November 12, 2019 • 58 mins
Augmented reality adds a digital layer over the real world and soon it will revolutionize how we live. Ultra-tailored information will be everywhere we look, creating a richer, more personalized experience in everything from surgery to walking down the street.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's
guest producer Andrew over there. Uh and um, this is
stuff you should know everybody, the real, real edition, but
(00:24):
not the online consignment retailer. Just meaning real twice over.
That's right, very real. Yeah, not augmented it anyway. As
a matter of factor. About as low tech as it
comes as far as podcasts go. Oh, I think all
podcasts are pretty low tech, right, No, some people really
kind of you know, jazz it up a little razzle dazzle. Sure, Like,
(00:47):
could you imagine a world where someone listens to Stuff
you should Know and they're wearing a headset and in
front of their face that was either us or what
we're talking about, or any of a mix of those things,
I like, the second idea or what we're talking about,
or if it was an animated version of us. Remember
(01:08):
those animated shorts. Yeah, gosh, those were good. Yeah. And
you know we have a mutual friend, uh who I
will tell name off air to you who was getting
into this quite a few years ago with another company
and came to me and was like, Hey, what do
you think about maybe one day you and Josh, you know,
(01:30):
doing these shooting videos. And at first I was like, Nope,
now hear me out shooting videos to where we were,
let's say, walking people on a virtual tour of like
a neighborhood in New York City and telling about the
history and the way that we do and stuff like,
Oh man, that would be awesome. You think, yes, dude,
(01:50):
I think people would love that. I would love that. Well,
this person was also a big believer in a R
and said, dude, in a few years, you won't be
able to buy a pair of glasses or sunglasses that
don't have this built in. Yeah. I think your friend
is right. Well, no, this was a few years ago.
It's like it's it should be happening right now according
(02:11):
to this person. Yeah, I remember at the time thinking
not only will that not happen in a few years,
but that will never happen. I don't know, man, I
don't know. So I I see what you're saying, Like,
with a lot of tech, there's like, you know, in
five years, this is going to be all the rage.
And then five years comes and goes, and we're not
that much further along. But if you step back and
(02:32):
look at the progress that augmented reality is making, um
I it's I think your friend is ultimately going to
be proven right. Maybe not over the same time frame obviously,
because they totally failed with their prediction, but I think
in the end, your friend will be vindicated. I hope
is this somebody? Is this somebody that I like, because
(02:54):
I hope it's not someone I dislike, and I'm vindicating
them because I feel like I'm trapped here. Here's my
prediction is that in the future there could be for
sure people that are into this and that you can
easily buy glasses like this. But I think the notion
that this is all of humans at some point walking
around like this is silly. Well, we'll see, we'll see.
(03:19):
We'll revisit this in five years, and I think things
will will be a lot different than I think. You'll
be singing a different tune walking around with your VR
glasses on. All right, mark the date everyone, Okay, five
years from now. Yep, I'm not gonna say I'll buy
everyone a beer if that Halloween twenty uh twenty four, Yeah,
that's five years from now, if we don't look out
(03:41):
of our house and see everybody walking around with living
a virtual augmented world, right or I guess it's possible
that that could also be the title of a rob
zombie movie to Halloween. There's nothing but augmented Michael Myers everywhere,
that's true. I just wanted to go ahead and I
guess foreshadow my future poo pooing. Okay, that's fine, that's fine.
(04:04):
That's easy to do when you're talking about predictions. But
I guess we should probably tell everybody what we're talking about.
It's augmented reality. It's in the title, so you should
have some heads up. But to give kind of a
brief definition of augmented reality, augmented reality, I'm gonna say
it a fourth time here. Augmented reality is a type
(04:25):
of technology that adds like a digital layer, computer generated
layer of UM augmentation to real life. And it can
be really actually any kind of sensory input. Typically it's
something visual, but it could also be haptic feedback, so
tactile like touch. It can be UM sound. You can
(04:49):
be walking through a certain place that will trigger like
a sound. Eventually it might be smells um warmth. Who
knows what we'll be able to do, But right now
most people are typically talking about visual stuff. Yeah, well,
they could combine the I smell with VR or a R.
I love that idea, man, I think the I smell
(05:10):
was just ahead of its time, not that it was
a bad idea. They've already gotten music. They've had that
since the Walkman. Sure, I guess it's a it's primitive
a R SHT. So I don't know that I would
call a sound a R except for the fact that
maybe you could look at something and it's triggered, right,
but it's all there. It's already two. Have us leave
(05:32):
our material world on a daily basis and go somewhere
else entirely Well, that technically is virtual reality, where you're
plunged into an entirely alternative version of reality. Augmented reality
is it's real, it's our normal reality, but there's there's
an extra little touch to it that's digitized. Yeah, but
(05:53):
the videos that I've seen, there was so much going on.
In my opinion, you are leaving the real world. Atcha catch.
I'm not saying you're transported to you know, Venus or anything.
But when you're sitting in a room and there are
screens all in front of your face and the couches.
You know, you can change your couch to a different
fabric virtually, Like, I don't consider that the real world. Okay,
(06:18):
I I think that you might be in the minority.
But okay, oh, I think we'll see in five years
that I'm not. Okay. So if you if you kind
of are like, well, I still don't I don't quite
get it. What we're talking about is Pokemon Go. Basically, yeah,
so Pokemon Go in two thousand and sixteen, it was
an enormous hit. It's this game where you walk around
(06:40):
and you basically play Pokemon in the real world. You
go visit with Pokemon creatures and try to capture them,
and um, like your score is as is shown on
the screen of your phone and you're using your camera
and it's adding that digitized Pokemon layer to the real
world you're seeing through your camera screen. And it was huge.
Apparently it just past the three billion dollar mark, which
(07:03):
is pretty pretty substantial profit made for a game that's
actually free. It's a free game, but there's a lot
of in app purchases and they've made three billion dollars
off of that so far. So there's a huge appetite
for augmented reality that Pokemon Go showed everyone. Oh for sure.
I think there are plenty of applications for augmented reality
(07:26):
in the future, right and so, UM, we kind of
got into it a little bit. The difference between virtual
reality and augmented reality. Have seen it put really well
in that virtual reality takes the user anywhere and augmented
reality brings everything to the user. Um. I think that's
a great description. But the idea is in in VR,
(07:46):
you're transported to a different world. In augmented reality, your
world is has that digitized layer added to it. And
then there's also something called mixed reality, which if you
read about it, that to me is that's the future
of augmented reality. Yeah. I wasn't quite sure the exact
difference here. It seems like very fine lines definition wise,
(08:07):
it is because augmented reality and mixed reality are virtually
the same thing as just mixed reality is kind of
like the um more sophisticated version of augmented reality. But
a good example that kind of distinguishes the two that
I've seen is, um, let's say that you are you
have your augmented reality phone going and you you hold
(08:27):
a soup can up in front of it. Well, your
your app says, oh, it's the soup. You know it's
it's Campbell's low sodium Tomato soup. Obviously, user friend who's
holding the phone up to the soup can wants to
know more about this soup, and it triggers like some
nutrition facts that aren't found on the label, or maybe
(08:47):
a recipe or something like that. And when you're looking
at this soup can through your phone, the additional layer
of information that's digitized over it that makes it augmented reality,
it doesn't look like it's on the soup can. It's
just like a little it's like you're looking at your
computer screen but it's in front of your face. Yeah,
it's kind of yes, but not nearly sophisticated. That's a
(09:09):
different thing that we'll get into later. But it's just
kind of like this layer of information that's just floating
in space over there. Mixed reality is far more sophisticated,
where if you um held your hand up in front
of in between the soup can and your phone, your
your hand would would what's called acclude it would cover
(09:31):
up that information. That's a big thing and it's really
really hard to do, but it makes the the stuff,
that digitized layer of augmented reality interact with reality that
much more so it could wrap around the soup can.
It could be covered up by something that comes in
between you and it. Um, that's mixed reality, and that's
really ultimately what augmented reality will be in the future. Uh,
(09:56):
we'll see. I'm starting to suspect have a real opinion
about this now. Again, I think there are totally people
the same people that loved Google Glass, which we'll get
too later. Uh, Whereas at the time, I was like,
this is not gonna work. I'm gonna I think you're wrong.
I'm gonna argue against your argument later on. So, UM,
(10:17):
we can explain a little bit about how this works.
It is. We are not tech experts, and we're not
gonna go bother Jonathan Strickland right now, no, or bother ourselves, frankly,
but we can give you sort of a brief the
briefest layman's overview of how this stuff works. Uh, there's
a field of um, I mean, there's a lot of
(10:41):
disciplines in it called computer vision, that's really super complicated,
but for our purposes, I guess we can just say
that computer vision basically, uh understands what's going on in
the world around whoever is using the augmented reality. And
they do this by you know, there's there's got to
(11:04):
be an interaction, and we'll talk about the wearables and
the headsets and stuff as opposed to smartphones. But what
they use is something called a time of flight sensor,
which is sort of works like a bat's use echolocation,
except it's not echolocation. It's infrared light. So they bounced
this light and if you look at these things, it
(11:24):
looks like a almost like a little go pro camera
or something like that on your forehead, which sends out
these pulses of light that are reflected by the objects
around you, and then it measures the delay of that
light reflecting back to you to calculate, you know, everything,
basically the depth of everything around you. Right, And then
(11:48):
every time it makes this measurement, it also says, I'm
a dork, that's right, because you're wearing this on your forehead, right.
And we also see with two eyes, we have binocular vision,
and so in order to simulate that Uh. They have
something called stereo cameras that are you know, uh, basically
placed like your eyeballs are at a fixed distance, and
(12:11):
then triangulates everything together to work with your two eyeballs,
right exactly. So if you look at them, if you
have a new iPhone, if you look at the back,
you'll see that there's two cameras on the back. Um,
some cameras. I think hu way highway. I can't remember
how to pronounce it. They have a phone with three cameras,
but does it? Okay? Um? But the the the input
(12:35):
from these cameras are providing slightly different information to the
onboard brain on your phone, and so it uses this
different information to triangulate it. Basically, um UM differentiates between
the information and says, okay, this is how far away
this this thing is, or this wall is, or this
you know, walkway goes, and it uses that information to
(12:56):
create UM the digitized layer that that is augmented reality
within the space that it realizes it's looking at. It's like, okay,
this is what I have to work with. Let's get rendering.
And that's the next step is rendering, which can be
as simple as UM adding like that layer of text
(13:17):
in front of you when you hold up that soup can.
Or it can be far far more sophisticated, like say,
using a Snapchat filter that makes you look like you're
wearing a cute little cat mask, but no matter where
you move your face up and down, or if you
open your mouth or something like that, it follows it perfectly,
which would actually technically make the Snapchat filter mixed reality
(13:37):
rather than augmented reality. Yeah, I don't do the Snapchat thing,
but you can do that on FaceTime. And I made
the mistake of doing that facetiming my kid, and now
that's all she wants to do whenever FaceTime is be
a monkey or a dinosaur or a lion or a
lizard or a robot or whatever, or which is kind
(13:59):
of fun and it is you know, uh, it is
pretty amazing that on this little phone you can stick
your tongue out and wrinkle your eyes and and you
can do that as a kiddiecat or a monkey in
real time. And so it does all this because of
all the facial facial recognition UM software aboard your phone, UM,
(14:19):
the gyroscope you know where you're like, who who needs
a compass? So I'm not gonna walk around in the
woods with this thing all the time. Actually, do you really? Yeah?
I mean I've got in the woods, but you know me,
I have a terrible sense of direction. So if I'm
in New York or wherever and I'm like, I need
to go north, then it's a very simple way to
find out. Yeah. True, but I'm I've always just used maps,
and it's really good for maps. That's how it knows
(14:41):
which way you're facing is that gyroscope and GPS coordinates.
