It Could Happen Here - The Good Parts of our Future Tech Dystopia

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

Robert and Garrison traveled through a portal to the future located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Now they're going to tell you what (good) things to expect from our techno overlords.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This, well, last week when you hear this, but this week when we're recording this, because we're recording this in the past for you, Garrison Davis, intrepid correspondent, and myself, Garrison Davis's boss, went to CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, in 2023 in order to explore the future. And in keeping with our guide both to the future, which we cover here, and collapse because the tech industry is falling apart, I think this was a pretty interesting time to be at CES. I did an episode last week where I kind of talked about some preliminaries. I went to an event called CES Unveiled, where some of the more prominent products were there. But we've since spent three days walking around the convention floor, probably around 30 miles on foot, something like that. My legs and back are falling apart. Yeah.

We've turned you into an old man. But we have learned what the future is going to be. And I am, boy, howdy, I'm excited to tell the folks what they can expect. Garrison, where do you think we should start? Let's start with some of the more collapse-y type things revolving around crypto. Because crypto was kind of like the white elephant in the CES, because this is happening right after the FTX fiasco. So it's kind of weird.

We saw it printed, the word crypto, and Web 3.0 printed on more stuff than I heard people talk about. Yeah, people were not talking about it the way I think they would have. I mean, definitely last CES, but even like a few months ago. And that was really interesting. We did sit in at one crypto industry event where it was a group of like French regulators and French crypto business people talking about what they felt like regulations were,

basically in the wake of the FTX collapse, what kind of regulations did they think would make crypto work. Yeah. And you might have caught more than I did, Garrison, because they couldn't get their microphones to work. No, their microphones stopped working. Then their backup microphone stopped working and then they got a third backup mic which is a little tiny lav mic that they had to finish the

he was just speaking into a tiny little lavalier mic yeah we're amplifying it yeah and sending painful feedback into everyone's ears and look they're going to be defending the uh the the traditional financial system but i will bet you when a a bunch of Goldman Sachs bankers get up on stage, their microphones work. I mean, that was just one thing in a long line of crypto and metaverse kind of fiascos that we ran into at CES. The first night we got here, we were going to be going to a crypto happy hour. That was... Supposed to be held at a bar called The Nerd on Fremont Street. Now, if you've never been to Fremont Street, Fremont Street is old Las Vegas.

So it's the worst part of town. There's a gigantic fucking football field long LCD screen above you that plays animated versions of God Bless America. How'd you feel about Fremont Street Garrison? It's a nightmare. It's horrible. There's cigar kiosks. The smell walking back to the car was something. I don't think I'll ever forget that smell.

By the way, folks, one of the things you're going to get from this is a travelogue of Young Garrison's first trip to Las Vegas. Yeah. It's been a real one. So we get to Fremont Street. Nobody is in the Nerd. No, the Nerd is completely empty. It's a bowling alley bar,

which sounds like a great idea, but it was completely deserted. There was not a single soul in. I poked my head in. It was all under harsh purple light and completely empty. And this is off of Frem of off of fremont street so like there's there were plenty of people around people on fremont street and the music music was blaring both inside and outside yeah completely dead um so once this so we saw this being empty

so we checked the email for the crypto party again and they said there there there was another location listed so this obviously just to clarify there was another location listed. So, like, oh, there's obviously... Just to clarify, there was the party invitation thing that you would click in the list of CES parties, and it had one location. Yeah. And then there was also what you got emailed, which was a separate location.

A separate location. And there was zero indication as to which was accurate. So we decided to go to the other location listed, because no one was at this one, which was called the Goat Bar. Yes. Which immediately upon pulling up, we got great impressions. Yeah, it was a hole in the wall, a little box. Windowless box.

Yeah, windowless box. All of the letters were coming off of the sign, so it was impossible to tell what they had once said. And they were descending in an almost artful manner. There's a photo on my Twitter. We'll probably use it to headline this episode. It's beautiful. It's like, I don't know if someone could have

intentionally placed those as well as they were. It was a perfect microcosm of this entire thing. We went inside. Very nice people. The person there said that the party wasn't happening here anymore, but that this bar is the Crypto Guy's usual hangout spot, which was a glorious sentence to hear. Not a big money location. And look, I've drank at a lot of dive bars. I have both been poor and in need of alcohol for much of my life. This is a classic dive bar. And by that, I mean, not the kind of like trying to play it being a dive bar so that people feel like they're

getting the dive bar. I mean, like you will get tetanus from the bathroom dive bar. It was great. Just the fact that the person like running the bar referred to this as their regular hangouts, referred to this as the crypto guy's regular hangout spot is just warm to my heart. My biggest regret from this trip is that we didn't stay for karaoke, but yeah we had other plans yeah so that probably leads us into metaverse there's not a lot else to say

about crypto which is the other kind of like but both like crypto nfts and metaverse were all kind of trying to piggyback off each other and i think metaverse has survived the best out of those three. It's doing better than crypto and NFTs, which isn't saying much. But even still, I think there was a slight – it was weird. Some people were trying to emphasize the Metaverse aspect. Some people were trying to emphasize just the VR aspect. Yeah. I saw Metaverse and Meta around, but when I would go to the companies advertising various VR products, they would usually were focused more often on other applications for VR tech technology. Yeah. Like I kind of get the feeling again, a lot of them ordered stuff with meta on it before it

