I've had a chance to do quite a bit of traveling this past year. I went to China and Japan and Russia and a number of other countries. And so I feel like it's a bit of an art to go into a country and to be able to see what is happening in the culture and then be able to somehow translate that into maybe some trend that is generalizable to what's happening there. And so because you are traveling all over the world all the time, what are you seeing out there? Like what types of trends and how do you describe what you're seeing in terms of this new emerging technology?
[00:04:48.703] Monika Bielskyte: Yeah, so that's, I guess I didn't mention that my sort of future research work got me into living for the past six years as a digital nomad. So it means that I'm literally like around the world all the time trying to find where the future's at. I've been working, researching, exploring over 80 countries to this day and expanding. And by no means I could pretend that I could go somewhere, spend a month and have it figured out. What really interests me is how do I bridge my digital and physical experience. The kind of digital network that I built over the past couple of decades allows me to tap in quite a fast and efficient way into some of the most amazing people. and through their eyes be introduced into what is happening in their reality and what is future in their context. And then how in my work, you know, I'm not just taking the ideas and spreading them as mine, but finding a way to tell the stories of what they're doing and how they're seeing and through that, you know, also connect the rest of the world to those very people who are, you know, spearheading different aspects of innovation. Now in terms of what are the trends that I'm seeing, I think this is a very vast question. Maybe it's interesting to go a little bit more targeted, but one of the main things is obviously the rising awareness of interconnectedness of everything. A big shift from focus on ownership to focus on access. decolonization movements really sort of starting to happen everywhere and when I mean decolonization I don't mean sort of physical decolonization that sort of stuff that started happening in mid 20th century and physically happened in most parts of the world although there's still political influence zones but I think cultural decolonization is something that is very very important that is not being spoken enough about, right? So people around the world stopping to see that the only equation is X plus the West, right? And thinking that the only way to make it is to make it through coming to the West, succeeding in the West, collaborating with the West, finding the funding in the West, et cetera, et cetera. Because so much of that so-called Western filter remains a colonial filter, remains a supremacist filter. And so it is not empowering. So what's starting to happen is a lot of, internal collaboration within certain areas, right? So within East Africa, then within African continent, within Central America, within Latin American continent, within Indian subcontinent, and then within South Asia. And then what is sort of starting to emerge right now is more of the collaboration across the global South, right? Because a lot of the problems are shared. You know, a lot of the issues that are common in a place like Bombay, is also common in a place like Lagos, is also common in a place like Nairobi, is also common in a place like Sao Paulo. What's interesting about it though is that the solutions to some of these problems can come from unique cultural angles. Yet once the solutions are found, they are likely to be able to apply. A solution that is found in Sao Paulo is also likely to apply in Lagos, in Nairobi, in Johannesburg, and Bombay, and Jakarta, right? Not every time, but it's something that I start seeing happening, right? And what is interesting about that is that it gives people a whole new confidence to tap into their cultural roots for that specific solution research and obviously it invites more of the cultural exchange between different regions of the global south and because it comes with such cultural vibrancy, it's not just about technology, it's also about the kind of cultural exchange that it generates and what that can unleash. So that's been something very, very interesting for me. And I feel that a lot of folks in Silicon Valley and some of the other sort of Western hubs of innovation have been taking their position for granted as the key hubs of innovation. for the world. And when they speak about global innovation and global futures, etc., in fact, they've been really speaking about mostly white Western worlds. And the kind of top-down approach that they've been having, even some of the major technological corporations that have major operations in places like India, I've been seeing that a lot of the talent they've been using there is very much like technological sweatshops, rather than really being able to fully use the R&D capability of local talent. and empowering them in a way that allows them to feel that they are looking and developing stuff really contextually. So this idea of contextual technology, I think Silicon Valley has not been approaching it in the best way possible. And so I think this idea that Its power, its capability to push out the innovation for the world is immutable. Actually, it's being questioned now in more and more places. And it's being pushed back against. And this whole idea of top-down approach and designing for. And there's a lot of, you know, I just come from a month in Kenya where I met a ton of really extraordinary people working in innovation space in Nairobi. And as my friend Mark Kamau from UX Africa says, you know, designing for doesn't work. You have to design with. And I don't think the Western hubs of innovation have been doing that really well. And even when they come and try to open operations on African continent, they still have very much that colonial approach of, designing for. We got the solutions for you, right? Rather than actually really designing with local innovators, local populations. And so that stuff has been very, very interesting for me. And in general, I guess, you know, where I'm at, as much as a futurist, my focus has to be primarily on science and technology. But as a future designer, right, when I work on science fiction projects, science fiction movies and series, I look into kind of everything, right? I look into cultural inspirations, I look into politics, I look into everything around lifestyle and how people live, how people eat, how people love, how people interact with each other, etc. And in my sort of technological thinking as well, I look a lot into not just technological innovation, but also cultural, social, political innovation, as well as regressive tendencies. And I feel that some of the world's most renowned futurists, when they give their talks, they speak about the path of technology as something predetermined. This is the technological path. That's where we're going. And they forget to take into account just how illogical and unpredictable we as human beings are. They forget to take into account that we are playful, creative, emotional animals. And when some of these needs are not being catered to, we go on extremes. Because a lot of these needs have not been catered to, what we're seeing now around the world is a rise of all these neo-fascist regimes. and neofascist movements and behavioral patterns that are associated with those, right? And that changes a lot and also where our science and technology will be heading. What will be the consequence? What will be the impact of it? And quoting Alicia Naples, a dear friend of mine, she says, the end result of innovation is not technology. The end result of innovation is what technology does to us and to the planet. So I always try to bring it back to that, right? And even when I think about the future of VR and MR, I try not to become excited about the gadgetry of it all, you know, the platforms and the hardware and this new content piece, whatever, but I actually really think, okay, well, does it really matter? In the context of where we're heading today, which is, as a dear friend Jenka Grifinkel says, you know, futures are exclusively radical, right? And I see there's no mediocre future. We're raised with this idea that the future is kind of just more of the same, and maybe we're a little annoyed that we don't have jetpacks and flying cars, and now all of a sudden we're awakening to this reality that the future is exclusively radical. Climate change is becoming undeniable, and its consequences will be more dire than any of us dare to imagine. Just now, last week, Jair Bolsonaro was elected to be the president of Brazil and he wants to gut the Amazon, open the Amazon for business, meaning take away all the indigenous rights and really decimate Amazon forest, which is called lungs of the earth for a reason right and so for me it's interesting to see how whatever that we're doing is not just another fancy cool thing that is born out of a want wouldn't be cool to do that but of a need like what it really does for not just survival of our species for survival of life on earth and ideally for thriving of life on earth. And so everything that I do kind of comes through that lens and is judged a bit through that lens and I guess the reason why I relate more with people working in science and technology across the Global South, and maybe especially on the African continent, because innovators there, you know, be it again scientific, technological, or also political, cultural, and sort of people working in the social space, you know, they look at it from that very similar filter. Are we doing just something that we want, or are we solving some real problems? Is it something that we're building for a real need? Will it really change people's reality? Will it change it for the better? Could we expand the human potential? You know, and not just sort of physically, intellectually, but also creatively and emotionally, because thinking just about practicalities of human existence and not thinking of the kind of social tissue that happens between us, for me, is really a failure of imagination.