So it's using all of this stuff, um, along with
facial recognition to to map and track where you're moving.
And no matter whether it's rendering the soup can information
or the snapchat filter, um, it does this. It does
all these calculations in figures out where what's going on
(15:01):
in the room and your motion and where your faces
or where the soup can is all that stuff. It
doesn't every time the camera sends a frame of info
to the to the onboard computer on your phone, which
happens thirty times per second, So these calculations are being adjusted, analyzed,
and re measured, and then the output is being put
out thirty times per second, which is pretty impressive. You
(15:23):
know what. I think you just hit on the key
difference in our outlook on this what it sounds like
you are primed for a r because I am someone
if I'm in New York, let's say, and I will say,
I will say, uh, all right, I know I need
to go northeast to get to this place. So I'll
just chart what northeast is. I'll put the phone in
my pocket and I'll start walking. Start walk, And I
(15:44):
think you are more primed to look at your map
and go along the streets that it's telling you to go.
On m I listened to the computer, is what you're saying. No,
not necessarily, but like the I think those are two
distinct differences of like kinds of people and how they
interact with technology in the world around them. Whereas I
just want to know I'm going northeast and that's correct.
(16:05):
A lot of people are wanted to look at that
map the whole way, and now they're going, like on
the exact right street to get them there. I guess
the quickest right, Which one do you think is correct?
I don't know. I mean I like to meander. Yeah,
I like me and doing too. I'm with you too,
for sure, But I also use ways like everywhere I
(16:26):
drive to I've never used it. It's really helpful, but
I don't I don't just sit like. I don't sit
there and like follow the ways app or anything like
I'm looking out the windows. So I would say I'm
somewhere between between you and like a Pokemon Go player. Well,
I drive Emily crazy because I am quite comfortable get
it unless I'm in a hurry, not getting someplace as
(16:46):
quickly as possible, and she's always like, where are you going.
I'm like, we'll get there eventually. I like that too.
I like that too, So don't mistake me. I'm somewhere
in the middle. But yes, I feel like I'm a
little more um into yeah or um exploited by tech
than you are. So where did we leave off here? Um?
With the two types of augmented reality? Yeah? Did we would?
(17:09):
Did you say those? No, we haven't talked about because
I was just about to talk about marker and marker less. Yeah,
those are the two broad categories. Yeah, and these, I mean,
it's very simple and it makes a lot of sense. Uh.
Marker based is basically if something is sort of pre
programmed and loaded into your program or your app or
your phone, and it knows you know, once you look
(17:30):
up at that thing, like the New York Public Library.
If you're let's say you have an app about New
York history. I keep picking on New York here because
it's easy. Well we were just there too. Yeah, that's right.
So it would have something preloaded about the New York
Public Library that will pop up in front of your face. Right,
it recognizes the library goes oh, oh, I know that thing, yeah, exactly,
(17:52):
and it's it's out there information. It's a marker, yeah,
or you know, could be a QR code, um market
loop can don't forget soup can chuck. Got to know
those sup recipes, right, it's add water. I don't even
add water. I think you're a chump if you add
water to condensed soup, because it's condensed to perfection. If
(18:13):
you ask me, do you just do the straight up? Yeah,
I'd like it to not run off the spoon when
you hold the spoon upside down. Wow, all right, It
depends on the soup. Actually, I'm I'm kidding, but I
have eaten soup that I have not added water too.
I would use a little less water like in a
let's say Campbell's chicken noodle. Sometimes you can get a
(18:34):
little watery, so I'll use like three quarters of a can. Maybe. Hey,
I've got one for you. Have you ever had Progresso's
I don't remember. It's like supposedly they're like healthier version
or whatever, but they have a creamy chicken noodle. It's amazing.
U me got it, And I just happened to be like,
what's in the pantry. I'll open this and I ate it,
and I like it so much that I would have
(18:57):
felt bad not mentioning it. Since we're talking about soup, Yeah,
I'm a fan of can soup, of having that around. Yeah,
it is that time of year. Two it is. It's
can soup time of year. Everyone. No one ever eats
can gaspacho in the summer. Can soup is like a
fall winter kind of thing. This episode brought to you
by Progresso. It's that time of year everyone. I wish
(19:20):
it were that easy. Uh? Where were we? Marker lists
is a little bit different and a little bit trickier. Uh.
It basically means there are no markers, so your device
actually has actually recognize things and be smart enough to
say that's a soup can. Uh. And it's not pre
programmed in but I know what a soup can looks like.
So here's what you do. Add water, right exactly. So
(19:43):
um that Pokemon Go apparently did that. For example, when
you were walking by a river, it would say, oh,
I recognize a river. I recognize this bit of land
or something like that. And it doesn't have actual markers
that are pre programmed. It's just smart enough to know
a river when it sees a river, and it will
show you like a water loving pokemon like gyro dose
(20:06):
or something like that. Oh boy, all right, let's take
a break. I'm gonna forget that ever happened. We'll talk
about the history right after this. Stuff you should know, gosh,
stuff you should know. So this is brand new, right, Yes,
(20:43):
no one has ever done anything with augmented reality until
Pokemon Go in two thousand six. I thought it was
interesting though that the very common thing that people might
not think about football fans is that that first down line. Uh.
And now they have all kinds of off like yards
to go to make a kick maybe and stuff like that,
(21:04):
but their overlays And we talked about that on some
other show some other episode. I can't remember. I couldn't
remember which one it was either, but we've definitely talked
about it. Yeah, but those screen overlays and from is
when they debuted sports vision, the glowing line that is
augmented reality. It is the kind I can get down with. Right, Well,
(21:24):
that's the so that works because you can only see
it from one point of view, right, So it really
works on TV because you can only see from one
point of view, which is the camera's point of view
when you're watching TV. Works really well, and you can
overlay all sorts of cool stuff. But um, what differentiates
(21:44):
that from the augmented reality that's coming around today is
that in the in the stands or whatever, maybe they
could project it so you know, you could see it
from one angle. Um, in the future, meaning like six
months from now, everybody will be sitting around in a
a football stadium and they will be able to see
the first down line from whatever their vantage point or
(22:05):
point of view is by looking through their phone, yeah,
their headset. Eventually, I'll bet if there's not an app
out that you can do that with your phone yet,
I'm it's coming, yeah, very soon, I'm sure. I'm surprised
they haven't overlaid ads on the field and stuff. I'm
surprised by that too, which will probably push things forward
(22:25):
as well. Advertising. So, um, that was the first down
line came out, but it goes back way further than that.
As a matter of fact, thirty years before that, there's
a guy named Ivan Sutherland who is a computer scientist,
and he came up with a headset that you wore.
Um that looks a lot like a scary, clunky, old
(22:47):
turn of the century version of a VR headset, but
it drops you into these like wire frame rooms, wire
frame like you know, line drawn computer generated line drawn
like troni ish kind of rooms. I was gonna say
battle zone, but sure, Um, I don't know what that is. No,
it was it was another arcade game where you put
(23:08):
your face into a into a sort of a headset.
Oh yeah. Was it like a battleship. Yeah, they were
like tanks and things, but it was green wire frame.
It was sort of three D look in and uh
you controlled that your tank with two two controllers like
shifting controllers. I got you. I'm thinking of the one
(23:29):
where it was like you're looking through a periscope and
you had to like torpedo UM ships. So like you're
like you're the joystick. Were two handles coming off of
like the periscope face plate that you were putting your
face up too. Do you remember that one? I do?
What was that one? I don't remember. It was probably
just called periscope or something stupid like that sub submarine bomb.
(23:51):
Maybe I don't think you said what year it was
for I've been settled on though, that was the summer
of love, my friends eight. I thought sixty nine was
a summer of love. I mean, no, I really wasn't.
But now I'm blessing that didn't mean that at all.
This is what I'm saying, Like these things just kinda
(24:13):
happened to me. I'm a victim. I think sixty eight
was a summer of love. I might be wrong. Well
let's just say both were. Okay, sixty nine was put
post coital right or pre wow? Uh. So there was
another UM researcher in four named Myron Krueger at Yukon.
(24:37):
It sounds like a Halloween villain, and he sounds like
a seventies computer researcher if I've ever heard Iron Krueger. Yeah,
that's true. The Krugs. He uh invented something called video Place,
which if you look up, is kind of fun to
look at. Two. It was interactive, and just think of
the most rudimentary VR you could think of, UM, which
(25:00):
is like someone going up to like a a nineteen
seventies Apple computer, if there was such a thing, and
being able to touch the screen to make something happen.
Very very rudimentary, very rudimentary. But for the seventies in particular,
this was like really ahead of its time, and like
you know, UM, I'vean Sutherland and Myron Kruger. They were
(25:21):
both working in in computer science labs just generating like
proof of concept, the fact that this was even possible,
and here's a here's a possible path forward to this
UM And then that's kind of how things like augmented
reality get pushed forward as there's people who figure out
how to do it in the clunkiest, most primitive way possible,
(25:41):
and then over time other researchers and other students come
along and they figure out how to shrink it down.
And then the next thing, you know, you have a
smartphone that's capable of doing this kind of thing. And
that's really where VR just took an enormous leap forward.
Was when the first smartphone started to come out, Because
if it weren't for smartphones, we would still be pressing
(26:02):
like bed sheets at video place, you know what I mean.
But the fact that smartphones were able to carry the
hardware needed, like things like onboard cameras and gyroscopes and
GPS coordinates and connections to the Internet. The fact that
all this was suddenly in the palm of people's hands.
People said, well, we should start doing things with with this. Yeah,
And I'm not knocking those those early pioneers, Like I
(26:25):
think that's the coolest part about any anything like this
is the people that were brave enough to say, like, hey,
put this microwave on your head, and this is the future.
You know. Um, if you want to talk about an
adorable presentation, you could go back to February two nine
and look at the Ted talk on six cents. It's
(26:48):
really great because things were smaller, but they still didn't
know how to like bring it all together in one
uh small like thing. They had to cobble a bunch
of stuff together. So they had a camera that you
wore around your neck like chest height. You had a smartphone,
You had a mirror. You had initially a projector strapped
(27:09):
to a helmet that you wore on your head, dork,
and it was all strung together, and you wore these
little colored caps on your fingers, uh, to be able
to interact with the thing that the projector on your
head was emitting. They do. They work for that. They
also work really well to keep your fingers clean when
you're eating buffalo wings. I used to work with a
(27:32):
commercial director named Tom Schiller, who was one of my
idols because he was an early writer for Saturday Night
Live and did all those old black and white SNL
things with Blushi and Chiller was great and he kind
of took me under his wing, and I want to
get in touch with the guy again. But he wore
just as a gag. He would walk around on set
and eat Cheetos with a surgical glove. Oh nice, nice,
(27:54):
And he told me one day. I was like, man,
that's so funny, and he went, I don't even like Cheetos.
He's like, I just do it for the gag. It's
pretty great. Yeah. Um those So they make surgical gloves
that are just fingertip protectors, and you me got me
some of those. At one time we went out to
eat with a friend and I was eating buffalo wings
like that. So yeah, and he like it, didn't say anything,
(28:15):
didn't make a big deal out of it, and he
just looked toward just lost it. It was pretty great.
It was. It was about as good as you can hope.
I think I've seen those What are those four I
don't know, man, I don't know, but I can tell
you they really do work for eating buffalo wings for
some reason. I remember my grandmother had those when I
was a kid, and I think it may have been like, uh,
(28:36):
to protect a cut or something if you're washing dishes,
or maybe that's what she used him. For sure, I
think it's one of those things where it's like we're
just gonna manufacturers and put them out there in the
world and whatever you're using, whatever you whatever you want.
Of course, this was the mid seventies. This is pre
buffalo wing. Okay, I was about to get crazy. I
(29:00):
just wanted to rile up all the people in Buffalo,
New York. So, yes, you're wearing these caps on your fingers.