became clear what a disaster it was. And there's some backing for this. So for one, we, we went and we saw, um, magic leap, uh, which is a company that makes VR headsets and VR programs. They have had pretty disastrous sales to the consumer market, even though they have a very good product because it's really high end and people aren't willing to spend $2,300 on a headset. sort of reoriented themselves trying to sell to enterprise and and trying to like move units uh in like an industrial capacity for people doing like training and and it's one of those things one of the things you can do with vr is you can sit a guy down um and have someone remotely explain them how to fix or repair something if he is less anyway so they were showcasing a lot of that as opposed to games and certainly yeah no one tried to make me hop into a fucking horizon worlds or um even vr chat there wasn't much in terms of like trying to

advertise their their their software or hardware for building like virtual concerts i probably had a lot of it was way more enterprise and like training, and a lot more very practical applications. Or gaming. Or gaming, but in terms of what the high-end, expensive, big VR producers were there for, they were definitely pivoting, or at least showcasing the applications that were more for enterprise. Yeah, and that's what I found really interesting, because I probably had a dozen different VR headsets on my head at some point.

Yeah. And not once was I dropped into like the kind of metaverse type thing that Facebook is. Yeah. And again, none of their products were on display. No. Meta Facebook was not here at all. There was another company called Meta

that I think did some kind of machining, which was funny because the Meta booth was just here at all. There was another company called Meta that I think did some kind of machining, which was funny because the Meta booth was just some completely different company. Yeah, yeah. But in terms of circling back to the collapse aspect of the Metaverse, so night one was this failed crypto party where we went to two locations

and they were at neither one of them. They sure weren't. Night two, we signed up for an invite to a metaverse party. And I can't tell you how excited we were for this metaverse party. We were actually very thrilled. For one thing, legs are now in the metaverse and Garrison's never experienced legs. So I was really excited for them to see that. I only had the quest one, which did not include legs.

I was also psyched to maybe make a big red robot friend, like in that horrible video that Mark Zuckerberg made where his friends are playing poker on a spaceship. So the party on the invite that we request, like you couldn't just show up. You needed to like request an invite and like get a ticket. Yeah, we got four tickets. We got four tickets to this metaverse party.

It was first for, it first said it was at the Palazzo. The Palazzo being part of the Venetian. And about two hours before the party they said it was no longer at the Palazzo and instead we were supposed to meet them at the fountain. At the fountains outside of the Bellagio.

Which is like one of the big famous Vegas landmarks and quite far away from the Venetian. Yeah, because the Venetian is where half of CES was Vegas landmarks and quite far away from the Venetian. Yeah, because the Venetian is where half of CES was taking place. The other half was in the Las Vegas Convention Center. So we make our jaunty walk over to Bellagio. We get there and we realize that we have to use this application on our phones for the Metaverse party thing to work. It's like this AR application. And they did tell you if you have a VR headset, you should bring it.

I think one person did at least. And bring a charged phone. Yeah, bring a charged phone, bring your headphones. So we all open up this QR code or whatever, or link, to try to get this software working and around 20 people there are all are all met with perpetual loading screens now a few people did have i saw one or two people that this was working for mine loaded just the vr avatars of people but it was on like a gray background. But it didn't load any of the background

or any of the AR capabilities. The way it was supposed to look, because one guy had it more or less working, I think. Yeah, yeah. It was basically, it was a video, like a live feed of the Bellagio fountain in front of us as his like camera scanned over it. It's using the phone camera.

All of the different, like a bunch of different awkwardly jerking avatars kind of crudely dancing. Yeah. In front of it. They did have legs. Ringing endorsement. Yeah. So it was,

it was supposed to be the, it was supposed to be this, this AR animated experience thing synced to the Bellagio fountain and to Viva Las Vegas. And that was what it was supposed to be. The thing is only one or two people it was working for everyone else had these loading screens or had just the just had the avatars popped in with none of the other features working um as before the fellatio fountain like just like a show finished yeah the guy the guy who's running this party before the final Viva the guy running this party

left he was gone he exited the premises he took advantage of the fact that people were confused and trying to figure out what was happening and he escaped so we have all like 20 people not sure what to do

and then we get an email we get an email like 10 minutes later saying that thank you for coming to the show um i hope you enjoy your time at beer park which is across the street beer park is a place by the way i know it's it seems like a joke name but it's a quite large business so we were told that the party had a reservation at beer park and that we were all going to go over to beer Park and, you know... By the way, the people heading up there, it's not just, like, pieces of shit like us.

There's, like, some serious industry people there. No, like, people who, like... Including, like, the CEO of arguably the most prominent virtual reality game company. Yeah, no, there was... Or the COO, whatever. COO, yeah. No, like, there was people who've been involved

in very popular VR games who are industry industry yeah entrepreneurs engineers yeah and other other like vr enthusiasts and then also people like us i assume who just wanted to watch it crash and burn which it did who was just there to be to be the sickos in the window laughing yes yes so we're told they have this they we're told that they have the reservation for beer park like okay well the ar technology didn't work that's that's a bummer you know it would not it's not the first failed demo i've seen at ces stuff happens maybe they didn't test it for how many people was there they thought maybe 20 was too many yeah like who like but like actually yeah who knows um but at least we can hang out with people but so but the guy the guy running the party left so he's just gone uh but everyone