[00:15:36.941] Kent Bye: Yeah, one of the trends that I'm also saying that I think reflects a little bit of what you're saying and just in terms of the decolonization as well as this movement from centralized systems to more decentralized systems. I'd see early signs of cryptocurrencies, but I feel like there's going to be a long time before that actually is viable enough to really take root and bring about some real deeper changes to the culture. I mean, Simon Wardley talks about his model of how The technology has these different diffusion curves where there's an academic idea that's sort of a concept or a seed of something But yet it's in a collaborative environment and then at some point it goes into the applied pragmatic Enterprise domain where there's a very bespoke application that's built around that and eventually at some point it goes into a consumer release where it really crosses the chasm into the mainstream and And then eventually it becomes a ubiquitous concept or idea. And so I kind of see that both culture and technology goes through these different phases where you'll be traveling around the world and you'll see like a seed of something that then maybe goes to the next step of maybe a larger communities or more at the next level of scale, or maybe it's an application, but then At some point, being able to see how that's going to progress out into what would the world look like if this concept that I see a seed of starts to filter out. I've been using the terms yang currency and yin currency from Bernard Laitier, who the yang currency being just much more about the individuation and the competition and a bit of a zero-sum game where there can only be one winner but yet it seems like the trends of where things are going is more towards this yen cooperative ecosystems and ecosystem development but also seeing how you as an individual is connected to the larger whole whether that's within the context of other people or well that's in relationship to the earth and so that if anything the virtual reality augmented reality mixed reality technologies are In some ways, this potential to be able to tell these new stories of how we are connected to this larger system that we can't see, that's one potential for how these technologies could be used. So I guess from your perspective as you're traveling around, I'm just curious to see how you see either that yen currency or the ecosystem development or that focus on cooperation, collaboration, and connectedness for how people are organizing together as groups.
[00:17:48.687] Monika Bielskyte: Yeah, so actually there are several things in here that I'd like to sort of unpack or maybe add on. There's a very famous African saying, if you want to travel fast, travel alone. If you want to travel far, travel together, right? And so another reason why I'm so interested spending time and exploring futures outside the Western context is because the sense of community efforts and community life and community realization, and the idea of success not being much of an individual success, but it's sort of like you succeed if your community succeeds, right? If you're able to help your community, right? That's the highest success. You know, and there's plenty of exceptions, but in general, that's kind of much more of a feeling, especially on the African continent versus the West. the kind of groundwork it lays for technological development, but also especially think of the kind of content that we'd be creating in the immersive media technology space. So that's one aspect. Actually, connected to that aspect, I recently gave a series of talks called User Experiences, Human Experience. Part of that talk was actually dedicated to speaking about how maybe this new paradigm of user experience design as human experience design could be based on this notion of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a Zimbabwean term that really became sort of popularized in South Africa in that transition period between the apartheid rule to the majority rule. And essentially it says I am because we all are. and it recognizes interconnectedness of everything. And Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela obviously were sort of the leaders that really brought that term to life for many people. And so Desmond Tutu says that, you know, I'm human not because I think, therefore I am. I'm human because I belong, I participate, I share. Right? Ubuntu though is a very different notion from Western communitarian socialism, which is very much sort of like very uniformizing, like seeing everybody as fitting that need box and the combination of those boxes is really just a sum of the parts and things and it can only be organized in that one particular way and these units have to fit in those specific boxes. Now Ubuntu really recognizes the difference in diversity, yet sees it as a plurality that is very complementary. So it's a very fascinating, much more fluid concept of recognizing how nobody's alone, nobody's an individual, you only are human because you exist in a society, yet also recognizing more of a unique and personal story, right? And how we contribute to society because we're all different. And that's where kind of the whole human experience comes in, like really recognizing the complexity of what is to be human and how we're not just sort of that algorithm. And we cannot be just identified by bits and pieces of a very limited sort of data points and be reduced to that. And I find it very interesting, especially how that translates into immersive media technology paradigms, because the competition paradigm in which we live to this day was sort of very much an abstracted, you know, 2D screen-based competition was a very abstracted notion, very little about body was involved, very little about psychology. A lot of our psychology was involved, but very little of our psychology was involved compared to where we're going, right? When we're entering the computational space. And so this whole kind of Ubuntu conversation plugs into my maybe third point, which is societies that had the chance and opportunity to leapfrog entire paradigms, cultural paradigms, technological paradigms, are sometimes able to look at things in a very new way. Right now we are here in LA, we're having this conversation. in the city of Hollywood where dreams are being made, right? And there was this expectation that somehow Steven Spielberg is going to bring the idea of VR to the masses with Ready Player One. And then, I don't know, like James Cameron is going to design the most amazing VR experience that we ever had. And to be really honest, I think people that are so anchored in a screen-based content paradigm will not be the ones that will come up with what is really native for the immersive media space. Because they have these notions of how things are being done. And similarly, when I think of Silicon Valley and people that grew up and were anchored in the notion of computation in this non-intuitive 2D space, will not be the ones that will design the future of interface. I mean, I might be wrong. There might be that one rogue genius that will come up with it. But to be honest, I mean, that's just my very biased personal feeling that when entire societies are leapfrogging certain of these sort of notions that seem like axioms for us in the West, they're able to look at things with very new eyes and be like, what if Why not? Could we just try