That is used to to you know, act as your
go between and manipulate the images that project your on
your head is showing everywhere, which is kind of cool
because it's on your head, right, So anything can be
turned into a surface sure, Like I mean ideally you're
(29:21):
looking at a white wall, right, or your wrist was
one that they used, so like you could put like
a numeric keypad projected onto your wrist, which is neat,
but it doesn't mean anything unless if you press the numbers,
it does something. And that's where those finger caps came in,
Like the the allowed the camera to track what your
fingers were doing. And that was a really really big
(29:44):
proof proof of concept that sense put out there, which
is tracking how we move because there's a difference between
just adding a layer of recipes on your soup can
and being able to swipe through recipes just by making
a gesture in the air with your finger. And that
was something that sixth cents showed could be done. And
(30:04):
that is starting to show up on phones as well,
where now you know you squeeze your phone, like the
screen of your phone, it's using all sorts of sensors
and pressure gauges and and um vibration measurements to to
figure out what you're doing with your fingers. Now they're
starting to track it using things like the infrared um
(30:25):
uh time of flight camera, so that you don't actually
touch your your screen, you just kind of make these
gestures above it. And when when that becomes further and
further developed, that will very clearly be used for a
r in the future. Yeah, and it's kind of funny
and clunky. Is something from two thousand nine appears now
just ten years ago. Just scrub through to the end
(30:48):
of that Ted talk and see the audience go wild
like that. That's the cool thing about this early tech.
At the people at these Ted talks, Man, they can
see it. They can see the future because they know
they can see beyond the fact that you've got six
different things hanging around your neck and strapped to your head. Sure,
it's the proof of concept because like you said, they
can always package it in the future and a nice
(31:10):
little tidy thing that you can sell. Well, everybody knows
that Ted Talks were populated by only the best people
on the best So there's a lot of this going
on now all around you, beyond the NFL, on the
football field, the n C double A they use that
stuff too, right. Uh, Yeah, I think everybody uses that
that glowing line for first douns. And remember they had
(31:33):
it following the hockey puck for a little while. The
last it didn't. And I specifically remember we talked about
that too wherever we talked about this before. But icky
fans were like, I don't like it. I don't want
my puck to glow. Um, but the the it kind
of is popped up here there and all sorts of
random places. There was an Esquire cover once where when
(31:55):
you waved your smartphone over it using the app Robert
Downey June, you would start talking to you. Um, there's
Starbucks Valentines you can send where you like looked at
a cup and it would say, hey, be my Valentine
or something stupid like that. There was a beta production
in the nineties called Dancing in Cyberspace. People are like, oh,
you can do stuff like this, so let me figure
(32:16):
out a neat way to use it. But it hadn't
really started to accumulate until the last probably five or
seven or ten years, when people really started throwing money
at a r development and and app creation. Yeah, I
mean one of you know, I use some of this
stuff here and there. Um, I'm not like a total
poop who er. I'm just saying I'm never gonna walk
(32:38):
around the world with a headset on. I don't think
that that's correct. Oh man, I will not do it
just despite you. Now it's correct, But it wouldn't have
been had I not said, had I just been like, sure, sure,
of course I'll be doing stories on the last man
on earth. To not do this all right, I wish
I could go back and edit out your mind here
(33:00):
are there, because this is one time I would do it.
But I like stuff like the sky maps. Um these
apps where you can go out at nighttime or in
the daytime, but it's more fun at night and look
at the stars and hold up your phone and um
see what what planets and constellations are out there, and
tap on one to get information. Stuff like that's really neat. Um.
(33:21):
My uncle, or rather I guess Emily's uncle, Tim, came
to visit not too long ago, and he I looked over,
was with um with my kid, showing her the room
around him, and I was like, all right, what's that
all about? And I went over and looked and I
don't know what the program was, but it's just the
walls were dripping with blood and that wasn't there, but
(33:44):
it very well could have been because they were like sharp.
You were like an aquarium. There were sharks and fish
and all these things, and she just of course it
blew her mind. Sure, but this is the world that
she's growing up in. This is to be totally normal. There,
that and that application when she's in her one ease,
will seem as primitive and clunky as a walkman does today.
(34:05):
For sure. You know, oh, I mean it looks clunky now, yeah,
I would say, I would say, so, how about like
people walking around with the phonograph, We're gonna say that
one instead. I'm gonna just double down even more triple down.
I guess you could say triple down. There are also
other applications, like, um, there's one for the for the
(34:25):
Gatwick Airport. It's a passenger app where you can hold
it up and find out information about wait times and
where the restrooms are, where you know where the restaurant
you want to go to is. Yeah, there's also one
that's helpful. Actually, there's a handful of them, where like
you remember where you park your car and then when
you're walking through a parking lot, there's like a big
(34:46):
giant like arrow or something over your car that you
just walk towards. I would use that because your head, buddy,
because it's out there right now. I use the primitive
version now, which is I just take a picture of
the the road number. Knowing you you probably like just
carve a picture into a piece of tree bark, and
then you'll use your you'll use your phone to note
(35:08):
where you know what direction your car is so you
can walk into No man, I'll drop a pin. I'm
not a total luddite. The military, obviously, with anything tech,
is where a lot of the application goes. Um. They
are they have something called synthetic training environments where you
can fully uh well, there are a couple of ways
(35:29):
to use it. You can fully practice stuff like you
could practice a raid on a terrorist compound over and
over again, um with like as much information as you
have about the compound and the building. You can build
that out virtually. Or you can potentially at some point
have soldiers on the field that where this stuff and
(35:50):
look up and have overlays of uh you know, stuff
beamed down from satellites about blueprints or just information bring
you know, instead of hearing it to your walkie talkie
or whatever. Yeah, you know how like when you zoom
in at us and you accidentally like move your your
thumbs in a certain way, all of a sudden, the
street map and I think Google Maps like becomes three
(36:12):
dimensional and like you're kind of looking at it in
a little bit of a three Well you would know
everyone else listening to this episode knows what I'm talking about. Um,
But that's what they're saying. Like you could be on
a battlefield and all of a sudden, there's like a
three dimensional visualization of what's ahead that you can know
where to go and it will show you where your
(36:32):
car is parked, which is great or potentially, Uh, my
friend was working on an app in Los Angeles for
like music festivals so you can find your friends. Yeah,
stuff like that. Well that's one that's um that kind
of pops up for something called Wikitude, And this is
UM that's a pretty good example of an entire kind
(36:55):
of type of augmented reality app where you're just are
looking at the world around you and it shows you
all sorts of different information. So like a building you're
passing might have a restaurant in it, and it will
show you, like the daily specials for that restaurant, and
then over here there's um, somebody walking down the street
and it has their Twitter handle over their head. Um,
(37:17):
and then there's uh, you know, like the hotel rates
for a hotel down the street, and all this stuff
is right there on your phone, which is pretty amazing.
But um, I guess I hopefully you have to opt
in for your Twitter handle to like be shown in
an app like this. But that's a really good example
of an entire variety of apps which is just basically
(37:38):
like that overlay of information, additional information about the world
around us as we're moving through it. Yeah, and I
could see a world where and this is what I
told our mutual friend, because he was just like, what
applications could you see? What could be cool? I was like,
I could get I guess I could see like if
you go to the Museum of Natural History, you could
load up anyone from Ary Seinfeld to us to us
(38:03):
to be your docent for the day. We could dress
like Teddy Roosevelt, we could, yeah, or you could just
point your camera at someone and it dresses them as
Teddy Roosevelt. Because that's the thing. If that's not a thing.
It's about to be next week, I'm sure. So I
could see applications like that, um historically walking around a
neighborhood getting information instead of um going through the trouble
(38:27):
to read the plaque by the statue. Yeah for sure.
Um there's also one. There's one for Pompeii that somebody built.
That's where you hover over the ruins and you look
at your screen and it shows you what the building
looked like before Pompeii was destroyed. Yeah, that's kind of cool. Yeah.
So so there's a lot of you know, um, really
great applications already for learning about our world. My prediction
(38:50):
is is that is what our world is just gonna
look like. When you're walking down the street or walking
around historicals that are walking anywhere, You're going to be
inundated with information like that, and I think you will
be able to curate it yourself where you select. Say,
you know, if you're a Instagram user and you don't
really use Twitter, well, it wouldn't show you people's Twitter handles.
(39:11):
It would show you their Instagram handles or um, if
you if it knew you were looking for a hotel,
hotels dot Com would would show you rates, but it
wouldn't otherwise, like if it if it was in the
city that you live in or something like that, Like you,
it will be ultra tailored to the to the individual. Yeah,
they would never just feed you content that you didn't
(39:31):
want to see automatically, right exactly, no one, No one
does that. No. Healthcare is obviously a big, big field
for a R because you can do practice surgeries um
that aren't just generic. You can do it very specific
to the person. Um there are Maybe the situation is
(39:53):
like somebody could come in and have a wound and
they could uh point a camera or you know, your
phone a phone. I guess I would imagine the hospital
would have something a little more advanced, but maybe not.
I don't think you need it. I think you just
need a smartphone. I just think they would gus see
it up at least so you didn't feel like you
did you set that down on a food tray on
(40:17):
an airplane, I mean, like, is that thing clean? But
it would look at the wound and it would send
a message that says you're screwed or yes, or you're great. Yeah,
the the yeah, one of them. One of the diagnoses
as you. Yeah, but um, reading about this, I was like, yeah,
I guess I'll go look up images of wounds for
(40:38):
a little while. And I did. Did you really? Sometimes
I can't help myself whenever I see the word wound.
If I'm researching, I'll just be like, let's go see
what some wound pictures look like. I'll do that. And
Emily always just like, why do you do that? It's
like picking at a scab or something. It's tough not
to well, And I also argued this just happened the
other day. I was like, you know, it's that same
curiosity that is why Josh and I do what we
(41:01):
do for a living. Yeah, the same one that also
kills cats left and run. Uh. What are some other
great applications if you're have sensory impairments? That is huge? Yeah. Yeah.
I want to give a shout out real quick here
because I got this from this article called thirty nine
ways augmented reality can change the world in the next
five years, and it's by yet see Weener on Thrive
(41:22):
Global on Medium. It's a lot of words I just
spit out, but they all make sense eventually if you
type them into Google. Um, and yet see weener. I
guess asked like thirty nine different people what they thought
about the future of a r and stuff that's like
just around the corner, and this was one of them. Yeah,
if you think about if you have partial vision and
(41:42):
it can actually help you to see, you know, it
can make things pop more and make edges more visible. Um,
it's it's you know, it's not going to restore vision obviously,
but it can actually help out partially cited people. Yeah,
or if you have a hearing impairment, Um, you can
say walk around and it'll say, oh, there's a train
coming because it hears the sound of a train, you know,
(42:05):
flash on your screen maybe a picture of a train
or just the word train or something like that. Um,
there's a lot of applications for that that will basically, um,
cure is not the right word, but that will make
living in you know, the world so much easier for
people with with um disabilities. That it's just that's a
really exciting thing too. And shopping is also exciting. Well.
(42:28):
That's probably as as much as the military's funding will
push this technology forward, retail will be at least as
big a contributor as well, and it already is like
some of the coolest VR apps around are ones that
help us consume better. Yeah, I mean I definitely see
this happening um all around us and in the near
(42:50):
future even more and more. You walk into a store
you're shopping for a couch, let's say, and you can, um,
you can see what that couch might look like in
your home or if it fits through your door or
in your space. Yeah, or glasses look like uh, instead
of trying them on they don't have them in the store,
you can virtually try them on. Yeah, and you don't
(43:11):
even have to leave your home either to Another way
to do it is like you can just hold your
your phone up and you can, you know, look at
the space where you want a couch to go and
select that couch and it'll show up and you'll be
able to see what it looks like in that space. Yes,
and I'm sure it will be complete with suggested purchases
and add ons. Right, You'll just be able to like
(43:31):
click it, like you say, and purchase it and it'll
show up at your house. And you might also want
this ottoman and this throw rug right the yeah, Yeah,
you're right about what I'm talking about. Yeah, For sure, Um,
but the the the idea that all of this that
are world are augmented world in the not too distant
future is going to be very personalized. That kind of
(43:52):
comes through to um one of those those people that
yit se Weener spoke to, which, by the way, yits
Weener has one of the better names of all time.
