Julian Dorey Podcast - 🤖 #84 - The Morality In The Metaverse, The Future of Humanity, & The Web 3 Conundrum | Lucky Gobindram

Starting point is 00:00:00 What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. When do we lose the phone? I mean, you know, I think it's akin to the metaverse adoption or the ARVR adoption curve, to be honest with you. You know, it's crazy, right? Like you start thinking

Starting point is 00:00:44 about adoption curves. You think about like when I was's crazy, right? Like, you start thinking about adoption curves. You think about, like, when I was a kid, right? And I'm a little bit older than you. Like, you know, people are like, I'm never going to carry a computer around with me. This is crazy. Like, why would I have a computer on my back? Why do I need a computer?

Starting point is 00:00:59 Five years later. I don't need one in my house. I'll go to the library, right? And then start shifting. And then people start getting more connected to it. And it becomes more accessible. YouTube right now. Please hit that subscribe button, hit that like button on the video. And as always, if you have a second, would love to see you drop a comment as well to everyone who has been leaving comments on these videos. Thank you. It is a huge, huge help. Love seeing that. Let's keep that rolling. To everyone who is listening on Apple or Spotify right now,

Starting point is 00:01:37 thank you for checking out the show there. If you haven't already, please be sure to hit a follow button on either one of those platforms. And I look forward to seeing you guys again for future episodes. And as a reminder, there are five star reviews now available on Spotify. So if you could leave one there, that'd be a huge, huge help. It is right below the logo on the homepage of the podcast. You can't miss it. Now, I am joined in the bunker today by Mr. Lucky Gobindram. Lucky is the general manager of Semtrex, which is a publicly traded AR VR company under the ticker symbol CETX. His previous company, OAB, was sold to Semtrex and he assumed a high up role there.

Starting point is 00:02:14 And essentially, these guys are building in the AR VR space into what we know now as the metaverse, since Facebook came out with changing their name to meta and getting us all used to this term. Lucky said he doesn't like that term, by the way. But in this episode, this was a very fast-paced, heavy-on-detail conversation. I really liked how this went. It was about – I think we talked for like two hours and 25 minutes.

Starting point is 00:02:40 And frankly, like he had to go, but I don't think I could have taken a pass there. Cause there was a lot that we unpacked in here. Like we covered a fuck ton of real estate. So very good conversation. Really, really enjoyed it. And I hope you guys will as well. That said, you know what it is. I'm Julian Dory and this is Trendify. Let's go. This is one of the great questions in our culture. Where is the nuance? You're giving opinions and calling them facts. You feel me? Everyone understands this, but few seem to do it.

Starting point is 00:03:19 If you don't like the status quo, start asking questions. Lucky, thanks for coming in, man. Thanks for having me. Start asking questions. Next time. Next time, if I bring you in, we'll do the three-mic thing, and we could talk about how you guys built the whole metaverse. Something like that. Something like that. Pull that mic in just a little bit, if you don't mind. See how close I am with it? Just so the people can hear your booming voice back there.

Starting point is 00:03:56 How about that? Is that better? That's phenomenal. Awesome. See? You can hear that in your ears now? Yeah. Great thing, right?

Starting point is 00:04:03 You're out of New York, too, right? I am. I'm based in Long Island. Our offices are in Brooklyn. Excellent. Where in Long Island? Huntington, right? You're out in New York, too, right? I am. I'm based in Long Island. Our offices are in Brooklyn. Excellent. Where in Long Island? Huntington, right on the water, man. Nice. How long have you been there?

Starting point is 00:04:12 We bought that house this year. I've been there for maybe, I don't know, I moved in December once. So not even like 45, branch banking. We bought a house on the beach in Huntington. Oh, you got the beach house. Yeah, we have an indoor pool. We have the whole night. You got an indoor pool?

Starting point is 00:04:27 Dude, what kind of house is this? Like 15,000 square feet? It's big. And how far from the office is it? It takes me like 50 minutes to get to the office in Brooklyn. That's actually not horrible. Not bad. Pull out of one garage, pull into another garage, walk in.