that? And sometimes it's from that sense of freedom and from not being anchored in how things have to be done that some of the most ingenious solutions come up. And so I'm kind of waiting and looking and trying to find who are these people that are doing that. I mean, things are being developed really, really fast, right? Like Rwanda, for example, brought in fast speed internet connection just a few years ago. I mean, we all know, right, historically what happened in Rwanda. But the explosion of technological and startup scene there in just the space of a few years. and how people that have made it are training the new generation is really, really massive. Another very big thing, too, is a lot of diaspora is actually going back. And in some cases, not even sort of diaspora, it's even second-generation Nigerian-Americans, second-generation Indian-Americans, second-generation British Indians are actually not going back. They're going to the country of their culture, of their parents, right? And sometimes the first generation, like people that left to study in college, have made their career, became very successful, worked for major companies, be it in Europe or North America, they feel that there's enough of an infrastructure and there's enough of a possibility to fund their ventures that are going to their places, their countries of cultural origin. And why I believe that there's a lot of power in what they're doing is that when they're working in the West, they're working towards mostly a commercial success. But when they go to their countries of cultural origin, and at least the people, the folks that I've spoken with, they feel this deep engagement for the success to not be just monetary. It's something that they really want to do for their community, for their culture, for their country, for their people, for their tribe, right? And when people have that deep and grounded motivation, the kind of success that they can achieve is incomparable. And the kind of new stuff that they can develop and how they're willing to take the longer path Because it's not just about cashing out, it's really about impact, right? And I think the power of that gets continuously underestimated. And I believe in the power of that. So I think these are the three points that I find very, very, very interesting and I'm continuously being inspired by. And I think that will lead towards the kind of innovation that might take a lot of us by surprise.
[00:25:56.318] Kent Bye: Yeah, and you mentioned what's happening in Brazil and Amazon and just our relationship to the earth and ecology. It seems like if you look at through the lens of both the yang currency and yin currency, the yang version of how you relate to the earth is that it's an externality that isn't even in the equations of the GDP. It's just something that is Not even accounted for for the current economic modeling and yet the yen currency I think is Trying to see that there is a connection between all of these things and that on one hand you can have the sustainable culture but then to take it to the next level is like this regenerative culture, which is And the yen currency, the more that you give, the more that you get. So as a journalist, the more information that I give out and capture and distribute, more people want to give me information. So that's in some ways, a regenerative aspect of information and education is that the more you do it, the more you get. In the Yang realm, there's a zero-sum game where basically there can only be one winner. So I'm curious to hear from your perspective this concept of regenerative culture, like what some of those primary metaphors and examples that you see of that, of maybe just moving beyond just sustaining things of keeping the status quo and not doing more harm, but actually like doing things that are gonna rebuild up the earth in some ways and how the immersive technologies could kind of play into that.
[00:27:15.448] Monika Bielskyte: Absolutely. So I think in general we need to move from this talk about sustainability. We've been such a destructive force on the planet that becoming a sustainable civilization is not enough because so much damage has been done already. So we really need to aim to become this sort of regenerative intelligence. Now, how does that tie to my experiences around the world and what we sort of briefly spoke previously about decolonization is it is mostly a Judeo-Christian background that we are sort of anchored in in the West that created that separation between the man and the world It is not a natural separation of course we managed already to export so much of that culture globally that through colonization that it eroded a lot of sort of roots it eroded at the roots of a lot of other cultures but you know looking back especially at all the animist cultures have always recognized that there's no such thing as the man and world you know we are interconnected we one we part of the same thing and it's all about the larger ecosystem it's about coexistence symbiosis with the plant life, with the animal life, with the deities, with other cultures, etc. So it's all about cohabitation. It's not about control and submission and using the other as some kind of infinite resource. But I think we forgot that, right? And we see that being translated into theories such as singularity, right? We want to be more gods than gods to create another god entity. And when we even think about mind uploading, right? We forget that the brain is not just all in a skull, it's a distributed brain and the best theories that we have right now of consciousness is that consciousness is being birthed specifically that interaction of sort of distributed brain within the body, body with an environment, environment with all of its interactions, right? And that's not just a basic algorithm that we can employ, it's not just mathematical calculations It's a sort of very complex interaction that cannot be oversimplified and reduced But when we look at all of that through that Judeo-Christian lens, we reduce it all into a binary So it fascinates me actually now when we're heading out of this 2D space into computational space, when we're heading out of binary computing into quantum computing, we're heading to a lot of these indigenous notions. I'm fascinated with how the similarity of the way neural networks see the world and sort of psychedelic visions induced by medicinal plants such as ayahuasca, peyote, San Pedro, of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon and Central America. And so these connections are very, very fascinating. As well as you'll find interesting parallels between African cosmology, Hinduist mythologies, and sutras, and sort of ideas of the way the world is constructed. And something very interesting that might seem sort of about semantics and something simple, but I think that notion was actually quite important. I was doing a big project with Mexico City. We're looking into the future of Mexico City and specifically how creativity could underwrite a lot of that future. But in order to think about the future, we looked, we try to look into the history, right? What is the history of Mexico City? How Mexico City was ahead of its time, you know, like aquaponics existed in Mexico City more than 500 years ago. and then the layers of culture that has been built upon it and today this vast sprawling megalopolis that Mexico City is and the complexity of its