If fantastic Um you see Weener spoke to somebody who said,
you know, this is gonna be really personalized. So this
a r world that you're experiencing. If you go to
a restaurant that a friend recommended, they might have left
like a recommendation for a dish for you to eat,
(44:15):
just scrawled on the wall and no one else would
be able to see it because your friend left it
for you. But this is this is like the kind
of personalization that that will have. Or if you walk
into a store, rather than like tailored ads coming up
in your in your web searches, like tailored ads will
come up in your field of view where it's like, hey,
we heard that you were talking about this, uh, this
(44:36):
Depeche Mode album. Well it just happens to be right there.
Even though nobody buys albums anymore, go buy it because
this is a terrible example. But you get what I'm saying.
That's what the ad will say. You get what I'm saying.
All right, let's take our last break here and we
will talk a little bit about some of the potential
pitfalls and hurdles facing a R. Stuff you should know,
(45:02):
lush stuff you should know. Okay, Chuck so Asis, which
(45:23):
makes UM all sorts of tech hardware and stuff. They
released a phone recently called the Zen Phone a R
and it is basically made for augmented reality. It does
all the other stuff that a phone does, but it
has like an extra bit of hardware and software that
makes it like a ACE augmented reality. And one of
the things that has on board is Google's Tango software,
(45:48):
and Tango is basically like an a R suite. It
has things like UM amazing motion detection, area learning. UM.
Do you remember how we talked about marker less a
R where it's like, oh that's a river, Oh that's
a walkway. Like it's really really good at that at
determining UM markerless objects to to figure out what needs
(46:08):
to be projected where UM. And it's a really amazing
phone as far as a R goes. Um. The fact
that it's out there really kind of shows like people
are really pouring money into this, this idea, this a
r idea, UM and eventually that is why I think
it's going to hit. Yeah. And the zen phone looks uh,
it's not it's not so clunky, it's like a regular
(46:31):
smartphone and just at the top in the center has
a little bit of a hardware situation, but it seems
like it could probably still just fit into your pocket nicely.
It's not super bulky, nothing on your forehead, nothing on
your forehead yet. But that's the thing though, you still
need a phone. UM. And most people, not most people,
(46:54):
but over three billion people close to you know, inching
towards the global population has a smartphone at this point, right,
So that's not an issue, not the biggest issue. But
there are some challenges, uh, and they are basically boiled
down to hardware and bandwidth. UM. Bandwidth is a really
big deal right now until five G is like fully integrated. UM,
(47:19):
it's just really tough to meet the band with needs
of a r right now on a day to day basis. Yeah.
And like the kind of a are that we're talking
about where it's called always on augmented reality, where you're
just walking through the world and there's just digital that
digital layer is everywhere, and it's really mixed too, so
that it's really interacting with reality in a very believable
(47:40):
way that is extraordinarily banned with hungry. Whereas like walking
down the street and streaming a YouTube video and HD
requires something like five or six megabytes per second of
bandwidth and something like thirty to fifty milliseconds of latency,
which is lag time between your phone sends a commando
(48:01):
server and then receives the info back. That's that's that's
about what it takes to watch an HD movie, to
stream an HD movie, But with UM, with augmented reality apps,
it's that's nothing like you wouldn't get anywhere with that.
Now you need about a hundred per second bandwidth and
a latency of one millisecond. And they think five g
(48:24):
could solve this problem, but we'll see. I think that
it definitely well. I think, I mean they're talking about
like an average download speed of a gigabyte a second
in peaks of like ten gigs a second, which is
way more than enough for an a r UM, an
a r APP. So I think five G really will
(48:46):
help move a r along. But you still you said
it earlier. We still have that problem with hardware with
a phone like the phone. Holding your phone up in
front of you is no way to move through the world.
But that's basically what you have to do if you
want to take part with augmented reality. Well, Google said
we have an idea, how about Google Glass? And everybody said,
that's a terrible idea. To get that thing out of here. Yeah,
(49:09):
this was six years ago. I remember Jonathan Strickland. I
think he was sent some in his defense. I don't
think he purchased them, but Google, he definitely he really
wore them a lot, if I remember correctly. Yeah, they
that did not work out, And one of the big
problems was they didn't have it fully worked out before
they said, hey, do you want to go ahead and
try this thing out. They should have probably worked on
(49:31):
a little longer, but the prototype was released as the product,
and they thought that this would just get such a
claim that it's going to be the next big thing
and then we'll work out the kinks as uh, the
money comes flooding in, And that didn't happen because people
didn't like the idea of people walking around with a
(49:51):
camera honed on everything or themselves. No, that was a
that's a big one and it still is today. I mean,
privacy is an enormous problem with um with augmented reality,
because to to be a part of it, like you
have your you're you're either you're wearable or your phone
or whatever, has to be taking in the world around it,
(50:12):
and that very frequently includes people. And it's like you said,
maybe there will very soon be an augmented reality app
where if you look at somebody, they're suddenly dressed like
Teddy Roosevelt. That's probably pretty innocuous, but also maybe it
takes their clothes off and it shows them naked right
there standing in front of you, and all of a
sudden you're leering at them and they know what you're
(50:33):
looking at. And that is an enormous invasion of privacy.
Plus also, with as much stuff as we share on
social media, all that stuff can be cobbled together to
pretty amazing profile of you. And if all of that
comes up when you look at somebody, when somebody comes
into your field of vision while you're wearing an augmented
reality wearable or something Um, that's an enormous invasion of
(50:57):
privacy too, especially if the person hasn't opted in for
that to be shared. That's right, and they are. Here's
the real scary thing. They're talking about a r contact
lenses that you wear on your eyeballs where this is
just the world you see at all times. They're not
clunky glasses, they're not headsets. You wouldn't even know that
(51:17):
someone has these in necessarily. And the problem now is
they can't provide a power source, which means that they
have not figured out a way to make them run
on human tears. Right, human tears are UM blinking. Surely
there's a way to make them work from blinking, you
know what I mean? Well, yeah, I could see that.
You just gotta blink a lot. Yes, So there was
(51:38):
something that we ran across, UM that I think if
you asked me, this is why a lot of people
are going to start UM using things like UM augmented
reality wearables or implants or something like that. There's gonna
be what's called or there could be. I should say,
I don't mean to say gunna because it's definitely not
a foregone conclusion, but UM, there could be a UM Uh,
(52:03):
like a career arms races. How I've seen it put
where somebody who has like this implant or who has
gone out and bought these contact lenses or whatever is
going to be a much more productive employee than somebody
who still goes to the trouble of typing out, you know,
how to you know, an internet search or something for information.
And they're doing it the old school way, They're going
(52:25):
to get left behind. And when you're talking about things
like livelihood, people are going to say, well, I need
to go get those contact lenses, right, I need to
undergo that surgery to get that implant so that I
can keep up in today's job market. That is what's
going to get everybody into the world of a r Yeah.
And they're also clearly just day to day physical pitfalls
(52:46):
like walking into traffic or driving off a cliff um,
because you're wearing those wearable while you're in a car
or something like that. I would think that some of
those are going to start coming with UM like you
want be able to operate it if it's moving, you know,
over a certain miles per hour or something. I don't
know how they're going to I don't know, man, I
(53:06):
do not know. Um, I do know that One of
the issues that was raised about that though, is the
ability to hack into stuff like that. And I mean
if we're if we're just completely reliant and trusting of
our apps or or a r apps to like kind
of take us from place to place, we might stop
thinking for ourselves and just kind of follow them blindly.
Like you don't use ways, but ways is very well
(53:29):
known as good as it is um for leading you
on some real like dingbat side side trips to save
you like a half of a second um. And I
follow them like very rarely, am I like, Okay, wait
where are you taking me? And you'll scroll ahead or
whatever look at the turns you know in texts. Instead
you just follow it, and you know you have to
(53:51):
look over sheepishly at the people who just watched you
get off on a spur and then get back on
and really not get anywhere. That's a really great example.
But imagine if that lead you off of a cliff
or something like that, and that happens. People literally have
walked off cliffs playing Pokemon Go because they weren't paying
attention to the real world around him. Yeah, and this
(54:11):
isn't exactly a r But my again, Emily's uncle came
to see us and he has he's a drone guy,
and he had a setup where you could fly the
drone up and then he put a headset on me,
and then I could see through the drones camera, so
the drones two feet in the air, and then I
can look around and operate the camera as if I
(54:33):
was up there, and I could not get that headset
off of my head quickly enough. Yeah, well that's another
thing too. I think that's another reason why that five
G is going to have to take places, like this
thing needs to be as smooth as possible as people
are just gonna walk around throwing up everywhere. Oh it
didn't make me sick. I just it's just not my thing, man.
I was like, I want to be in the real world.
(54:54):
I don't want to wear a headset and look at
something projected. I think I think that is I think
that will definitely be a thing, Chuck, or there will
be like there'll be a whole movement of you know,
back to reality types where rather than back to nature,
will be back to reality where people are like, no,
we we just want to experience reality as it is.
(55:15):
None of people will be like, how can you ever
say what reality really is? You know, what is subjective consciousness?
You leon? And then they'll say, you're right, We might
as well just get digitized. Do you got anything else?
I got nothing else. Well, let's revisit this poet in
five years. Okay, hawe. If you want to know more
about augmented reality, go online and start finding apps and
(55:36):
see what you think. You'll love it. There's also a
pretty good article on how stuff works you can check
out too. And since I said that, it's time for listener,
ma'il ah. This is called a disagreement about trunk or treating. Okay,
we had a very minor spat. Oh yeah, yeah, I thought, Hey, guys,
(55:56):
been listening since. And consider myself a devotee. I've marveled
for some time about how good natured, good natured you
are toward each other, even when you disagree slightly on
some of the controversial topics. I think it's an important
skill to have, especially in the midst of divisive ages.
After over three years of listening to your dulcet tones, however,
your masks finally began to slip. The most unlikely of
(56:19):
episodes trunk or Treating. I thought that the disagreement over
the presence of apple bobbing at trunk or Treating is
going to boil over, but being the consummate professionals you are,
you swiftly moved on. I did find the momentary annoyance
in your voice is hilarious, though, and it just goes
to show you uh to take that you take every
episode very seriously, despite the seemingly laid back manner in
(56:40):
which you deliver your pearls of wisdom. I've long been
waiting for a conflict between the two of you because
I've found your on my relationship very funny. And the
fact that the first sign of an argument came when
discussing a child's Halloween event is the most stuff you
should know thing that has ever happened and made me
laugh out loud. So that is from one Alex in London.
(57:01):
Thanks Alex. You should go back and listen to the
Barbie episode. We had a little spat in that one too,
if I remember Craig and I will say this is
not a grass watering grass level vindication. But we got
at least one email from a guy They said our
trunk or Treating has Fall Festival stuff too, because yes,
that's fine, he said, because the kids it would take
(57:21):
them fifteen minutes to visit the cars and that's not
long enough, right, So in this case, trunk or treating
is a feature of the larger Fall festival, but apple
bobbing has nothing to do with trunk or treating. Let's
just send this, okay, let's do it all right. Well,
if you want to get in such with this, like
Alex from London did, you can go on to stuff
(57:43):
you Should Know dot com and check out our social links.