else makes make you know like you know like a dozen or a dozen or so people make our way over to beer park and we're told that there is in fact no reservation for this party nobody has called them they don't know what we're talking about so could we please get out of the way of the staircase so we start our way down the staircase and then we then we then we stop halfway down because someone at beer park says well there is like there's a bar in the very back yeah of of of and they're not selling alcohol there but you guys can stand around and buy from other places we can stand there as they figure out what's going on we later learn that the that the guy who's running the party who's who did not show

up uh did have a did have a reservation for six people at one table yeah garrison that man hung himself at circus circus within 30 minutes of the show i i do know he actually made his way over to beer park at some point but he did not go to where everyone else was going he was at the other side of the bar oh oh good but he was not talking to anyone else from the party so that was that was the the second party we went to which was yeah of a inspiring of a similar level of competency. So that is the crypto. People did show up for the second part. That is true.

So I'm going to have to give it to the metaverse. They changed locations three times. From the Palazzo to the Bellagio Fountain to Beer Park with a variety of issues along the way. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories

inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love

technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba.

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In terms of the VR stuff we actually got to try, so Robert tried like, I think,

three or four different haptic feedback suits. I tried every haptic product I could find. And haptic, again, for the folks who don't know this, whenever you like touch your phone and it like buzzes to like let you know that you're typing or whatever, that's haptic feedback. And that's kind of the crudest form of it. But the idea and the hope of the people kind of playing with the technology is that you can find ways to basically like simulate a keyboard so that you would be able to touch type in a keyboard that's not really there because you would be wearing a glove or something that would simulate the feeling so well and so this is a key part of when you think about like what would it take to go from where vr is now which is a pretty visually immersive and can be a pretty auditorily immersive experience

but that leaves the rest of your body tactile feedback isn't there yeah um to something that is kind of yeah more like a holodeck where you feel and, like, can, you know, even people have talked about, like, smell-o-vision and stuff, which is a little further behind. But, like, something that's actually engaging the entirety of your physical person. At the very least, not being able to, like, walk through walls. Yeah, or at least more of your physical person than just your head and eyes and ears. So that's the goal. So the first one I tried was the tact suit, which basically feels like – and I wrote – this was in the last episode. It feels like having a bunch of N64 rumble packs on your body.

It does not mimic the feeling of hugging or touching a human being. Another one that we tried, I tried one that was just gloves that did a pretty good job of, and the tact suit gloves did a pretty good job of mimicking keyboards, which is kind of interesting. I don't think it would allow me to touch type, but it was neat to see that kind of developing a little bit. Then we tried one by OWO. It's like big capital O's, little W.

We're just going to call it OWOW-O. It's like big capital O's little W. We're just going to call it O-O. O-O. And that was like a full body suit where basically it's like a skin tight, like a workout shirt with a bunch of EEG pads underneath it. So the EEG pads make direct connection to your

skin. And then if you have ever engaged in the kind of kinky sex play that involves like a violet wand, which is a device that erotically electrocutes you or your partner, you can also like draw on each other with it. Or if you've ever used like any of those fake sex cattle prods, they used to sell them at the kink.com arena in that old castle in San Francisco. If you've ever used any of those, it's like that. So you're just like getting zapped a bunch all over your body. And on the low settings,

it's kind of like a nicer massage gun thing. Yeah. And on the higher settings, it's actually really, really uncomfortable. It's actually, yeah. I tried this one today.

I put on the little skin tight jumper thing. And even just during the calibration settings, it was really fascinating because it's, even though the electrodes are only on like a few of your muscle sections, the current runs through and it doesn't really, it doesn't necessarily have like, you know, like a taser shocky feeling.

It just, it just is like muscle pain. It's involuntarily contracting your muscles. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's not just like staticky, shocky stuff.

Um, there was, you know, uh, get, you know, uh, the,

the, the cool thing about this is that it can simulate, you know, uh, an entry wound and an exit wound. So, uh, Robert was playing the popular VR game pistol whip where you get shot by dudes and you do

like a John wick thing basically. And you can feel, you know, like bullet goes in, bullet goes out. Yeah. And yeah. So it's not just like a John wick thing basically. And you can feel, you know, like bullet goes in, bullet goes out. Yeah. And yeah. So it's not just like a rumble pack type things,

actually depth to the feeling. And one of the things they simulated that was really cool is getting stabbed and then having the knife twisted, which was the worst with the worst feeling for me is like, honestly, like getting shot in like the chest or shoulders. It was, it was painful,

but it wasn't necessarily, it wasn't like painful in like a bad way. It was like, Oh, I'm playing a game and this, this, this is a punishment. It's, it hurts, but it wasn't painful in a bad way. It was like, oh, I'm playing a game and this is a punishment. It hurts, but it's kind of fun. The stabbing was awful. I would seek to avoid it. It was very painful because all the stuff

below my chest was way more uncomfortable and painful versus chest and arms, which was kind of fun. I don't know, again, whether or not you find this appealing will have to do with the way that you like to do your video games.

Yeah. But what I will say is that from a perspective of just like enjoying an FPS type game, it is the first time I've been playing a game that's had some sort of feedback when you're hit that actually is negative reinforcement. Yeah. Like you do not want to get hit.