social strata, cultural strata and then the richness that can be found within it and how we could look at that complexity not as an issue but as an opportunity for the future I mean, it was just an incredible project, you know, led by a dear friend of mine, Gabriela Gomez-Montt. She's the co-founder and director of Laboratorio para la Ciudad, which is part of Mexico City municipality government. And a conversation we had is how it's not about going back in history and being, oh, that thing was better before. But it's about going deep. And it was almost like unpeeling these layers. and sort of false histories written by the winners and going deep into what the culture was about what its true stories and how we could take inspiration from it and not conserve in the past and be like oh that thing was great right how that nostalgia wouldn't become poison but how we could look in those deeper things and imagine what is the future pathway and future inspiration therein, right? So that not going back but going deep was something very, very interesting. And another big takeaway, I think, from this Mexico City project and thinking of what is the role of creativity in the future and creativity not as some kind of like hippy-dippy kind of idea or thing, But really, what is real economical value of creativity? And especially in the age of technological automation, where so many of the most prized hard skills will become automated away by AIs and robots, and how creative thinking and taking X, adding creativity is, you know, like we all spoke about, you know, take X and add AI, and that's like your startup of the future, but how take X and add creativity, and that's the answer of survival tactics towards the future. And so what interests me a lot is the notion of the future economy that could sustain infinite growth, because our economic model is based on infinite growth. But it's stuff-based infinite growth in a world of finite resources. So it's a linear economy. We take natural resources, turn them into goods, turn them into waste. It cannot continue. Infinite growth cannot continue in the world of finite resources. But what if we think of economy based on creation of knowledge and experience? We can definitely imagine infinite growth in that space. And what if the value becomes not you know Lamborghinis and fancy cars and yachts and like penthouses overlooking Central Park or whatever right like things that we cannot have more of but we start thinking of culture and knowledge as a real economic currency and that's of course very kind of a you know very utopian vision of the future, but maybe some of that is something that we need. And specifically, that taps into conversation about immersive media technology. These escapist fantasies of Ready Player One, for example, promoted. People start forgetting about their physical lives, and it all becomes about this escape space in a virtual place. So you could say, oh, but then they maybe consume less in their physical life. But then if those experiences that are being created is just this escapist fantasy that takes people further away from the planet, takes people further away from each other, then that is very problematic. That's why I've always been interested, how do we think of knowledge creation and culture and economy built around that, that is not about an escape. but it's really about going someplace not physical so that you could enter that digital possibility space to expand your potential, to gain new understanding, to gain new knowledge that is maybe inaccessible in a physical realm or very difficult to access in the physical realm, but it's all about going back to the physicality. It's all about bringing it back to real life. It's all about creating actual change in this physical world that we inhabit. So how can we create that feedback loop between the two? And I think as we're moving that paradigm of computational space, of interactive space, of experiences that we're entering in with the entirety of our bodies, We actually need the creators to be the people that engage with their bodies, that engage with the physical world, that engage with the lived reality, that engage with other human beings. And so that's what makes me believe to think that the kind of creators that will do the truly positively groundbreaking work will be a whole different creative species than what we've been seeing. you know, people that have been mostly designing video games and digital and even interactive experiences to this day. Not that there wouldn't be overlap, but I think there's a whole new sort of opportunity space or maybe collaborations, right, between the teams of people. Some members of a team go and really experience and capture what is sort of that IRL experience of the world that really gives us a sensation of mind, body, soul, spirit, heart expansion, magic, wonder, awe, and then maybe the technical folks will help to translate those ideas. The experiences that we need to create cannot be theorized, cannot just be imagined, cannot be brought together by perusing Tumblr and Pinterest boards. You actually need to go and physically experience real life and then see how it can be not recreated in the digital space, because the most interesting stuff will not be recreations of physical reality. I think the most interesting stuff will be the adding onto the physical experience, right? Like understanding what affects us deeply in a physical realm, and then how we can add that whole digital augmentation on it. How we could take that deep understanding, what affects us physically, and add a whole new psychological layer to it and a possibility layer because we're not bound by earthly gravity. We're not bound by earthly rules. So what are these new rules, right? What are these new rules? Because things need to make sense for our mind to believe in us, but things don't have to make sense in that sort of same earthly way. So I'm just really fascinated by the much deeper engagement that we will need with the real world, with real human interactions. You know, it's interesting. I'm saying the word real as if digital was not real. I really need to say physical and digital and where these two things meet, right? Because these digital experiences will become physical as well. And that boundary space is the most sort of fertile ground for really new things to be born in.
[00:38:46.915] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I'm curious if you could explain your vision for how you see something like science fiction and world building as a way to, I guess, prototype some of these ideas, maybe extrapolate some of those seeds that you see just starting to be planted here and maybe even starting to sprout up in small ways. what they look like when they come into full bloom, and how the immersive technologies like VR and AR can start to have everybody start to do this type of world building, which is projecting out imagined futures that maybe have this layer of virtualization, but is able to facilitate these different types of interactions that you see, as you say, that the user experience is human experience that sort of implies that part of the future of this design is creating these different contexts under which that people can interact and have unique novel human experiences that they've never had before. And so just curious to hear how you think of the role of both world building and science fiction towards that means.