Starting point is 00:04:44 It's pretty nice. And where are you guys in Brooklyn? We're in Greenpoint, right on McGinnis and Greenpoint Ave. Nice. Nice. But how much do you guys still have everyone going into the office? No. Or is it really?

Starting point is 00:04:54 No, no. I work remote most of the time. And most of the people on my teams are remote. There are some teams that are. The organization I work for is seven companies and growing, right? And we're publicly traded. I mean, the thesis is we build technology, it changes where we live, work, and play.

Starting point is 00:05:10 Some of the divisions focus on hardware and things of that nature, or they have manufacturing where they actually have warehousing and distribution and whatnot. So those types of operations need to have in-person facets. So they've continued to operate through the pandemic in person, to be honest with you.

Starting point is 00:05:29 So it's kind of like a split then, in a way. Yeah, it is a split throughout the organization about people in office or remote. I mean, we don't mandate people to go to the office. I mean, there's some roles where you need it because you don't have the tools at your house. But, you know, I mean, the office is open. If Chaz wanted to go there, Chaz could go there, right go there oh you're not showing up chas i'm not going into

Starting point is 00:05:49 brooklyn too much it's never even been there it's like it's like a flight from new jersey to brooklyn took me three hours to get oh my god bro i'm well i mean this is down there a little bit but still like even from north jersey like where i used to live when some of my business partners moved to brooklyn from jersey city I was like, goodbye forever. Never going to see you again. I was coming down here. I was like, man, I should just go past this guy's house and go to AC and play some blackjack. Well, that's like another 60 minutes east.

Starting point is 00:06:16 But yeah, you blackjack guy? I do like playing blackjack. Huge blackjack guy? I like it. Yes, I enjoy it. Are you a card counter? I am not a card counter. You feel like a card counter.

Starting point is 00:06:24 But I do like playing when we have all our friends on the table and you know the odds are in your favor if you play blackjack right right you just need the right people at the table who know how to play do you think that blackjack is like if you're not counting cards there's a significant amount of luck in it so there's multiple variables luck is there obviously um but it's definitely about the rest of people on the table right you're playing heads up your odds go down but if you have five people at a table and you know you're playing correctly you can you can make the dealer lose if you're following the rules right it's just a matter of like how you play the game yeah i never really got into it i was i was a poker player and my logic when i was growing up getting really into poker was that it was the one

Starting point is 00:07:03 game where the house didn't give a shit they took their rake and that was it yeah it's about you playing yeah the other man yeah are you a poker guy too i play it i mean that's more of a luck game right you're betting on like the cards coming out in the fucking come on get out of here no i mean you can obviously fold but like if you're playing and you're playing everything's a lot of bluffing and bullshit it's like you know it's uh it's definitely um there's a lot of significant factor of luck in there i mean there's obviously like you know you you know when you have a shit hand don't don't keep upping the ante right right i mean that's like life right sometimes you're gonna you're not gonna fold and you're gonna you're gonna keep riding the game right

Starting point is 00:07:39 it's a beautiful game though because and i probably disagree a little bit with some of the luck point there that you're talking about, because you're playing, you're understanding people. You know, the whole, like, oh, what's their tell? People don't have, like, a simple tell like Teddy KGB and Rounders and not fucking cracking an Oreo. It's not like that. But, you know, you can really learn a lot about somebody, how they play hands and just sitting with them because you know we used to play we used to play 16 20 hour rounds playing it at a table and by the end of that you can tell if you're paying attention you know those guys pretty well and you probably made a lot of money fun times but i liked it too much though oh yeah i was like if i