No. And you actually kind of dread getting hit. It actually, it makes the game a lot more immersive. Yeah. That's like a bullshit phrase people use for like, this is immersive. Like, no, this actually, like this actually starts introducing consequences.

It was really cool the thought, I think, that they put into something like, how do we simulate a knife wound? How do we actually do like a through and through gunshot wound? And it also makes your VR body feel more connected to your actual body. Yeah. Which is something that usually doesn't happen. Yeah, you feel a sense of like defensiveness towards your person.

Yeah. And like when I was trying to like dodge the bullets and shit, like I actually felt, it didn't just kind of feel like I was playing a game, like my body felt more on the line, which was which was interesting because this is purely we're talking about this kind of in the context of stuff that matters and the stuff that matters here. of people to simulate accurately life in a digital form because if that can be done then a lot of other weird things are possible many of which are good some of which are bad many of which are bad um i mean i i think the next the next thing we're talking about has a bit more practical application and a bit more real world because that's what i wanted to say all the only application i saw for this was in gaming this does not i didn't see like a metaverse application of this. Like this is not going to help in Mark Zuckerberg. Like you don't want to,

unless you can get mugged in the metaverse. Yeah. And some, some asshole 10 year old will walk up to you with a knife and stab you. Well, that's a good point. When we're talking about, is it possible that people will be living increasing quant increasing portions of their life in persistent digital environments?

One thing I would not want to have is a suit like this because people will find ways to access it. Because you can get bullied. Well, and we've talked to some people who program for these things who are like other versions of them. At the Metaverse party, actually. At the Metaverse party, they fuck up and it's like getting electrocuted. You can't take it off yourself it's a serious problem there is a competing model to the oh whoa suit called the tesla suit not not made by elon musk's tesla different company but similar similar degrees of care towards safety maybe i mean it is this is the most high-end

haptic suit that does this electroshock thing um and he said that he he has watched demos where people have been in the suit and the suit like glitches and all of the things turn on and like at full capacity which means you're you you're getting you're not only in excruciating pain you also you also just like can't move your body like you're stuck frozen in horrible pain until someone turns the suit off. So like there is this type of like logistical problems with these sort of things as well. Well, and it's one of those like the first thought I had when using that thing was like, oh, this is kind of neat. This actually would make certain video games better.

And the second thought I had was I would only ever want to have this on if I was playing a video game that was not connected to the internet. Because the instant, I would never want to engage in a multiplayer game where I could get stabbed like that. It would be horrible. You would constantly be trolled. I mean, obviously, like, you can have lower settings on these things

to make it not painful at all. Yeah, and you do get to pick that. But I tried to go as far as I could. But in terms of practical applications beyond just gaming, the next haptic suit that we tried, this company is working with governments. That's a B-Haptics.

Haptics is the company. They do the thing where they remove vowels. Yeah, haptics. And they have military contracts. We saw Army people testing it out. Yeah, two employees of the United States Army. But they already are working with law enforcement and – In an industrial capacity.

Government training. There's a fucking video of Jeff Bezos using one of their products to wirelessly control a robot that is based off of human hands in order to do technical tasks. They work with governments. They work with businesses, corporations. This isn't really a consumer thing at this point because the full suit – I think they said the next full suit is going to be like $80,000. No, no, no. The gloves are $4,000. The gloves and battery pack.

The next full suit that they're doing is going to be $80,000 or $400 a month subscription. But that's for their suit that's not even released yet. That is their next model. Yeah. Not a consumer... Theoretically, if you're willing to pay the monthly fee, you could have this thing.

But that's not the intent. But I think what's interesting about it is this is kind of where all of the technology is going. And the main difference is that the haptics that we had used on us in the lower-end gaming products, where again, they're basically just kind of like shocking you a bunch in specific ways. Or just like vibrating.

Yeah, or just like vibrating. Whereas this suit used air pressure. It was like pneumatic. So it was basically you have these gloves on, and the gloves are much more cumbersome than the other gloves. Yeah. You have these gloves on, and they're like blowing air onto parts of your hand. It's compressed air that feeds into these little sensor things

that actually go in, they make contact with your skin. And so the feeling is real in a way that the other haptic stuff isn't. And it doesn't, first off, it does not actually, it does not feel like you're getting puffs of air blown on your hands. No, it does not. One of the things that they did in there is they simulated holding your hand under a leak with drops of, I think it was oil in that,

but like drops of a liquid coming down on your hand. And it felt like having water cup pour onto your hands without wetness, which is an odd feeling. Yeah, that is bizarre. They had like a bonsai tree, which kind of felt like a prickly, yeah. They had a bonsai tree and like a grape like uh it felt like a prickly almost yeah it felt like a bonsai tree it felt like a prickly vine it felt like a prickly plant running your hands through both plants if you'd closed your eyes and you'd run your hands through both plants they would

feel like different plants yeah um and one thing you could do is you could grab the vine with leaves on it and pull your hand down the leaves would come off the way they would in a real vine and like you can like feel them you can feel it and then your hand down, the leaves would come off the way they would in a real vine. And you felt it. You can feel it, yeah. And then your hand is full of leaves at the end and you feel them too as they slide off of your hand, which is a kind of fidelity I didn't really realize was possible at the moment.

There was other stuff that really, there was some stuff that worked better. The turning wheels and stuff was kind of like whatever. The knobs and buttons weren't great. I actually thought the, the weak point was turning knobs. The radio. It just felt kind of shocky.