You can also send us an email The stuff podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more
podcasts for my heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio
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(58:05):
M h m hm
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's
guest producer Andrew over there. Uh and um, this is
stuff you should know everybody, the real, real edition, but
(00:24):
not the online consignment retailer. Just meaning real twice over.
That's right, very real. Yeah, not augmented it anyway. As
a matter of factor. About as low tech as it
comes as far as podcasts go. Oh, I think all
podcasts are pretty low tech, right, No, some people really
kind of you know, jazz it up a little razzle dazzle. Sure, Like,
(00:47):
could you imagine a world where someone listens to Stuff
you should Know and they're wearing a headset and in
front of their face that was either us or what
we're talking about, or any of a mix of those things,
I like, the second idea or what we're talking about,
or if it was an animated version of us. Remember
(01:08):
those animated shorts. Yeah, gosh, those were good. Yeah. And
you know we have a mutual friend, uh who I
will tell name off air to you who was getting
into this quite a few years ago with another company
and came to me and was like, Hey, what do
you think about maybe one day you and Josh, you know,
(01:30):
doing these shooting videos. And at first I was like, Nope,
now hear me out shooting videos to where we were,
let's say, walking people on a virtual tour of like
a neighborhood in New York City and telling about the
history and the way that we do and stuff like,
Oh man, that would be awesome. You think, yes, dude,
(01:50):
I think people would love that. I would love that. Well,
this person was also a big believer in a R
and said, dude, in a few years, you won't be
able to buy a pair of glasses or sunglasses that
don't have this built in. Yeah. I think your friend
is right. Well, no, this was a few years ago.
It's like it's it should be happening right now according
(02:11):
to this person. Yeah, I remember at the time thinking
not only will that not happen in a few years,
but that will never happen. I don't know, man, I
don't know. So I I see what you're saying, Like,
with a lot of tech, there's like, you know, in
five years, this is going to be all the rage.
And then five years comes and goes, and we're not
that much further along. But if you step back and
(02:32):
look at the progress that augmented reality is making, um
I it's I think your friend is ultimately going to
be proven right. Maybe not over the same time frame obviously,
because they totally failed with their prediction, but I think
in the end, your friend will be vindicated. I hope
is this somebody? Is this somebody that I like, because
(02:54):
I hope it's not someone I dislike, and I'm vindicating
them because I feel like I'm trapped here. Here's my
prediction is that in the future there could be for
sure people that are into this and that you can
easily buy glasses like this. But I think the notion
that this is all of humans at some point walking
around like this is silly. Well, we'll see, we'll see.
(03:19):
We'll revisit this in five years, and I think things
will will be a lot different than I think. You'll
be singing a different tune walking around with your VR
glasses on. All right, mark the date everyone, Okay, five
years from now. Yep, I'm not gonna say I'll buy
everyone a beer if that Halloween twenty uh twenty four, Yeah,
that's five years from now, if we don't look out
(03:41):
of our house and see everybody walking around with living
a virtual augmented world, right or I guess it's possible
that that could also be the title of a rob
zombie movie to Halloween. There's nothing but augmented Michael Myers everywhere,
that's true. I just wanted to go ahead and I
guess foreshadow my future poo pooing. Okay, that's fine, that's fine.
(04:04):
That's easy to do when you're talking about predictions. But
I guess we should probably tell everybody what we're talking about.
It's augmented reality. It's in the title, so you should
have some heads up. But to give kind of a
brief definition of augmented reality, augmented reality, I'm gonna say
it a fourth time here. Augmented reality is a type
(04:25):
of technology that adds like a digital layer, computer generated
layer of UM augmentation to real life. And it can
be really actually any kind of sensory input. Typically it's
something visual, but it could also be haptic feedback, so
tactile like touch. It can be UM sound. You can
(04:49):
be walking through a certain place that will trigger like
a sound. Eventually it might be smells um warmth. Who
knows what we'll be able to do, But right now
most people are typically talking about visual stuff. Yeah, well,
they could combine the I smell with VR or a R.
I love that idea, man, I think the I smell
(05:10):
was just ahead of its time, not that it was
a bad idea. They've already gotten music. They've had that
since the Walkman. Sure, I guess it's a it's primitive
a R SHT. So I don't know that I would
call a sound a R except for the fact that
maybe you could look at something and it's triggered, right,
but it's all there. It's already two. Have us leave
(05:32):
our material world on a daily basis and go somewhere
else entirely Well, that technically is virtual reality, where you're
plunged into an entirely alternative version of reality. Augmented reality
is it's real, it's our normal reality, but there's there's
an extra little touch to it that's digitized. Yeah, but
(05:53):
the videos that I've seen, there was so much going on.
In my opinion, you are leaving the real world. Atcha catch.
I'm not saying you're transported to you know, Venus or anything.
But when you're sitting in a room and there are
screens all in front of your face and the couches.
You know, you can change your couch to a different
fabric virtually, Like, I don't consider that the real world. Okay,
(06:18):
I I think that you might be in the minority.
But okay, oh, I think we'll see in five years
that I'm not. Okay. So if you if you kind
of are like, well, I still don't I don't quite
get it. What we're talking about is Pokemon Go. Basically, yeah,
so Pokemon Go in two thousand and sixteen, it was
an enormous hit. It's this game where you walk around
(06:40):
and you basically play Pokemon in the real world. You
go visit with Pokemon creatures and try to capture them,
and um, like your score is as is shown on
the screen of your phone and you're using your camera
and it's adding that digitized Pokemon layer to the real
world you're seeing through your camera screen. And it was huge.
Apparently it just past the three billion dollar mark, which
(07:03):
is pretty pretty substantial profit made for a game that's
actually free. It's a free game, but there's a lot
of in app purchases and they've made three billion dollars
off of that so far. So there's a huge appetite
for augmented reality that Pokemon Go showed everyone. Oh for sure.
I think there are plenty of applications for augmented reality
(07:26):
in the future, right and so, UM, we kind of
got into it a little bit. The difference between virtual
reality and augmented reality. Have seen it put really well
in that virtual reality takes the user anywhere and augmented
reality brings everything to the user. Um. I think that's
a great description. But the idea is in in VR,
(07:46):
you're transported to a different world. In augmented reality, your
world is has that digitized layer added to it. And
then there's also something called mixed reality, which if you
read about it, that to me is that's the future
of augmented reality. Yeah. I wasn't quite sure the exact
difference here. It seems like very fine lines definition wise,
(08:07):
it is because augmented reality and mixed reality are virtually
the same thing as just mixed reality is kind of
like the um more sophisticated version of augmented reality. But
a good example that kind of distinguishes the two that
I've seen is, um, let's say that you are you
have your augmented reality phone going and you you hold
(08:27):
a soup can up in front of it. Well, your
your app says, oh, it's the soup. You know it's
it's Campbell's low sodium Tomato soup. Obviously, user friend who's
holding the phone up to the soup can wants to
know more about this soup, and it triggers like some
nutrition facts that aren't found on the label, or maybe
(08:47):
a recipe or something like that. And when you're looking
at this soup can through your phone, the additional layer
of information that's digitized over it that makes it augmented reality,
it doesn't look like it's on the soup can. It's
just like a little it's like you're looking at your
computer screen but it's in front of your face. Yeah,
it's kind of yes, but not nearly sophisticated. That's a
(09:09):
different thing that we'll get into later. But it's just
kind of like this layer of information that's just floating
in space over there. Mixed reality is far more sophisticated,
where if you um held your hand up in front
of in between the soup can and your phone, your
your hand would would what's called acclude it would cover
(09:31):
up that information. That's a big thing and it's really
really hard to do, but it makes the the stuff,
that digitized layer of augmented reality interact with reality that
much more so it could wrap around the soup can.
It could be covered up by something that comes in
between you and it. Um, that's mixed reality, and that's
really ultimately what augmented reality will be in the future. Uh,
(09:56):
we'll see. I'm starting to suspect have a real opinion
about this now. Again, I think there are totally people
the same people that loved Google Glass, which we'll get
too later. Uh, Whereas at the time, I was like,
this is not gonna work. I'm gonna I think you're wrong.
I'm gonna argue against your argument later on. So, UM,
(10:17):
we can explain a little bit about how this works.
It is. We are not tech experts, and we're not
gonna go bother Jonathan Strickland right now, no, or bother ourselves, frankly,
but we can give you sort of a brief the
briefest layman's overview of how this stuff works. Uh, there's
a field of um, I mean, there's a lot of
(10:41):
disciplines in it called computer vision, that's really super complicated,
but for our purposes, I guess we can just say
that computer vision basically, uh understands what's going on in
the world around whoever is using the augmented reality. And
they do this by you know, there's there's got to
(11:04):
be an interaction, and we'll talk about the wearables and
the headsets and stuff as opposed to smartphones. But what
they use is something called a time of flight sensor,
which is sort of works like a bat's use echolocation,
except it's not echolocation. It's infrared light. So they bounced
this light and if you look at these things, it
(11:24):
looks like a almost like a little go pro camera
or something like that on your forehead, which sends out
these pulses of light that are reflected by the objects
around you, and then it measures the delay of that
light reflecting back to you to calculate, you know, everything,
basically the depth of everything around you. Right, And then
(11:48):
every time it makes this measurement, it also says, I'm
a dork, that's right, because you're wearing this on your forehead, right.
And we also see with two eyes, we have binocular vision,
and so in order to simulate that Uh. They have
something called stereo cameras that are you know, uh, basically
placed like your eyeballs are at a fixed distance, and
(12:11):
then triangulates everything together to work with your two eyeballs,
right exactly. So if you look at them, if you
have a new iPhone, if you look at the back,
you'll see that there's two cameras on the back. Um,
some cameras. I think hu way highway. I can't remember
how to pronounce it. They have a phone with three cameras,
but does it? Okay? Um? But the the the input
(12:35):
from these cameras are providing slightly different information to the
onboard brain on your phone, and so it uses this
different information to triangulate it. Basically, um UM differentiates between
the information and says, okay, this is how far away
this this thing is, or this wall is, or this
you know, walkway goes, and it uses that information to
(12:56):
create UM the digitized layer that that is augmented reality
within the space that it realizes it's looking at. It's like, okay,
this is what I have to work with. Let's get rendering.
And that's the next step is rendering, which can be
as simple as UM adding like that layer of text
(13:17):
in front of you when you hold up that soup can.
Or it can be far far more sophisticated, like say,
using a Snapchat filter that makes you look like you're
wearing a cute little cat mask, but no matter where
you move your face up and down, or if you
open your mouth or something like that, it follows it perfectly,
which would actually technically make the Snapchat filter mixed reality
(13:37):
rather than augmented reality. Yeah, I don't do the Snapchat thing,
but you can do that on FaceTime. And I made
the mistake of doing that facetiming my kid, and now
that's all she wants to do whenever FaceTime is be
a monkey or a dinosaur or a lion or a
lizard or a robot or whatever, or which is kind
(13:59):
of fun and it is you know, uh, it is
pretty amazing that on this little phone you can stick
your tongue out and wrinkle your eyes and and you
can do that as a kiddiecat or a monkey in
real time. And so it does all this because of
all the facial facial recognition UM software aboard your phone, UM,
(14:19):
the gyroscope you know where you're like, who who needs
a compass? So I'm not gonna walk around in the
woods with this thing all the time. Actually, do you really? Yeah?
I mean I've got in the woods, but you know me,
I have a terrible sense of direction. So if I'm
in New York or wherever and I'm like, I need
to go north, then it's a very simple way to
find out. Yeah. True, but I'm I've always just used maps,
and it's really good for maps. That's how it knows
(14:41):
which way you're facing is that gyroscope and GPS coordinates.
So it's using all of this stuff, um, along with
facial recognition to to map and track where you're moving.