Starting point is 00:08:22 was gonna go should have gone pro that's what i was thinking i'm like if i i was like 20 years old i've been playing for like six seven years and i loved going to games but i was like do i want to be a pro at this you still have a chance man they're about to bring casinos to the metaverse you'll be able to sit here oh my god literally be playing playing in virtual reality you know all over the world well fuck it let's go right to it what's what's what's what's what's the deal here so you you sold a company how long ago it must be four years ago five years ago okay and what did you guys do there we were creative technology lab so strategy design development deployment of web mobile applications that's where we cut our teeth oh you were building apps we're building apps you know iphone 2 app store 1 and you know from there

Starting point is 00:09:12 it sort of snowballed right and it went from building applications to building full stack building cloud infrastructures then it started getting more into like more commoditized things like wordpress and you know then we got more specialized enterprise deployments and migrations on that side and then like i must be it must have been like eight or nine thanksgivings ago my brother rolled up with a cardboard and he's uh he's always been the techie one of the two of us and you know he uh he put it on me and then you know from there we started experimenting with virtual reality and then augmented reality.

Starting point is 00:09:46 Eight or nine years ago. Yeah. I mean, that's when the Google Cardboard came out. That's when you first started. You slide your phone in. You built a little thing. You put your phone in there. And all of a sudden, you transplant it to all types of places.

Starting point is 00:09:56 I remember one of the first things he put me in was like, I was looking around Afghanistan and war zones. And there were such cool things. Or you were underwater and you like looking at fish or dolphins. So this is what we know now is like the Oculus. The quest to is that the foremost head at headset today. Yes, they are others. I mean,

Starting point is 00:10:15 we're ISVs of Oculus on the enterprise and business side. So we also have ISVs, independent software vendors. So that means that we've been accredited by them to build enterprise applications. Oh, within the Oculus. Within the Oculus. Wow. And we've done that with other major headsets as well.

Starting point is 00:10:31 So like HP, the Vive, which is an awesome device. Actually, ByteDance bought Vive. Oh, boy. No, ByteDance bought... HTC owns Vive. ByteDance bought HTC owns Vive. ByteDance bought Pico, which we also ISVs of. And then there's HP that has their own headset. There's Vario that has their own headset.

Starting point is 00:10:54 So there's a bunch of headsets out there today, right? There is a growing demand and there's a growing, you know, hardware development community looking to build and foster from the headset to other connected devices that feed into it. Like what? I mean, at CES this week, HTC dropped a device that sits on your wrist, right? That basically looks at your motion and whatnot so you get more accuracy facebook's been working on haptic gloves right for i don't know how many years

Starting point is 00:11:33 and just for people that haven't heard previous episodes where that's been discussed can you explain haptics just very quickly haptics are um you know they're they're you can they can be in gloves they can be in body suits They can be in body suits. They can be anything else. What they do is they play to the sensory of your body. So touch, feel. Say you are using virtual reality to do machine training or something that's more complicated that has feedback on it.

Starting point is 00:12:05 So you can feel that feedback feedback on it, right? You can feel that feedback or it can even get more simpler, right? Like maybe it becomes more consumer oriented and you are shopping for different textured things for your house. It could be tiles. It could be different types of wood. It could be, and you could feel those things and see what they feel like before

Starting point is 00:12:22 you buy them, but you don't actually have to be in person to like lift, touch, feel. And and i mean it's going to get beyond even the haptics like the people working on sensory things for smells and things that you could add onto your vr headset so you could be like you know you could be transported to any place in and anywhere in the world maybe not even maybe out of this world right what does it look like though not not today right because people who haven't looked at this a lot they saw the initial facebook turn to meta announcement and they saw mark zuckerberg on some of these promos talking is a bitmoji basically like a 3d bitmoji in the meta and so everything it's like it's kind of like a pixar movie the way they're showing it's like it's kind of like a Pixar movie the way they're showing it versus like oh you're actually