Yeah. Um, but the, the straw, there was one where you, the rope, the, yeah,

there was a rope hanging from the ceiling. So you could like pull it to like, it was kind of like attached to, you were on basically like a fake airship in the sky. So it's kind of like attached to a horn. Yeah like a fake airship in the sky so it's kind of like attached to a horn yeah so you could pull the rope and then you could the way you can grab a rope and pull it down hand over hand you could pull it and it felt like it felt just like yeah pulling a rope through your hand like it was like if if i was if i had no like near perfect fidelity yeah if i had no like visual sensory perception, I would think I am pulling a rope through my hand.

Yeah. It felt perfect. And there were, there was a moment where I was at a desk and I had to open it. And so I like, I pull like, and normally in VR, if you're like opening a desk or something,

you just kind of like grab and pull in the right area and it opens the drawer. This, I felt like there was a big metal kind of like hook thing that you the right area and it opens the drawer this i i felt like there was a big metal kind of like hook thing that you get your glass that you like get your hand up and to pull so i pull it out and i feel my hand inside that thing as i pull it and then at a certain point i stuck my hand into the drawer to push it open the rest of the way which i do on real drawers when they get stuck and it worked the same way that it does in a real drawer and it it felt like one i mean the other thing that was impressive about that is

that uh even just i i i instinctually picked up a mug by putting like half my hand inside the mug and holding on to the other side which you can't really you can't do that if you're using vr controllers and you can't even do that if you're doing like hand tracking it just it just doesn't work but that you you put your hand in, pinched both sides of the mug and picked it up and just that by itself, as you're feeling the mug in your hand, is

extremely impressive right now. It kind of sounds silly because you're talking about the mechanics of grabbing a mug, but it's actually a lot of advancement. But you're also talking about the capacity for mimicking reality with close to perfect fidelity, which I would not have guessed walking into the show you could do the things that we're doing. They were speaking about how they're using this for workplace training, but also even talking about how you don't want to just use this tech for workplace training because then people will get too used to doing it in VR. And then when they actually go into the real world, they'll actually be completely lost because it's not close enough to the VR. You know, VR, it can only do so much. You want to use, you know, VR training as a supplemental thing for also in-person training and kind of go back and forth so that you actually stay grounded in what you're going

to be actually doing. But then you can also use the VR as an assistant so you can, you know, train it on, you can train on your own, but also you get to apply it to the real world. So you don't get stuck just doing the stuff in the digital world, which I thought was an interesting comment from the person who's like trying to sell this technology. Yeah. Yeah. Which I, yeah. And that was kind of the thing, one of the neat things about CES. So most of the people you encounter and CES, for those of you who've never been to a trade show, it's rooms that are bigger than you ever thought rooms could be filled with thousands of booths. And some of the booths contain earth movers by the company Cat that are like the size of a mansion in terms of their actual like mass. And some of the booths are a crazy person sitting with his homemade air conditioner and his cut open gloves explaining to you the new way he's figured out how to make air conditioner coils.

air conditioner coils um and so you get this mix of at the big corporate booths a lot of the time like pr people who are hired to sell a line and don't know what they're talking about and are just trying to hype a product and then inventors uh and people who like have are actually have actually made the thing in front of you and are very excited about it and are kind of incapable of bullshitting you sometimes they believe irrationally in their product. Sure, sure. But they don't, they're not PR people. No. And yeah, I got that feeling from the haptic people.

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since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field,

and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba.

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Yes. So I want to talk about some of the others since we're doing the good. The other products we saw or things that we saw, inventions we saw that made me kind of hopeful about aspects of the future. So we saw some AR glasses. And again, VR is immersive. AR is just kind of putting an overlay from the digital world on the regular shit. You're wearing glasses and you're seeing something that a computer is showing you. It was their Xander glasses, Xander with an X, like the guy from Buffy. And these are glasses that are designed to provide real-time captioning to those with hearing loss. So you are wearing them, and you are conversing with people all around you, and you see every word that's being said around you, including the words you say, on screen in front of you, live captioning. And it worked.

It worked extremely well. I didn't see it miss or fuck up any words. It's not like punctuated or anything, but it was perfectly easy to follow. And it works for all of the voices around you. To the extent that I could tell, and I'm not hard of hearing in a way that I need captioning glasses, but I think that if you are, this is kind of a miracle product it worked incredibly well as far as i could tell and um i think a good amount of thought from what they said at least it seems like a good amount of thought went into the fact that if you are acting as someone's ears you have a responsibility to take care of their privacy um because all of it was local none of it was going

into the cloud there's no app there being stored anywhere. There's no app. It doesn't touch your fucking phone. It's just the glasses. That's all it is. There's no internet. There's no app. It's just the glasses. So that was one of the coolest things

that I think we saw there and was just also a fairly rare, legitimate example of a need being met through fascinating technology that I think could really improve people's lives. Yeah. One other pair of AR glasses I tried was by Ant Reality Optics.

They had a few different models. They're the ones that make the actual lenses. They had models that you could switch between AR and VR. It was actually pretty impressive how they look pretty much like regular glasses. The specific AR and VR ones look a little bit funky, but they're not completely ridiculous. But with a button, you could switch between having the AR

pass-through mode, so you see the AR screen, but you also see the world around you. Then you can hit the VR mode, and it blacks out the real world, and you just see the VR stuff, and that was pretty impressive. They also had a full-frame AR glasses that, again, looked relatively normal in terms of this is the regular pair of glasses, but this was the only pair of AR glasses I saw at the show that had the AR going over the course of like the entire lens.