And no matter whether it's rendering the soup can information
or the snapchat filter, um, it does this. It does
all these calculations in figures out where what's going on
(15:01):
in the room and your motion and where your faces
or where the soup can is all that stuff. It
doesn't every time the camera sends a frame of info
to the to the onboard computer on your phone, which
happens thirty times per second, So these calculations are being adjusted, analyzed,
and re measured, and then the output is being put
out thirty times per second, which is pretty impressive. You
(15:23):
know what. I think you just hit on the key
difference in our outlook on this what it sounds like
you are primed for a r because I am someone
if I'm in New York, let's say, and I will say,
I will say, uh, all right, I know I need
to go northeast to get to this place. So I'll
just chart what northeast is. I'll put the phone in
my pocket and I'll start walking. Start walk, And I
(15:44):
think you are more primed to look at your map
and go along the streets that it's telling you to go.
On m I listened to the computer, is what you're saying. No,
not necessarily, but like the I think those are two
distinct differences of like kinds of people and how they
interact with technology in the world around them. Whereas I
just want to know I'm going northeast and that's correct.
(16:05):
A lot of people are wanted to look at that
map the whole way, and now they're going, like on
the exact right street to get them there. I guess
the quickest right, Which one do you think is correct?
I don't know. I mean I like to meander. Yeah,
I like me and doing too. I'm with you too,
for sure, But I also use ways like everywhere I
(16:26):
drive to I've never used it. It's really helpful, but
I don't I don't just sit like. I don't sit
there and like follow the ways app or anything like
I'm looking out the windows. So I would say I'm
somewhere between between you and like a Pokemon Go player. Well,
I drive Emily crazy because I am quite comfortable get
it unless I'm in a hurry, not getting someplace as
(16:46):
quickly as possible, and she's always like, where are you going.
I'm like, we'll get there eventually. I like that too.
I like that too, So don't mistake me. I'm somewhere
in the middle. But yes, I feel like I'm a
little more um into yeah or um exploited by tech
than you are. So where did we leave off here? Um?
With the two types of augmented reality? Yeah? Did we would?
(17:09):
Did you say those? No, we haven't talked about because
I was just about to talk about marker and marker less. Yeah,
those are the two broad categories. Yeah, and these, I mean,
it's very simple and it makes a lot of sense. Uh.
Marker based is basically if something is sort of pre
programmed and loaded into your program or your app or
your phone, and it knows you know, once you look
(17:30):
up at that thing, like the New York Public Library.
If you're let's say you have an app about New
York history. I keep picking on New York here because
it's easy. Well we were just there too. Yeah, that's right.
So it would have something preloaded about the New York
Public Library that will pop up in front of your face. Right,
it recognizes the library goes oh, oh, I know that thing, yeah, exactly,
(17:52):
and it's it's out there information. It's a marker, yeah,
or you know, could be a QR code, um market
loop can don't forget soup can chuck. Got to know
those sup recipes, right, it's add water. I don't even
add water. I think you're a chump if you add
water to condensed soup, because it's condensed to perfection. If
(18:13):
you ask me, do you just do the straight up? Yeah,
I'd like it to not run off the spoon when
you hold the spoon upside down. Wow, all right, It
depends on the soup. Actually, I'm I'm kidding, but I
have eaten soup that I have not added water too.
I would use a little less water like in a
let's say Campbell's chicken noodle. Sometimes you can get a
(18:34):
little watery, so I'll use like three quarters of a can. Maybe. Hey,
I've got one for you. Have you ever had Progresso's
I don't remember. It's like supposedly they're like healthier version
or whatever, but they have a creamy chicken noodle. It's amazing.
U me got it, And I just happened to be like,
what's in the pantry. I'll open this and I ate it,
and I like it so much that I would have
(18:57):
felt bad not mentioning it. Since we're talking about soup, Yeah,
I'm a fan of can soup, of having that around. Yeah,
it is that time of year. Two it is. It's
can soup time of year. Everyone. No one ever eats
can gaspacho in the summer. Can soup is like a
fall winter kind of thing. This episode brought to you
by Progresso. It's that time of year everyone. I wish
(19:20):
it were that easy. Uh? Where were we? Marker lists
is a little bit different and a little bit trickier. Uh.
It basically means there are no markers, so your device
actually has actually recognize things and be smart enough to
say that's a soup can. Uh. And it's not pre
programmed in but I know what a soup can looks like.
So here's what you do. Add water, right exactly. So
(19:43):
um that Pokemon Go apparently did that. For example, when
you were walking by a river, it would say, oh,
I recognize a river. I recognize this bit of land
or something like that. And it doesn't have actual markers
that are pre programmed. It's just smart enough to know
a river when it sees a river, and it will
show you like a water loving pokemon like gyro dose
(20:06):
or something like that. Oh boy, all right, let's take
a break. I'm gonna forget that ever happened. We'll talk
about the history right after this. Stuff you should know, gosh,
stuff you should know. So this is brand new, right, Yes,
(20:43):
no one has ever done anything with augmented reality until
Pokemon Go in two thousand six. I thought it was
interesting though that the very common thing that people might
not think about football fans is that that first down line. Uh.
And now they have all kinds of off like yards
to go to make a kick maybe and stuff like that,
(21:04):
but their overlays And we talked about that on some
other show some other episode. I can't remember. I couldn't
remember which one it was either, but we've definitely talked
about it. Yeah, but those screen overlays and from is
when they debuted sports vision, the glowing line that is
augmented reality. It is the kind I can get down with. Right, Well,
(21:24):
that's the so that works because you can only see
it from one point of view, right, So it really
works on TV because you can only see from one
point of view, which is the camera's point of view
when you're watching TV. Works really well, and you can
overlay all sorts of cool stuff. But um, what differentiates
(21:44):
that from the augmented reality that's coming around today is
that in the in the stands or whatever, maybe they
could project it so you know, you could see it
from one angle. Um, in the future, meaning like six
months from now, everybody will be sitting around in a
a football stadium and they will be able to see
the first down line from whatever their vantage point or
(22:05):
point of view is by looking through their phone, yeah,
their headset. Eventually, I'll bet if there's not an app
out that you can do that with your phone yet,
I'm it's coming, yeah, very soon, I'm sure. I'm surprised
they haven't overlaid ads on the field and stuff. I'm
surprised by that too, which will probably push things forward
(22:25):
as well. Advertising. So, um, that was the first down
line came out, but it goes back way further than that.
As a matter of fact, thirty years before that, there's
a guy named Ivan Sutherland who is a computer scientist,
and he came up with a headset that you wore.
Um that looks a lot like a scary, clunky, old
(22:47):
turn of the century version of a VR headset, but
it drops you into these like wire frame rooms, wire
frame like you know, line drawn computer generated line drawn
like troni ish kind of rooms. I was gonna say
battle zone, but sure, Um, I don't know what that is. No,
it was it was another arcade game where you put
(23:08):
your face into a into a sort of a headset.
Oh yeah. Was it like a battleship. Yeah, they were
like tanks and things, but it was green wire frame.
It was sort of three D look in and uh
you controlled that your tank with two two controllers like
shifting controllers. I got you. I'm thinking of the one
(23:29):
where it was like you're looking through a periscope and
you had to like torpedo UM ships. So like you're
like you're the joystick. Were two handles coming off of
like the periscope face plate that you were putting your
face up too. Do you remember that one? I do?
What was that one? I don't remember. It was probably
just called periscope or something stupid like that sub submarine bomb.
(23:51):
Maybe I don't think you said what year it was
for I've been settled on though, that was the summer
of love, my friends eight. I thought sixty nine was
a summer of love. I mean, no, I really wasn't.
But now I'm blessing that didn't mean that at all.
This is what I'm saying, Like these things just kinda
(24:13):
happened to me. I'm a victim. I think sixty eight
was a summer of love. I might be wrong. Well
let's just say both were. Okay, sixty nine was put
post coital right or pre wow? Uh. So there was
another UM researcher in four named Myron Krueger at Yukon.
(24:37):
It sounds like a Halloween villain, and he sounds like
a seventies computer researcher if I've ever heard Iron Krueger. Yeah,
that's true. The Krugs. He uh invented something called video Place,
which if you look up, is kind of fun to
look at. Two. It was interactive, and just think of
the most rudimentary VR you could think of, UM, which
(25:00):
is like someone going up to like a a nineteen
seventies Apple computer, if there was such a thing, and
being able to touch the screen to make something happen.
Very very rudimentary, very rudimentary. But for the seventies in particular,
this was like really ahead of its time, and like
you know, UM, I'vean Sutherland and Myron Kruger. They were
(25:21):
both working in in computer science labs just generating like
proof of concept, the fact that this was even possible,
and here's a here's a possible path forward to this
UM And then that's kind of how things like augmented
reality get pushed forward as there's people who figure out
how to do it in the clunkiest, most primitive way possible,
(25:41):
and then over time other researchers and other students come
along and they figure out how to shrink it down.
And then the next thing, you know, you have a
smartphone that's capable of doing this kind of thing. And
that's really where VR just took an enormous leap forward.
Was when the first smartphone started to come out, Because
if it weren't for smartphones, we would still be pressing
(26:02):
like bed sheets at video place, you know what I mean.
But the fact that smartphones were able to carry the
hardware needed, like things like onboard cameras and gyroscopes and
GPS coordinates and connections to the Internet. The fact that
all this was suddenly in the palm of people's hands.
People said, well, we should start doing things with with this. Yeah,
And I'm not knocking those those early pioneers, Like I
(26:25):
think that's the coolest part about any anything like this
is the people that were brave enough to say, like, hey,
put this microwave on your head, and this is the future.
You know. Um, if you want to talk about an
adorable presentation, you could go back to February two nine
and look at the Ted talk on six cents. It's
(26:48):
really great because things were smaller, but they still didn't
know how to like bring it all together in one
uh small like thing. They had to cobble a bunch
of stuff together. So they had a camera that you
wore around your neck like chest height. You had a smartphone,
You had a mirror. You had initially a projector strapped
(27:09):
to a helmet that you wore on your head, dork,
and it was all strung together, and you wore these
little colored caps on your fingers, uh, to be able
to interact with the thing that the projector on your
head was emitting. They do. They work for that. They
also work really well to keep your fingers clean when
you're eating buffalo wings. I used to work with a
(27:32):
commercial director named Tom Schiller, who was one of my
idols because he was an early writer for Saturday Night
Live and did all those old black and white SNL
things with Blushi and Chiller was great and he kind
of took me under his wing, and I want to
get in touch with the guy again. But he wore
just as a gag. He would walk around on set
and eat Cheetos with a surgical glove. Oh nice, nice,
(27:54):
And he told me one day. I was like, man,
that's so funny, and he went, I don't even like Cheetos.
He's like, I just do it for the gag. It's
pretty great. Yeah. Um those So they make surgical gloves
that are just fingertip protectors, and you me got me
some of those. At one time we went out to
eat with a friend and I was eating buffalo wings
like that. So yeah, and he like it, didn't say anything,
(28:15):
didn't make a big deal out of it, and he
just looked toward just lost it. It was pretty great.
It was. It was about as good as you can hope.
I think I've seen those What are those four I
don't know, man, I don't know, but I can tell
you they really do work for eating buffalo wings for
some reason. I remember my grandmother had those when I
was a kid, and I think it may have been like, uh,
(28:36):
to protect a cut or something if you're washing dishes,
or maybe that's what she used him. For sure, I
think it's one of those things where it's like we're
just gonna manufacturers and put them out there in the
world and whatever you're using, whatever you whatever you want.
Of course, this was the mid seventies. This is pre
buffalo wing. Okay, I was about to get crazy. I
(29:00):
just wanted to rile up all the people in Buffalo,
New York. So, yes, you're wearing these caps on your fingers.