[00:39:46.055] Monika Bielskyte: Can I come to this question, but I want to backtrack to something I spoke before. Sure. Cool. So actually, as per what we spoke previously, what really interests me a lot is how this massive difference that we'll experience when the content moves from the frame into the space. When the content existed within a frame, we needed to compete with everything else in our reality. So it had to be sort of fast and aggressive and sharp-edged and really sort of bright in colors, contrasted, etc. However, when the content becomes completely spatialized and we are in it with our physical bodies, the psychological aspect of all of that, from color to shape, to speed, that's a whole different ballgame. The way we will physically react to stuff that we don't mind at all when it's on a little screen. and can become incredibly aggressive, incredibly infringing on our space, and extremely psychologically triggering. And it was a whole area that needs to be discussed. So actually, in the last couple of years, I've been trying to find as much time as I can to dive deeper, a little bit of neuroscience space and speak more with neuroscientists. in how these experiences and this kind of content could be affecting our brain and how could we understand deeper the longer term impact it could have on our bodies and our brain wiring as well and what kind of damage and trauma it could be causing and that's why I'm quite frustrated by the lack of maybe attention to be given to the kind of finesse that we need in the flow, in the speed, in the texture, in the color, and the psychological effect of it all. How we need things to be much more about the light and the atmosphere, and we need things to be more soothing, and more caressing, and have a sensation of it being caring. And I believe that those kind of experiences will be the ones that will deliver most value to people's lives. And those will be the kind of experiences that people will return to. Because a lot of stuff that is being created today, we check out, it's fun, but we don't really want to come back to it. And it's everything, right, from the user interface, how something very flat and 2D pops into our eyeballs, and it comes way too close to our bodies, especially, I think women and folks of color feel that because we're so much more sensitive of things sort of infringing on our physical space because it represents some kind of danger, uninvited attention. Production companies and startups and a platform and hardware space, I believe we really need to be hiring more creatives, more designers that could explore those aspects and that could create things that aren't just a demo of technology, but can really deliver not just our intellectual expectation, what technology can do, but to our psychological expectation. could make us actually feel good in a way that is lasting. Not just to be fun for that moment, but could give a lasting effect of making us feel good. That is not just some kind of dumb escape fantasy situation. So that stuff is really, really interesting for me. And I think when you look through my world design work, you can see how much I focus on things that aren't 2D, how much I focus on things that are very immersive and atmospheric and delicate. And then, you know, a lot of folks will scream back at me being like, oh, but that's very high production value and it's very high poly, et cetera. But it doesn't have to be that. You know, sometimes it's really finding a ways how our imagination can work within those constraints. And sometimes really just finding that balance, but you have to have that intention, right? You have to have that intention to create something that psychologically makes people feel good, that psychologically tells them that we care about them and how they will feel through that experience and after it, right? And so maybe that plugs into your question about science fiction world design and immersive media technology space and where that merges. What's interesting for me is that for the long time, it's almost like I lived these two lives. On one side, I'm sort of a creative director in a sci-fi world design space, having started more with the commercial work and then moved into movies and TV series and sadly not video games yet. Just a shout out, I'd love to work on a video game that is not primarily violence-based. I don't want to work on a first-person shooter. And I want to work on some dope sci-fi video game that is about building and creating and solving problems and not killing each other. But there are very few opportunities to do that, right? But for me, that connection totally always made sense. My life, my work in the immersive media tech space, and my work in world design, the first time I put a headset on, I was like, this is the medium for the world design. Like, this is the place where world design could come to its full realization, obviously, right? Because when we see things on a screen, we see there's a tiny glimpse into a world that was created. We were having this conversation with a different of mine, Hannah Beachler, who's a production designer of Black Panther. And she was telling me about all the research work that she'd done and all the stories behind the world design of Black Panther. and then how little of all of that we end up seeing on a screen. Because screen time is always focused on action. And I think wrongly, the industry seems to have been thinking that immersive media tech should also be focused on action. And I always believed that immersive media space should be focused on exploration. I just want to go and walk around the world of Wakanda and have some interactions with the characters in there, but really just like explore and learn and understand and see more and let me be guided by my curiosity rather than by some kind of claustrophobic tricks that are being played on me. Time, space or action closing in on me, so I have to run, rush, try to escape, etc. I don't really want to do that. The world of Wakanda is so dope, I just want to walk around, right? Just be. But while being there, also learn. Because what's interesting too, right, when you add the interactive element, what we could be seeing and understanding is how Hannah's research on the African continent in African cultures has actually informed, right? So you could be able to see what she created and also see where it comes from, what its story. In her voice, could you be whispering in your ear, what is the story behind it? And so more of that type of exploration model of interaction should be done, I think, in the immersive media space. Just today, actually, we're having lunch with Paul Raphael. from Felix and Paul you know dear friend and collaborator and I think one of the more wonderful people in a VR space together with Felix of course you know Felix and Paul always together and you know we're working on this new project I can't speak much about but it's very much about that you know it's sort of this wondrous world that is built on real science and technology but with a whole lot of natural wonder and exploring very specific aspect of nature and just today we spoke how a lot of it should really be interactive because we want people to be able to explore that space and to really indulge in that sense of wonder and see the beauty from many different aspects and find the kind of peace and solace yet also satisfy their curiosity with it. So that kind of stuff is really interesting for me. Now, your question about prototyping futures, like why VR, AMR is the most interesting space for it. So let's take an example of climate change. Today, most of the content that focuses on climate change tends to be very preachy. You know, that's how terrible things have been or become or will be, etc. And then on the other side, you have the kind of content that is sort of planet Earth, blue planets, David Attenborough stuff, that is look at these exotic whales and how beautiful they are, et cetera. And in some way, it authorizes nature again. What really, really interests me is to really combine these two, show people the beauty and wonder of natural environments, but then make them understand the consequences of their actions. So you bring people to a space where their senses are engaged with what an incredible environment that is. And then you get them to do a series of actions, and then they see the consequences of actions. So you enter that simulation, and you're making certain choices, and you see the outcomes. And I think that's the most powerful non-preacher way to make people understand that when there's this, there's that, right? And how everything's interconnected, interrelated, and everything that we do ends up being a certain reality. So that's an example of climate change, but a similar example for the future of cities. It's very hard sometimes for the policymakers to pass unpopular policies or say that we need to collect more taxes in order to achieve this and this or that. However, if we could create a simulation what a city will look like if we invest in this particular effort, in this particular project, in this particular infrastructure, in this particular social aspect of the city. And then we can bring in a simulation of what that could be. In the virtual reality space, so people from everywhere around the world could enter and experience that. But also an augmented reality space, where people that can physically come to the city, they could see how that particular area of the city or that particular building or that particular park could be changed and innovated and what kind of life that could bring to it. And I think if we could do that efficiently and if we could really bring creatives, you know, some of the world's top creatives to work on projects like that, it'd be much easier to actually help the citizens understand why certain