All the other ones had like a little box that they operated in. Yeah. That also in some cases fucked up your vision when you didn't have a thing playing through. Yeah. And it's like hard to, it's hard for your eyes. It's like scratches on the lens. Yeah. And it's hard, it's hard for your eye to know what to focus on yeah um but this the ar was was over that was was across the entirety of the lens

and that one was was very nice to uh to test out now i think one of the things that we're kind of talking around here is the fact that if you paid attention to this you'll note that none of the really cool stuff we're talking about is made by a giant tech company. Facebook meta, yeah. Yeah, Facebook meta or like Samsung, Panasonic, LG. We went to those booths. Those are the largest booths at the show. They're fucking massive.

Multi-million dollar booths. God knows how much money. Panasonic spent, had one of the largest booths at the show, which probably was tens of millions of dollars. It is not cheap to get real estate in the LBCC, the Las Vegas Convention Center. They had the third largest booth in the entire show. It was massive.

They didn't really have any of their new products. They didn't have any products. Panasonic makes things. No, they had two cameras and like maybe like 10 lenses. But. And like not multiple ones of those, just those. Yeah. The only two cameras and like 10 lenses.

That's all they had for this massive, massive booth. And then some fucking TVs and shit. Like nothing new. And they had like displays and like not displays for sale. It was just like projected displays of people using their stuff. They didn't have anything to show at all. But they did have a breakdancing stage.

And they brought up DJ Funky and his breakdancing crew, which I swear were pulled right out of Times Square in 2003 and just thrust into our reality. It was deeply awk because it's these very like clearly people who spend most of their time doing breakdancing shows out in public in streets and crowded cities and a bunch of confused Japanese businessmen just like staring back at them. And they're being like, come on, come on, make some noise. And the Japanese businessmen are continuing to stare at them. Do not want to make any noise. Don't understand why this is being asked of them.

It was extremely funny. But yeah, and that was one of kind of the takeaways for me was the lack of ideas from big tech. Most of what the big companies were showing was like either a million different cars and, you know, our technology is this car technology. And I'm sure they're all great cars. I'm sure they're all wonderful cars. Very popular. A lot of EV cars. One of the bigger trends we saw was how much people were pushing their EV cars. Which is, I think, if you want to read something about that, it's bad news for Tesla. I also don't think it's good news for the rest of us because just replacing all of the cars on the road with EV cars does not solve many of the fundamental problems that we have, including even emissions. It's not easy to make them.

A lot of that electricity is generated via this. Yeah. Some of them look neat. There were a lot of e-bikes. A lot of e-bikes. A lot of e-bikes, which all look neat. And of course, that's going to be a huge thing. A big impetus for the e-bikes right now is that Ukrainians have been using them very

effectively in combination with drones to murder Russian soldiers. And the U.S. military has actually put in large orders for e-bikes as a result of that. So I suspect you're going to see a lot more e-bikes geared towards military applications too in the near future. But like what most of the big companies had were like TVs. Yeah, fucking Samsung. Like Samsung and LG, mostly big TVs. Yeah. Fucking Samsung, like Samsung and LG, mostly big TVs. Yeah.

And like LG had one that it was like stored in a little box where it was all rolled up and it would like unroll when you press a button, kind of like the, if you've ever had a hotel that has automatic blackout curtains, it kind of works that way. But which is like conceptually like, oh, neat, you've developed a TV that can fold and put itself away. But also, is this really better than my current TV? In a way that's going to alter my life. Is this like. Yeah, there's not much in terms of actual new innovation. Like they were trying to make their transparent TVs seem really cool and new.

But like that's not new tech either. It's just that people don't really like using them outside of like the corporate space. Yeah, transparent TVs are neat for if you're decorating's just that people don't really like using them outside of the corporate space. Yeah, transparent TVs are neat for if you're decorating a space. If you're doing a lobby. You wouldn't want that in your living room because it's a worse experience. Out of all the big

companies, LG had the best booth experience. I walked through Samsung after waiting in a massive line and it looked half like a hospital and half like an Ikea where you're walking through and they're kind of showing you all their different like smart appliance products but nothing is like actually new or innovative it's all it's all the same shit you can find it at like a Best Buy it's not it's not cool or interesting you're just waiting

in line to walk through these little Ikea homes that, that, and they show you how you can now use, you can now use like Microsoft teams from your television. And you're like, Oh, there are a lot of people bragging about their Microsoft teams integration. Look, you and I both have to use teams for work. Sometimes always the worst part of my day,

but, but now, but now Robert with your new rollable TV, you too can use Microsoft teams. Finally, a rollable TV that automatically too can use Microsoft Teams. Finally. A rollable TV that automatically takes me into my Teams room. So when you boot up Microsoft Teams and you don't want to be there anymore, just roll the TV down. When I first clicked the link on Firefox and it says this browser is not supported, you're going to have to use another browser to start Microsoft Teams. You probably wouldn't run into that issue if you had your rollable tv

that was a smart tv that could connect directly to microsoft teams yeah um i hate it but yeah the samsung booth was horrible sony mostly had playstations which is fine that's their people love them playstations playstations uh panasonic was a complete bust. LG at least had some interesting stuff. Like they had this one projection-powered TV extension room where you have an image or a 3D video file of the thing on the television that then projects out into the entirety of the room. At least that was cool and new. There was no stated release date for this, no stated price point.