That is used to to you know, act as your
go between and manipulate the images that project your on
your head is showing everywhere, which is kind of cool
because it's on your head, right, So anything can be
turned into a surface sure, Like I mean ideally you're
(29:21):
looking at a white wall, right, or your wrist was
one that they used, so like you could put like
a numeric keypad projected onto your wrist, which is neat,
but it doesn't mean anything unless if you press the numbers,
it does something. And that's where those finger caps came in,
Like the the allowed the camera to track what your
fingers were doing. And that was a really really big
(29:44):
proof proof of concept that sense put out there, which
is tracking how we move because there's a difference between
just adding a layer of recipes on your soup can
and being able to swipe through recipes just by making
a gesture in the air with your finger. And that
was something that sixth cents showed could be done. And
(30:04):
that is starting to show up on phones as well,
where now you know you squeeze your phone, like the
screen of your phone, it's using all sorts of sensors
and pressure gauges and and um vibration measurements to to
figure out what you're doing with your fingers. Now they're
starting to track it using things like the infrared um
(30:25):
uh time of flight camera, so that you don't actually
touch your your screen, you just kind of make these
gestures above it. And when when that becomes further and
further developed, that will very clearly be used for a
r in the future. Yeah, and it's kind of funny
and clunky. Is something from two thousand nine appears now
just ten years ago. Just scrub through to the end
(30:48):
of that Ted talk and see the audience go wild
like that. That's the cool thing about this early tech.
At the people at these Ted talks, Man, they can
see it. They can see the future because they know
they can see beyond the fact that you've got six
different things hanging around your neck and strapped to your head. Sure,
it's the proof of concept because like you said, they
can always package it in the future and a nice
(31:10):
little tidy thing that you can sell. Well, everybody knows
that Ted Talks were populated by only the best people
on the best So there's a lot of this going
on now all around you, beyond the NFL, on the
football field, the n C double A they use that
stuff too, right. Uh, Yeah, I think everybody uses that
that glowing line for first douns. And remember they had
(31:33):
it following the hockey puck for a little while. The
last it didn't. And I specifically remember we talked about
that too wherever we talked about this before. But icky
fans were like, I don't like it. I don't want
my puck to glow. Um, but the the it kind
of is popped up here there and all sorts of
random places. There was an Esquire cover once where when
(31:55):
you waved your smartphone over it using the app Robert
Downey June, you would start talking to you. Um, there's
Starbucks Valentines you can send where you like looked at
a cup and it would say, hey, be my Valentine
or something stupid like that. There was a beta production
in the nineties called Dancing in Cyberspace. People are like, oh,
you can do stuff like this, so let me figure
(32:16):
out a neat way to use it. But it hadn't
really started to accumulate until the last probably five or
seven or ten years, when people really started throwing money
at a r development and and app creation. Yeah, I
mean one of you know, I use some of this
stuff here and there. Um, I'm not like a total
poop who er. I'm just saying I'm never gonna walk
(32:38):
around the world with a headset on. I don't think
that that's correct. Oh man, I will not do it
just despite you. Now it's correct, But it wouldn't have
been had I not said, had I just been like, sure, sure,
of course I'll be doing stories on the last man
on earth. To not do this all right, I wish
I could go back and edit out your mind here
(33:00):
are there, because this is one time I would do it.
But I like stuff like the sky maps. Um these
apps where you can go out at nighttime or in
the daytime, but it's more fun at night and look
at the stars and hold up your phone and um
see what what planets and constellations are out there, and
tap on one to get information. Stuff like that's really neat. Um.
(33:21):
My uncle, or rather I guess Emily's uncle, Tim, came
to visit not too long ago, and he I looked over,
was with um with my kid, showing her the room
around him, and I was like, all right, what's that
all about? And I went over and looked and I
don't know what the program was, but it's just the
walls were dripping with blood and that wasn't there, but
(33:44):
it very well could have been because they were like sharp.
You were like an aquarium. There were sharks and fish
and all these things, and she just of course it
blew her mind. Sure, but this is the world that
she's growing up in. This is to be totally normal. There,
that and that application when she's in her one ease,
will seem as primitive and clunky as a walkman does today.
(34:05):
For sure. You know, oh, I mean it looks clunky now, yeah,
I would say, I would say, so, how about like
people walking around with the phonograph, We're gonna say that
one instead. I'm gonna just double down even more triple down.
I guess you could say triple down. There are also
other applications, like, um, there's one for the for the
(34:25):
Gatwick Airport. It's a passenger app where you can hold
it up and find out information about wait times and
where the restrooms are, where you know where the restaurant
you want to go to is. Yeah, there's also one
that's helpful. Actually, there's a handful of them, where like
you remember where you park your car and then when
you're walking through a parking lot, there's like a big
(34:46):
giant like arrow or something over your car that you
just walk towards. I would use that because your head, buddy,
because it's out there right now. I use the primitive
version now, which is I just take a picture of
the the road number. Knowing you you probably like just
carve a picture into a piece of tree bark, and
then you'll use your you'll use your phone to note
(35:08):
where you know what direction your car is so you
can walk into No man, I'll drop a pin. I'm
not a total luddite. The military, obviously, with anything tech,
is where a lot of the application goes. Um. They
are they have something called synthetic training environments where you
can fully uh well, there are a couple of ways
(35:29):
to use it. You can fully practice stuff like you
could practice a raid on a terrorist compound over and
over again, um with like as much information as you
have about the compound and the building. You can build
that out virtually. Or you can potentially at some point
have soldiers on the field that where this stuff and
(35:50):
look up and have overlays of uh you know, stuff
beamed down from satellites about blueprints or just information bring
you know, instead of hearing it to your walkie talkie
or whatever. Yeah, you know how like when you zoom
in at us and you accidentally like move your your
thumbs in a certain way, all of a sudden, the
street map and I think Google Maps like becomes three
(36:12):
dimensional and like you're kind of looking at it in
a little bit of a three Well you would know
everyone else listening to this episode knows what I'm talking about. Um,
But that's what they're saying. Like you could be on
a battlefield and all of a sudden, there's like a
three dimensional visualization of what's ahead that you can know
where to go and it will show you where your
(36:32):
car is parked, which is great or potentially, Uh, my
friend was working on an app in Los Angeles for
like music festivals so you can find your friends. Yeah,
stuff like that. Well that's one that's um that kind
of pops up for something called Wikitude, And this is
UM that's a pretty good example of an entire kind
(36:55):
of type of augmented reality app where you're just are
looking at the world around you and it shows you
all sorts of different information. So like a building you're
passing might have a restaurant in it, and it will
show you, like the daily specials for that restaurant, and
then over here there's um, somebody walking down the street
and it has their Twitter handle over their head. Um,
(37:17):
and then there's uh, you know, like the hotel rates
for a hotel down the street, and all this stuff
is right there on your phone, which is pretty amazing.
But um, I guess I hopefully you have to opt
in for your Twitter handle to like be shown in
an app like this. But that's a really good example
of an entire variety of apps which is just basically
(37:38):
like that overlay of information, additional information about the world
around us as we're moving through it. Yeah, and I
could see a world where and this is what I
told our mutual friend, because he was just like, what
applications could you see? What could be cool? I was like,
I could get I guess I could see like if
you go to the Museum of Natural History, you could
load up anyone from Ary Seinfeld to us to us
(38:03):
to be your docent for the day. We could dress
like Teddy Roosevelt, we could, yeah, or you could just
point your camera at someone and it dresses them as
Teddy Roosevelt. Because that's the thing. If that's not a thing.
It's about to be next week, I'm sure. So I
could see applications like that, um historically walking around a
neighborhood getting information instead of um going through the trouble
(38:27):
to read the plaque by the statue. Yeah for sure.
Um there's also one. There's one for Pompeii that somebody built.
That's where you hover over the ruins and you look
at your screen and it shows you what the building
looked like before Pompeii was destroyed. Yeah, that's kind of cool. Yeah.
So so there's a lot of you know, um, really
great applications already for learning about our world. My prediction
(38:50):
is is that is what our world is just gonna
look like. When you're walking down the street or walking
around historicals that are walking anywhere, You're going to be
inundated with information like that, and I think you will
be able to curate it yourself where you select. Say,
you know, if you're a Instagram user and you don't
really use Twitter, well, it wouldn't show you people's Twitter handles.
(39:11):
It would show you their Instagram handles or um, if
you if it knew you were looking for a hotel,
hotels dot Com would would show you rates, but it
wouldn't otherwise, like if it if it was in the
city that you live in or something like that, Like you,
it will be ultra tailored to the to the individual. Yeah,
they would never just feed you content that you didn't
(39:31):
want to see automatically, right exactly, no one, No one
does that. No. Healthcare is obviously a big, big field
for a R because you can do practice surgeries um
that aren't just generic. You can do it very specific
to the person. Um there are Maybe the situation is
(39:53):
like somebody could come in and have a wound and
they could uh point a camera or you know, your
phone a phone. I guess I would imagine the hospital
would have something a little more advanced, but maybe not.
I don't think you need it. I think you just
need a smartphone. I just think they would gus see
it up at least so you didn't feel like you
did you set that down on a food tray on
(40:17):
an airplane, I mean, like, is that thing clean? But
it would look at the wound and it would send
a message that says you're screwed or yes, or you're great. Yeah,
the the yeah, one of them. One of the diagnoses
as you. Yeah, but um, reading about this, I was like, yeah,
I guess I'll go look up images of wounds for
(40:38):
a little while. And I did. Did you really? Sometimes
I can't help myself whenever I see the word wound.
If I'm researching, I'll just be like, let's go see
what some wound pictures look like. I'll do that. And
Emily always just like, why do you do that? It's
like picking at a scab or something. It's tough not
to well, And I also argued this just happened the
other day. I was like, you know, it's that same
curiosity that is why Josh and I do what we
(41:01):
do for a living. Yeah, the same one that also
kills cats left and run. Uh. What are some other
great applications if you're have sensory impairments? That is huge? Yeah. Yeah.
I want to give a shout out real quick here
because I got this from this article called thirty nine
ways augmented reality can change the world in the next
five years, and it's by yet see Weener on Thrive
(41:22):
Global on Medium. It's a lot of words I just
spit out, but they all make sense eventually if you
type them into Google. Um, and yet see weener. I
guess asked like thirty nine different people what they thought
about the future of a r and stuff that's like
just around the corner, and this was one of them. Yeah,
if you think about if you have partial vision and
(41:42):
it can actually help you to see, you know, it
can make things pop more and make edges more visible. Um,
it's it's you know, it's not going to restore vision obviously,
but it can actually help out partially cited people. Yeah,
or if you have a hearing impairment, Um, you can
say walk around and it'll say, oh, there's a train
coming because it hears the sound of a train, you know,
(42:05):
flash on your screen maybe a picture of a train
or just the word train or something like that. Um,
there's a lot of applications for that that will basically, um,
cure is not the right word, but that will make
living in you know, the world so much easier for
people with with um disabilities. That it's just that's a
really exciting thing too. And shopping is also exciting. Well.
(42:28):
That's probably as as much as the military's funding will
push this technology forward, retail will be at least as
big a contributor as well, and it already is like
some of the coolest VR apps around are ones that
help us consume better. Yeah, I mean I definitely see
this happening um all around us and in the near
(42:50):
future even more and more. You walk into a store
you're shopping for a couch, let's say, and you can, um,
you can see what that couch might look like in
your home or if it fits through your door or
in your space. Yeah, or glasses look like uh, instead
of trying them on they don't have them in the store,
you can virtually try them on. Yeah, and you don't
(43:11):
even have to leave your home either to Another way
to do it is like you can just hold your
your phone up and you can, you know, look at
the space where you want a couch to go and
select that couch and it'll show up and you'll be
able to see what it looks like in that space. Yes,
and I'm sure it will be complete with suggested purchases
and add ons. Right, You'll just be able to like
(43:31):
click it, like you say, and purchase it and it'll
show up at your house. And you might also want
this ottoman and this throw rug right the yeah, Yeah,
you're right about what I'm talking about. Yeah, For sure, Um,
but the the the idea that all of this that
are world are augmented world in the not too distant
future is going to be very personalized. That kind of
(43:52):
comes through to um one of those those people that
yit se Weener spoke to, which, by the way, yits
Weener has one of the better names of all time.