things matter, right? And actually with a friend of mine, several years ago in Brazil, we had this idea for a political campaign for the opposition party. That's why my heart is being a little torn out of my chest right now because we had this idea of a campaign of creating a simulation of what would happen if such a president as Jair Bolsonaro would be elected and what would happen to the city, what would happen to all these incredible street art in Rio and Sao Paulo, what would happen to the Rio Carnival, right? What would happen to some of these sort of most beloved traditions and festivities and aspects of a city if this regressive government is elected, and what would happen, how it could flourish if a progressive government is elected. And I think that campaign would have been amazing, but we didn't get to do that, and nobody had got to do that, and maybe we'll get to do that on some other political campaign and really, really use the immersive media technology to create the kind of simulations that would help the people to understand how their actions and how their engagement matters and how future doesn't happen somewhere else. It's not somebody else's choice. It's what we do and also what we choose to not do. Because future happens not just by our actions. It also happens by our inaction. It happens by our apathy. I mean, here in America, right, like, we know that very well, right? Last election happened the way it happened because most people didn't vote. So I wish that this technology and this media would be used for these kind of purposes. But more than anything, what we will see being used, you know, as Street always finds uses for its things, you know, William Gibson says, right? It'll be used more for Cambridge Analytica on steroids. filter bubbles of Facebook that we had for the last election, the sort of targeted misinformation campaign now in Brazil, powered by WhatsApp, empowered, I mean, ironically, but a WhatsApp platform was used for it. So imagine where we're going when the digital and physical starts blurring and becomes indistinguishable. And it brings us to Black Mirror episode, right? When the soldiers were made believe that their targets were literally cockroaches and not other humans through the AR augmentation. I mean, this is an extreme case, you know, and Black Mirror, of course, pushes everything to that, you know, but the metaphor is true, right? Like, I was at a very interesting talk by Christopher Wiley, Cambridge Analytica's whistleblower, and he spoke how Cambridge Analytica was not created to serve political campaigns per se. It was created for cultural warfare and to essentially infiltrate criminal cells, terrorist cells, and target as a tumor and turn the cells of a tumor onto itself to self-destroy. And then it was applied to the world's most powerful nation. And society started tearing apart its own fabric. And it's not like none of these issues were already here. All of that stuff was already part of our reality, but the technology augmented it. And what happens when those digital augmentations literally become indistinguishable from reality? And then who has access to that, and who can manipulate our experience of the world? So these are very important questions that we need to raise, we need to ask, and we need to really, really, really think, how are we using this technology for good? Because it will always be used for bad. The bad always happens. The street always finds users for its things. And so if we're not consciously striving for the positive usage, some positive usage will happen, but not enough. And we're not on a kind of timeline where we can just hope that somebody else, a third party, will create something great on it. And that's why when companies are raising millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions of funds or sometimes billions, and they're not investing into actual positive applications that would be created and done and engineered for their technology, it's just not a very conscious way to be and to behave and to think of the future. So I hope that, you know, with bigger political awareness and bigger reality hitting at us harder and harder, more of these folks in the decisive power will start considering this option of actually consciously thinking what good things can we do and how can we prevent terrible things being done with it.
[00:55:23.397] Kent Bye: Great. And finally, what do you think is the ultimate potential of virtual and augmented reality and what it might be able to enable?
[00:55:35.233] Monika Bielskyte: So I'm actually quite surprised how one of the earliest and one of the most celebrated VR pieces, which is my dear friend's marshmallow laser feast in the eyes of the animal, has not sprung a whole lot of other things in that vein. What I mean that vein is not similar aesthetically or kind of similar in sort of what it does specifically, but more what it allowed us to do. And when this very early janky stage of VR, what it did, it allowed us to perceive the world through the eyes of an animal. So something that really we cannot do IRL. And so this idea of expanding our senses into something that our physical bodies would not allow us otherwise was something really, really interesting for me. How we could bring this whole new way of understanding a new way of being, a new way of thinking, the way we are, not just intellectual, but physical, and deep understanding how other entities, be it plants or animals, or other human beings, or even neural networks, what is their experience of the world, and how having that experience, having that understanding could expand our own understanding. I think is the most fascinating era for me. I mean in general I think a lot of what will happen when we'll start being able to have these other senses that interestingly enough you know a lot of that stuff already is part of indigenous traditions as we spoke earlier right you know having a sensation of being a bird or being an animal or entering some kind of like metaphysical realm. I mean these are all part of the rituals that shamans from time immemorial have been bringing us to. And how interesting that now we're developing all these new technology of which the highest purpose maybe could be that. And I just hope that it will not become sort of industrialized, but it could retain some of that depth and magic that some of those rituals had. I mean, this is a very sort of esoteric part of it, but I'm personally very interested. because it could expand us as humans, it could expand us as a civilization in ways quite previously unimagined. And I think the value, honestly, the value of beauty and inspiration should never be overrated. I think we forget, we just focus so much on just practical problems, and it's very, very important to tackle practical problems, especially all of the issues around inequality, be it sexism, racism, ableism, ageism, xenophobia, and all of the issues kind of around that space, and the consequences of all of that. This is very, very, very important. But for me, it's also very important to find ways to take us out of that rut and out of that, you know, like I think in the media format that we have today, we are so not present. On a screen format of the media is making us just skip through everything and just flip through it and never, never fully be there, never fully be present. And I think as humanity, that's one of the things that we need to relearn most is actually being present. actually being there, actually paying attention, actually listening, actually hearing. And if this technology could help us to remind ourselves of what we are capable of and what we forgot in this pursuit of gadgetization of everything, I think that'd be incredible. Whether it will do that or not remains to be seen. But in most of my talks, especially when I speak about science fiction, I try to remind people that it's actually not the technologists, not the Sergey Brin's and Elon Musk's and Larry Page's that are the most powerful agents of the future. I firmly believe that it's those who control the fantasy that control the future. It's people that create fictions, right? Because fictions, if they're compelling at all, always bleed back into reality. And all of these biggest technologists and scientists, they were actually, initially were inspired by something to go and build technologies for this particular world that they thought that they want to inhabit. And it usually started with a science fiction book or a movie or a game or something like that. And so that power of imagining a reality that we can be in and that we can be part of should never be underestimated. And today when we are mostly experiencing the reality of violence and indifference and cruelty, and ignorance. We keep creating technologies for that kind of world. And if we could bring people, not just in a format of a film, which is sort of still a storytelling, a narrative, but really bring people into this alternative reality that is about caring, caring for each other, caring for the environment, caring for our own bodies, caring for our own minds, caring for our own souls as well. that reality of listening, that reality of being attentive, that reality where success is not monetary, where success is not about what you get but what you contribute, and would make it compelling enough, then maybe the future generation of scientists, technologists, innovators could set out to try and build that kind of world. And so I just really, really hope that whoever's listening, Creators and technologists could think of how we could fund this kind of stuff, how we could fund experiences and technological tools that could allow us to access those kind of experiences that would make us believe that a different kind of world is possible, a world that is more conscious and a world that is more caring.