Or application, because honestly, what movies are going to work in that? Now, the answer is that what you want to do is you want to combine that kind of drawing AI and use it so you can run a movie through it, and it will finish the rest of the scene. So, for example, you could put on Boogie Nights, that opening scene where it's that one long shot as they go through it's just all around you but everyone looks a little wrong and their hands are tweaked and fucked up you constantly have mid-journey continuing up the movie to fill the frame lord of the rings when you look to your right one of the elves has hands that just curl up in on themselves and then you just take a shitload of acid and permanently damage your brain i i think the funniest thing at the lg booth though although despite being corny was still miles better miles better than anything else in panasonic or inside

samsung oh was the home of the future was they they had three different home of the futures which was mostly talking about how to use smart appliances and how to integrate them with your phone or whatever. That was most of what they were talking about, but they had three actors in each of the homes, actual ass human beings who are like, God, kind of doing like a kind of doing a presentation, kind of doing a fourth wall breaking performance.

It's a, it was a weird, it was a weird mix of performance. Mom kept emphasizing that she was almost criminally incompetent at cooking and thus had to be taught by a robot how to make pasta but like they're talking about like their kids and my husband and it's like it's a weird performance art thing but honestly that way of presenting their products was much more enjoyable to watch than walking through the samsung, who didn't have any of that.

You were just walking through. Despite being silly, it was still much, much more enjoyable. Yeah, and so I have been attending CES since 2010, not every year, but often I try to hit it every couple of years just to kind of keep abreast of not just like what's possible because you always see some exciting new stuff that you wouldn't have guessed was a thing, but also to just kind of get an eye for how the tech industry is talking about itself to itself. And the thing that struck me most was

how completely out of the driver's seat the big tech companies were. And not even really even, not even trying. Google's big box was not in the main convention center, their main booth. They had it outside the convention center. And it does not seem to be a focus of much coverage right now. I've seen NOLA talk about it. People are not, do not care. It's just more phones. And it's like Razer's there, right?

The company that makes gaming laptops. And they make perfectly fine gaming laptops. But it's also just like, well, now I can see what the new 16-inch Razer's there, right? The company that makes gaming laptops. And they make perfectly fine gaming laptops. But it's also just like, well, now I can see what the new 16-inch Razer looks like. It looks like a Razer laptop. I can go to Lenovo and see what – they had actually a couple of cool laptops. Actually, Lenovo, I was bummed because they took away the laptop clit. They did take the clitoris off of the laptop, which is a shame. Although they have a semi-clitoris button of the laptop which is a shame although they have

a semi clitoris button on the side of the phone okay that's good it's red like the old anyway whatever um look up lenovo clitoris or just type clitoris into red tube um don't well i don't know whatever it's your life uh so the the lenovo has like, I mean, there's some like, oh, here's a laptop with two screens that doesn't completely suck. Um, you know, here's a laptop that is in a slightly better form factor, but it's, there's kind of, they've given up the idea that like, um, there's anything kind of, but iterative, like here's TVs that are slightly better than than your current tv but not in a way that you can notice and that's most of like the products there which is like well on paper this is slightly

better than the thing i have but i don't think i would actually notice a difference in that and when you're seeing that from the companies that are spending 30 million 20 million however many fucking millions of dollars to be at ces and have God knows how many billions that they put into R&D when that's what they're bringing to the table. And there's just like three nerds in a tiny booth in a corner of a room that have a device that like is capable of reading all of the speech around you and translating and like captioning it live. Or there's those, I mean, that little, not a massive company, although not, you know, clearly a decent amount of backing, doing that kind of shit with haptics. Like, that's all of the, that's the, I think the main takeaway to me is, like, there's big tech seems to have entirely given up driving the conversation about what the future's going to look like.

I mean, even like. Which I don't take as a bad thing, actually. I mean, even... We went to the John Deere booth and they had this... They had this AI-assisted way to scan your crops and locate where weeds are and another kind of... And it was on like

one of those gigantic irrigation plow machines where you like drive it around. It's like 100 yards long and it waters and sprays pesticide and shit. I forget around. It's like 100 yards long and it waters and sprays pesticides. Yeah, but it's this AI-powered thing that recognizes things that are not crops and tries to remove them.