If fantastic Um you see Weener spoke to somebody who said,
you know, this is gonna be really personalized. So this
a r world that you're experiencing. If you go to
a restaurant that a friend recommended, they might have left
like a recommendation for a dish for you to eat,
(44:15):
just scrawled on the wall and no one else would
be able to see it because your friend left it
for you. But this is this is like the kind
of personalization that that will have. Or if you walk
into a store, rather than like tailored ads coming up
in your in your web searches, like tailored ads will
come up in your field of view where it's like, hey,
we heard that you were talking about this, uh, this
(44:36):
Depeche Mode album. Well it just happens to be right there.
Even though nobody buys albums anymore, go buy it because
this is a terrible example. But you get what I'm saying.
That's what the ad will say. You get what I'm saying.
All right, let's take our last break here and we
will talk a little bit about some of the potential
pitfalls and hurdles facing a R. Stuff you should know,
(45:02):
lush stuff you should know. Okay, Chuck so Asis, which
(45:23):
makes UM all sorts of tech hardware and stuff. They
released a phone recently called the Zen Phone a R
and it is basically made for augmented reality. It does
all the other stuff that a phone does, but it
has like an extra bit of hardware and software that
makes it like a ACE augmented reality. And one of
the things that has on board is Google's Tango software,
(45:48):
and Tango is basically like an a R suite. It
has things like UM amazing motion detection, area learning. UM.
Do you remember how we talked about marker less a
R where it's like, oh that's a river, Oh that's
a walkway. Like it's really really good at that at
determining UM markerless objects to to figure out what needs
(46:08):
to be projected where UM. And it's a really amazing
phone as far as a R goes. Um. The fact
that it's out there really kind of shows like people
are really pouring money into this, this idea, this a
r idea, UM and eventually that is why I think
it's going to hit. Yeah. And the zen phone looks uh,
it's not it's not so clunky, it's like a regular
(46:31):
smartphone and just at the top in the center has
a little bit of a hardware situation, but it seems
like it could probably still just fit into your pocket nicely.
It's not super bulky, nothing on your forehead, nothing on
your forehead yet. But that's the thing though, you still
need a phone. UM. And most people, not most people,
(46:54):
but over three billion people close to you know, inching
towards the global population has a smartphone at this point, right,
So that's not an issue, not the biggest issue. But
there are some challenges, uh, and they are basically boiled
down to hardware and bandwidth. UM. Bandwidth is a really
big deal right now until five G is like fully integrated. UM,
(47:19):
it's just really tough to meet the band with needs
of a r right now on a day to day basis. Yeah.
And like the kind of a are that we're talking
about where it's called always on augmented reality, where you're
just walking through the world and there's just digital that
digital layer is everywhere, and it's really mixed too, so
that it's really interacting with reality in a very believable
(47:40):
way that is extraordinarily banned with hungry. Whereas like walking
down the street and streaming a YouTube video and HD
requires something like five or six megabytes per second of
bandwidth and something like thirty to fifty milliseconds of latency,
which is lag time between your phone sends a commando
(48:01):
server and then receives the info back. That's that's that's
about what it takes to watch an HD movie, to
stream an HD movie, But with UM, with augmented reality apps,
it's that's nothing like you wouldn't get anywhere with that.
Now you need about a hundred per second bandwidth and
a latency of one millisecond. And they think five g
(48:24):
could solve this problem, but we'll see. I think that
it definitely well. I think, I mean they're talking about
like an average download speed of a gigabyte a second
in peaks of like ten gigs a second, which is
way more than enough for an a r UM, an
a r APP. So I think five G really will
(48:46):
help move a r along. But you still you said
it earlier. We still have that problem with hardware with
a phone like the phone. Holding your phone up in
front of you is no way to move through the world.
But that's basically what you have to do if you
want to take part with augmented reality. Well, Google said
we have an idea, how about Google Glass? And everybody said,
that's a terrible idea. To get that thing out of here. Yeah,
(49:09):
this was six years ago. I remember Jonathan Strickland. I
think he was sent some in his defense. I don't
think he purchased them, but Google, he definitely he really
wore them a lot, if I remember correctly. Yeah, they
that did not work out, And one of the big
problems was they didn't have it fully worked out before
they said, hey, do you want to go ahead and
try this thing out. They should have probably worked on
(49:31):
a little longer, but the prototype was released as the product,
and they thought that this would just get such a
claim that it's going to be the next big thing
and then we'll work out the kinks as uh, the
money comes flooding in, And that didn't happen because people
didn't like the idea of people walking around with a
(49:51):
camera honed on everything or themselves. No, that was a
that's a big one and it still is today. I mean,
privacy is an enormous problem with um with augmented reality,
because to to be a part of it, like you
have your you're you're either you're wearable or your phone
or whatever, has to be taking in the world around it,
(50:12):
and that very frequently includes people. And it's like you said,
maybe there will very soon be an augmented reality app
where if you look at somebody, they're suddenly dressed like
Teddy Roosevelt. That's probably pretty innocuous, but also maybe it
takes their clothes off and it shows them naked right
there standing in front of you, and all of a
sudden you're leering at them and they know what you're
(50:33):
looking at. And that is an enormous invasion of privacy.
Plus also, with as much stuff as we share on
social media, all that stuff can be cobbled together to
pretty amazing profile of you. And if all of that
comes up when you look at somebody, when somebody comes
into your field of vision while you're wearing an augmented
reality wearable or something Um, that's an enormous invasion of
(50:57):
privacy too, especially if the person hasn't opted in for
that to be shared. That's right, and they are. Here's
the real scary thing. They're talking about a r contact
lenses that you wear on your eyeballs where this is
just the world you see at all times. They're not
clunky glasses, they're not headsets. You wouldn't even know that
(51:17):
someone has these in necessarily. And the problem now is
they can't provide a power source, which means that they
have not figured out a way to make them run
on human tears. Right, human tears are UM blinking. Surely
there's a way to make them work from blinking, you
know what I mean? Well, yeah, I could see that.
You just gotta blink a lot. Yes, So there was
(51:38):
something that we ran across, UM that I think if
you asked me, this is why a lot of people
are going to start UM using things like UM augmented
reality wearables or implants or something like that. There's gonna
be what's called or there could be. I should say,
I don't mean to say gunna because it's definitely not
a foregone conclusion, but UM, there could be a UM Uh,
(52:03):
like a career arms races. How I've seen it put
where somebody who has like this implant or who has
gone out and bought these contact lenses or whatever is
going to be a much more productive employee than somebody
who still goes to the trouble of typing out, you know,
how to you know, an internet search or something for information.
And they're doing it the old school way, They're going
(52:25):
to get left behind. And when you're talking about things
like livelihood, people are going to say, well, I need
to go get those contact lenses, right, I need to
undergo that surgery to get that implant so that I
can keep up in today's job market. That is what's
going to get everybody into the world of a r Yeah.
And they're also clearly just day to day physical pitfalls
(52:46):
like walking into traffic or driving off a cliff um,
because you're wearing those wearable while you're in a car
or something like that. I would think that some of
those are going to start coming with UM like you
want be able to operate it if it's moving, you know,
over a certain miles per hour or something. I don't
know how they're going to I don't know, man, I
(53:06):
do not know. Um, I do know that One of
the issues that was raised about that though, is the
ability to hack into stuff like that. And I mean
if we're if we're just completely reliant and trusting of
our apps or or a r apps to like kind
of take us from place to place, we might stop
thinking for ourselves and just kind of follow them blindly.
Like you don't use ways, but ways is very well
(53:29):
known as good as it is um for leading you
on some real like dingbat side side trips to save
you like a half of a second um. And I
follow them like very rarely, am I like, Okay, wait
where are you taking me? And you'll scroll ahead or
whatever look at the turns you know in texts. Instead
you just follow it, and you know you have to
(53:51):
look over sheepishly at the people who just watched you
get off on a spur and then get back on
and really not get anywhere. That's a really great example.
But imagine if that lead you off of a cliff
or something like that, and that happens. People literally have
walked off cliffs playing Pokemon Go because they weren't paying
attention to the real world around him. Yeah, and this
(54:11):
isn't exactly a r But my again, Emily's uncle came
to see us and he has he's a drone guy,
and he had a setup where you could fly the
drone up and then he put a headset on me,
and then I could see through the drones camera, so
the drones two feet in the air, and then I
can look around and operate the camera as if I
(54:33):
was up there, and I could not get that headset
off of my head quickly enough. Yeah, well that's another
thing too. I think that's another reason why that five
G is going to have to take places, like this
thing needs to be as smooth as possible as people
are just gonna walk around throwing up everywhere. Oh it
didn't make me sick. I just it's just not my thing, man.
I was like, I want to be in the real world.
(54:54):
I don't want to wear a headset and look at
something projected. I think I think that is I think
that will definitely be a thing, Chuck, or there will
be like there'll be a whole movement of you know,
back to reality types where rather than back to nature,
will be back to reality where people are like, no,
we we just want to experience reality as it is.
(55:15):
None of people will be like, how can you ever
say what reality really is? You know, what is subjective consciousness?
You leon? And then they'll say, you're right, We might
as well just get digitized. Do you got anything else?
I got nothing else. Well, let's revisit this poet in
five years. Okay, hawe. If you want to know more
about augmented reality, go online and start finding apps and
(55:36):
see what you think. You'll love it. There's also a
pretty good article on how stuff works you can check
out too. And since I said that, it's time for listener,
ma'il ah. This is called a disagreement about trunk or treating. Okay,
we had a very minor spat. Oh yeah, yeah, I thought, Hey, guys,
(55:56):
been listening since. And consider myself a devotee. I've marveled
for some time about how good natured, good natured you
are toward each other, even when you disagree slightly on
some of the controversial topics. I think it's an important
skill to have, especially in the midst of divisive ages.
After over three years of listening to your dulcet tones, however,
your masks finally began to slip. The most unlikely of
(56:19):
episodes trunk or Treating. I thought that the disagreement over
the presence of apple bobbing at trunk or Treating is
going to boil over, but being the consummate professionals you are,
you swiftly moved on. I did find the momentary annoyance
in your voice is hilarious, though, and it just goes
to show you uh to take that you take every
episode very seriously, despite the seemingly laid back manner in
(56:40):
which you deliver your pearls of wisdom. I've long been
waiting for a conflict between the two of you because
I've found your on my relationship very funny. And the
fact that the first sign of an argument came when
discussing a child's Halloween event is the most stuff you
should know thing that has ever happened and made me
laugh out loud. So that is from one Alex in London.
(57:01):
Thanks Alex. You should go back and listen to the
Barbie episode. We had a little spat in that one too,
if I remember Craig and I will say this is
not a grass watering grass level vindication. But we got
at least one email from a guy They said our
trunk or Treating has Fall Festival stuff too, because yes,
that's fine, he said, because the kids it would take
(57:21):
them fifteen minutes to visit the cars and that's not
long enough, right, So in this case, trunk or treating
is a feature of the larger Fall festival, but apple
bobbing has nothing to do with trunk or treating. Let's
just send this, okay, let's do it all right. Well,
if you want to get in such with this, like
Alex from London did, you can go on to stuff
(57:43):
you Should Know dot com and check out our social links.
You can also send us an email The stuff podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more
podcasts for my heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio
app podcasts and where ever you listen to your favorite shows.
(58:05):
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Josh Clark
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Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.