[01:02:18.343] Kent Bye: Great. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the immersive community?
[01:02:23.855] Monika Bielskyte: You know, life begins where your comfort zone ends. And I think it is very important to get out of a space that is familiar for you. And it's not about traveling half of the world away. I mean, that's what I do. I try to go to all kinds of places that give me a whole new understanding of what reality is and what reality can be. But sometimes it's really just walking a few blocks away. Sometimes it's really just connecting to a community that is culturally very different from you. Sometimes it's simply like stepping away from your screen and really engaging with your body. And I think that's what this community needs, is to step out of whatever feels like your comfort zone, go and physically experience something very different, see the beauty in that plurality of experience, and see how that can be translated into immersive media space. That's one. And then second thing, really think much deeper of the psychological aspect of the kind of experience you design. You know, from the interface to the characters to the spaces. Does it feel aggressive? Does it feel flat? What does it really make people feel? And how you could make it less aggressive, less flat, less of a caricature of a reality. And then maybe point number three, hire amazing creatives. Honestly, don't save your money on that. When you're putting so much money into creating that demo, and it just remains a demo, and it's not visually spectacular, it's not sonically spectacular, it's not spectacular in its dialogue, or whatever is that element of a spoken word conversation, etc. You fall short. All that investment you put in a project falls short. If it's only good because it's new, paraphrasing Bruce Sterling here, if it's only good because it's new, it's not going to be good for long. You have to look at it like it's already passe. Push away that novelty effect. Even when it's old, even when it's passe, it still has to be relevant, it still has to be good. And not just because it was the first thing of a kind, but it was the first good thing of a kind. And it will only happen when you will hire dope creatives. And those creators might not fully understand your technology. It is your role to explain to them what this technology is really about, but you're not going to create anything in this space that is so immersive, right? And it's sort of sonic and visual and then further down the line also sensorial aspect. If you do not have top-notch creatives working with you, that art should not be done by engineers. It has to be a collaboration. And similarly that creatives will not do incredible experience in that space unless they associate themselves with the top people in a technical field. So this has to be about stepping out of your comfort zone, having conversations with people that have very complementary skill sets, Trying to push new boundaries and that collaboration, not just being about it being another thing, but what is that transformational effect that he wanted to have? What is the kind of real behavioral change that you think it could trigger? Work towards that. And even if you fail while you're trying to do that, at least you will fail because you try to do something amazing, not just because it was another shitty demo of something that doesn't ultimately matter. So, yeah, I think that's about that. Work with amazing people, hire dope artists, and try to create something that will have world-changing effects.
[01:06:19.462] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Monica, I just wanted to thank you for joining me today. So, thank you.
[01:06:24.225] Monika Bielskyte: Thank you. Always a pleasure.
[01:06:26.326] Kent Bye: So, that was Monica Abiliskita. She's a world builder and futurist. So, I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that, first of all, Well, there's a number of different themes that I think were arising in the course of this conversation. There was a lot that we covered, but I think that some of the big themes come back to the interconnectedness of all things and these different decolonization movements that are taking centralized systems and starting to decentralize them in different ways. And so let's break that down a little bit. So the decolonization is just this idea that Western culture has been able to put a certain idea of what our Western values are, but also seeing things through this lens of capitalism in the market. And there's this going back towards not seeing that success comes from commercial success, but seeing that whatever you're doing has some sort of impact. It's not something that can necessarily be reduced down to a singular number, but it's something that changes the culture. And so she sees that there's this movement of diaspora going back to their place of cultural origin to see how they can make a larger contribution to what's happening in the culture. So there's also this idea of designing for and moving towards something that is designing with. Something that's going to be able to take in that contextual information of what's happening in any particular region. If we look at what has been happening in Myanmar, by the way, there's an amazing documentary called The Facebook Dilemma. That's a two-part series that just aired on Frontline on PBS this past week. I highly recommend you find a way to be able to watch this piece, because I think it really gets into a lot of the crux of what we're discussing here in this conversation. And that is essentially that Facebook has been doing a lot of designing for rather than designing with and trying to do this aggressive growth around the world. And there's a lack of cultural awareness of what's happening in specific contexts. If we just look at Myanmar, for example, we have the genocide of the Rohingya. And so when we have these centralized systems that are going in and are not sensitive to whatever the context of what's happening in that region, if they don't even speak the language, then How can they expect that their product is going to be able to have the intended consequences of what their final causation is for what their intention is for even being in there in the first place? So there's this concept of this contextual technology where it's more about what is organically emerging from the culture that's going to be able to solve the needs that are unique to that culture, but also to integrate whatever different values that they have that are relative to that culture, rather than having something come from the outside and be able to have this disruptive effect. And sometimes that disruptive effect can have a great impact, but there's often a backlash that then makes things even worse. So I also see that a big theme that was arising throughout this conversation was the interconnectedness of all things. And so it's really looking at the earth, the sense of embodiment, our emotions, these indigenous cultures, the ecology, and how we're actually in relationship to all these things. And so if we're creating these escapist types of experiences, that it's really an isolating effect where you're not actually in deeper relationship what's happening with the world around you. So rather than escapist interactions, what are the types of experiences that can invoke this sense of wonder and awe and beauty and have this art that is able to both transform and inspire us to be able to start to participate? And I think that's the other thing is like rather than acting as an individual, there's this sense of being able to collaborate and cooperate and create these ecosystems. And so there's this Ubuntu concept, which is I am because we all are. And it's not this Descartes, I think, before I am. it's more of what Desmond Tutu says is, I am because I belong, I participate, I share. And so there's this yin dimension of this cooperation and this collaboration where you can actually have this regenerative culture and that it's actually culture and knowledge and education, all these things that the more that you participate in it, the more that it is additive of this diversity and this concept that we all have these unique perspectives and that the more that people are cooperating and collaborating in this diverse ecosystem than the more valuable it is. And so it's moving away from this mindset that all of the innovation is gonna come out of Silicon Valley and San Francisco and California, but yet what is the renaissance of culture that's coming from around the world that is going to be able to be shared through the medium of virtual reality and augmented reality and these experiential