The case in point being trying to spray pesticides just on the weeds and not on the rest of the crops. And it can do this while operating at 12 miles an hour. The person we talked to, they just started working for John Deere because this technology was

developed at a different company that John Deere just bought. Yeah. Like John Deere didn't make this. Other companies did, and then they just bought it. I think that's just another interesting case of like, that was just another small random company who was doing, you know,

innovative farming technology that then, you know, another big company with money just decided to buy and be like, Hey, this is our thing now. random company who was doing, you know, innovative farming technology that then, you know, another big company with money just decided to buy and be like, hey, this is our thing now. And I think I want to, we'll do another part where we talk about the dark side. We'll talk about Palantir, who was there and who we got to chat with. We'll talk about surveillance. We'll talk more about John Deere because there's some bleak shit in the John Deere stuff too. But I think this is the stuff that I found broadly optimistic,

even the shit that didn't work, because what didn't work is like big tech. And I kind of like the fact that big tech, it seems, is stumbling. And crypto. Those are the two things that didn't work. What I like is the fact, I like to see big tech stumbling out the gate

and a bunch of weirdos putting some cool shit out there. And that actually makes me more hopeful of like a future where technology makes things more accessible. And I get to wear motorized exoskeletons. Oh, let's end on the exoskeletons. Let's end on the exoskeletons. So we got to finally try the motorized exoskeleton, which is supposed to basically increase your lifting capacity by 60 or 70

pounds. Um, it's like a backpack you wear on your back with a chest piece and hooks around your hips and stuff. Uh, and it works when you're like carrying loads and moving and squatting, you don't have to move the way you normally do to protect your lower back, which is kind of harder on your knees.

If you've ever like done kettlebell spots or deadlifts. Um, when you, when you first put it on and they had you've ever like done kettlebell spots or deadlifts um when you when you first put it on and they had you bend over and then stand back up the first time you did that it was you kind of felt like you're getting launched in the air yeah yeah because it's pushing up with you it's assisting you yeah but you can move it like springs in your step as you're running it worked really well it was very cool want to, and I was kind of shocked at how. This is from a German biotics company. Yeah, German Bionics. Okay.

Which is the name of the company. And it was a really awesome, first off, shout out, the folks were fans. So that was nice. But it was a really cool product for, like, the price point was surprisingly like we're not talking toyota factories can afford them we're talking like if you are if you work in like a mid like a small automotive company or whatever like you could afford one of these suits they're not they're sub 10k so they're not cheap but they're not like the kind of thing that only a multi-billion dollar corporation could have access and it will actually improve the kind of thing that only a multi-billion dollar corporation could have access to. And it will actually improve the lives of workers.

And you can rent them for 250 bucks a month, which is, again, very, because it would allow you to work lifting and hauling shit all day or do stuff like on a farm, like bale hay and huck hay up without straining your knees and back, which, you know, we talk a lot about like the kind of devices, oftentimes the kind of devices that make work more that are like marketed to companies in this may make work more efficient but they don't they try to they try to increase productivity yeah uh by just doing more numbers but not actually improving

the experience for the worker like the human side of this is that well maybe a bunch of people who ruin their backs and knees working in factories every day won't. Yeah. And that would be nice, too. And it seems like it works really well. So if you are currently working a job or run a company and your employees are destroying their backs and knees, maybe reach out to the German Bionics guys. Um, also it does seem like I could rent or purchase one and then combine my plate carrier with the chest rig, purchased extra thigh and shoulder armor and have what is effectively powered armor without straining my body.

I can't see any reason why that wouldn't work, Garrison. Um, so come back next week where I will have recreated space Marine power armor. Um, and, and soon after that gone mad with power. Come back next week where I will have recreated Space Marine Power Armor. And soon after that, gone mad with power. And take over Circus Circus. Yeah, finally. Finally take over. Garrison, why don't we end this by, so Circus Circus.

Oh, God. Most beautiful place in the Las Vegas Strip. If you've never been, if you've ever read the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or watched the movie, it's where Hunter Thompson starts hallucinating. Now, the thing about Circus Circus is that it's a clown themed casino. And the other thing. Well, it's supposed to be a circus themed casino. There's a lot of clowns. But there is a lot of clowns in their branding.

And it was it's like one of the oldest casinos on the strip. So everything is faded. They have not repainted it in a very long time. It is the outside is a shade of like mauve that you only get when the sun has deeply damaged your building. You cannot purposely produce that color. No, no man cannot create it even with all of our talents.

Um, and it's, it's just, I, I purposely put Garrison up there cause it's where I used to stay on the strip. And it's one of the worst places in the world. I love it very much. Tell the people how you found Circus Circus, Gare.

I mean, initially, I wanted more theming on the inside. I think it's a bummer that clowns have gotten such a bad rap in the past 20 years that I feel like they've kind of taken a backpedal off the clown theming. Yeah, it's cowardice. Because without the clown theming, it's just kind of dingy and depressing, where instead it could be surreal and uncomfortable. And I would prefer it to be surreal and uncomfortable than just dingy and depressing. See, this is why I wanted to support you in your dream of sitting in dark corners of Circus Circus at four in the morning wearing your clown costume.

I brought a clown costume. You could give, I mean, you might get stabbed. I still have one more night. That's right. Yesterday, after I exited my hotel, there was a Las Vegas police officer. What time of day? At least 7 a.m. A Las Vegas police officer was walking the hallway in the very top floor where I'm staying.

And then I go downstairs and there's a whole team of police sweeping the ground at 7 a.m. in Circus Circus. Probably just a murder. So this has been, it could happen here. Reporting from CES. We'll be back probably tomorrow to talk about the dark, horrifying things that we saw that made us deeply uncomfortable. And then we'll probably have like an audio documentary on the way as well using audio that we recorded at CES. So that will be integrated at some point in the future. We will continue to inform you of the future that is mercilessly rushing towards you and cannot be stopped and will inevitably crush you and everything and everyone you love.

But in this episode, in a good way. So true. So be happy. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step Into the Flames of Fright, an anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America.

Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into Tex Elite you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers.

Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.