technologies? And so what Monica was asking is, what would it look like to enter in a digital possibility space where you're able to expand your potential, to gain new understanding and to gain new knowledge? And that if we want to create a future that's not only just sustainable, but that's moving into regenerative cultures to be able to repair the damage that's already been done. If we have finite resources, then we cannot have infinite growth with finite resources. That's just a basic reality of mathematics. And so if we're putting our value onto having objects and ownership, then it's not about the ownership of those things. It's about having access to the experiences of those things. And so once we do this paradigm shift of moving into this spatial computing and experiential technologies, then we can start to have an economy that's based upon experiences and knowledge that you actually do have the capability to have this infinite growth because it is more regenerative. It's no limitations or constraints around those resources. And the other thing that's really fascinating about what Monica is doing is that she's actively collaborating with different cities around the world to be able to say, these are the trends of where things are going. What does it mean to orient an entire city design that is really encouraging and emphasizing these types of creative economies? You can start to do visualizations within virtual reality technologies to be able to say, hey, this is the budget that we have to be able to actually create this in physical reality. We can have a virtualized experience of that to see what kind of social dynamics might be able to happen. But wouldn't it be great to actually have this and to build this? And don't you want to be able to contribute some of your taxes to be able to build these different systems that are going to be supporting these types of community dynamics? And so there is this role of virtual reality that can start to play the role of science fiction, which is to craft entire worlds that are imagining a specific future. And what Monica said is that it's not the technologists like Elon Musk or the founders of Google or Facebook that are really having the most impact on the future, but it's actually the people who are controlling the fantasies are the ones who control the future. it's the science fiction storytellers and the narrative designers who are creating imagined futures that we want to live into and that if the only vision that we have right now of the future of virtual reality is the ready player one dystopic future where the IOI centralized power is going to be able to control everything that's kind of what we're creating and we're already having this battle between these major companies that are trying to own the platform and to be able to control the ecosystem and that We need to have alternative visions, which are much more slower. And that was the thing that Monica was saying, is that once you move out of the frame of the 2D frame, whenever you're looking at something that's a 2D frame, it's something that needs to be fast and sharp edges and this very young energy where you're taking very aggressive actions. But then when you try to translate that same type of aesthetic into an immersive environment, then it becomes overwhelming and too aggressive in that we need to have much more flow and slower speeds and texture and focus on the lighting and the ambience and something that's caressing and caring and something that feels good. Something that you want to explore and just be in that sense of this full embodied presence. And so what's it mean to be able to cultivate some of these experiences that can give people that type of experience that makes them feel good. And finally, it's just this concept of if you want to travel fast, travel alone. If you want to travel far, travel together. And when I heard Monica say this, it really hit me. It really struck and resonated because I feel like I have been doing the Voices of VR podcast. In a lot of ways, I am not alone because I wouldn't be able to do this without my support from Patreon. And I really want to just express my gratitude to say that I literally wouldn't be able to do what I do and wouldn't be able to have these types of conversations without Being able to have the support that I have from patreon to be able to do this type of coverage And I just wanted to pause and just say thank you And that it's it's It's really scary for me to be able to ask for help and to receive help because I do like to travel fast, but I feel like I'm reaching the phase of the work that I'm doing here that I've traveled fast enough and have really operated by myself quite a bit. It's really just me that does the Voices of VR in support from my support from Patreon. I do want to take what I'm doing here on the podcast to the next level and to travel far and to go from just where I'm at right now and that means traveling together and so what's that mean to be able to actually engage my listener community to be able to create something that's greater than just myself and to create a future that we all want to live into and have this vision of something that we want to create together and what is that mission and I think that I'm still honestly trying to figure out exactly what that looks like. I know that the core mission of the Voices of VR podcast is to educate and to capture this oral history of what's happening with the virtual reality community but there's a an educational component there too which is that it's just sharing knowledge and information and Honestly, that knowledge and information is really inaccessible for a lot of people if you haven't been listening to the podcast for a really long time. And so getting transcripts done, redoing the website, figuring out how to do tags in more atomized ways, and maybe even creating like this memory palace of all of the different content from the Voices of VR. that's one vision and figuring out the logistics of how to actually coordinate that and to turn this theory of cooperation and collaboration and community building into an actual practice with actually putting that into action where we can actually say I am because I belong, I participate, I share and I think there are going to be different ways where my audience of the Voices of VR can start to participate because Honestly, I feel like virtual reality and augmented reality are these highly leveraged technologies that are helping to shape our immersive future, and they're going to transform individual consciousness and to shift culture. So your involvement within this immersive industry can help to answer some of these fundamental challenges and problems that are facing our world today that Monica is discussing in this podcast. the people who control the fantasy and the visions of the future are the ones who actually impact the trajectory of where that future actually goes. And so I would love to see the community here at the Voices of VR be a part of helping to create that immersive future and for the Voices of VR podcast itself to be able to help educate and to bring more people into the fold to be able to have the resources and knowledge that they need to be able to actually make that future. And so having the transcripts is going to be a huge deal just because it's going to be able to actually get translated into other languages. It's going to help me to write books and to produce other content. And it's going to make it possible and easier to have this memory palace of all this content that you could start to explore in some sort of immersive way. And what does that look like? So if you want to contribute and become involved, then please do become a member of the Patreon. That's a great way to be able to help to provide some financial support to the foundations of the work that I'm doing here. And there's going to be other ways to get involved as well. But for right now, I think the thing that you can do is to just make the decision to become a supporter and a member of my Patreon. If I can find my 1,000 true fans who, on average, are able to give me $100 per year, then that's gonna put me in a financial position that's sustainable and thriving, rather than just barely scraping by, and to be able to expand and grow into these other initiatives and these other things that I actually wanna do with the podcast. And so, if that makes you excited, then come join us and be a part of this immersive future and the potentials that Monica is talking about here in this interview. So, to become a member of the Patreon today, you can go to patreon.com slash Voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