Starting point is 00:13:06 sitting in the other room is that where we're trying to get it though I assume I think maybe in a long time it gets there right I think there are beginnings of that you know there's a big tear in where people believe the metaverse is going right I mean I think one of the biggest indicators and you know they've been more vocal and people have been more vocal this week is apple right and you know it's like when the imac came out it was an aha moment to yes what what the personal computer is at home right um and what you could do with it right i mean obviously there were laptops before there were other devices but that that led to a different a shift in the paradigm right absolutely um that was what like 99 and 98 yeah somewhere around there so we know apple is going to release a headset um or there's been rumblings of it we

Starting point is 00:13:52 should say nobody really knows when or where they've been working on that rumors for a long time yeah they've been acquiring a lot of companies for a decade to build it right um so there's like some people have released like renders or what they think it's going to be like you know but it's been pretty known now after this week. Apple doesn't believe the definition of the metaverse the way Facebook's going about it. In fact, they're leaning more into AR. They're leaning more into glasses that can be worn and have like a mixed reality vibe. They also don't think that you're going to be immersed in virtual reality all day long at the jump.

Starting point is 00:14:23 Well, not at the jump. Well, we're several years in, right? What is the average user duration right now? I think, you know, the first time user is spending 16 to 18 minutes in there, right? Like, you know, obviously somebody like me who spends hours in there, right, is a little bit different,

Starting point is 00:14:39 but like there's a wide spectrum of users, right? It's your business, yeah. It's my business. It's also I enjoy it. I play video games. I take meetings in there at this point. You can prototype in there. Oh, you've been doing business meetings in there?

Starting point is 00:14:51 Yeah. So like Mark was showing on CBS or whatever? Actually, I think his platform for meetings is probably the best out there today. There's a meet in VR. I mean, I met those guys. It's cool. They were spatial doing it.

Starting point is 00:15:07 They've moved towards more of NFTs and selling their environments. Then you have Facebook. But what Facebook's done is they've used the inside-out tracking. You can use pass-through so you can see the real world. When you say inside-out tracking,

Starting point is 00:15:18 I'm going to stop you just when we got to explain to people. Inside-out tracking is basically, you know, the sensors that are in used in you know the oculus quest 2 that allow you to not have to um be tethered to a pc and you're using like an environment right and basically you're not going to run into the wall and beyond that they're using pass-through so pass-through is basically the cameras on the oculus that allow you to like see the desk in front of you right so when i pull into facebook's work room horizon experience right like now i it has me scan my desk so it knows that my desk is

Starting point is 00:15:53 there right then beyond scanning your desk it allows you to then pair with your laptop so if you have your mac here your new m1 mac or even the older Macs, whatever it is, you can now see that. So now I can use my keyboard. I can use my Mac in there. And then you can bring other people and say, you're meeting in there with me too, right? Yeah, how easy is it for someone that's never been in there? It's easy. It's easy.

Starting point is 00:16:15 It's very easy. Download the app. Sign up. Get right to the world. And then you go. You got a whiteboard. You can go up to the whiteboard. You can use your controller.

Starting point is 00:16:24 You can start drawing and whiteboarding in there. Right? You can do a lot of things. Well, beyond that, right? Like, we have a project right now. It's a Google at Tilt Brush come out a long time ago. I don't know if you know what Tilt Brush is. Explain that. It's like, remember, Mike, you know, a paint was and like, it's like paint for the metaverse, right? Or for virtual there's other tools called multi-brush, which build on that. So for example, we're working on a project right now. I can't talk too much about the project. But to go through early stage prototyping to help them figure out their business, the environment, we're doing multi-brush sessions. So they're in virtual reality. Our spatial designers are in virtual reality. We're prototyping in real time as they're seeing us do it and whatnot so you know it's getting it's getting pretty wild right and i mean work has

Starting point is 00:17:10 gone well beyond that right so we invested in a company called masterpiece studio which you know um you know i i'm a big believer in fact i think he's on a rocket ship to a unicorn what do they do so so john gagney um he founded it they're based out of ottawa um canadians love hey right no but but john is a genius um you know and like um essentially it's like you know what adobe did in 81 to 2d design they're doing a 3d design so like you can build 3d assets in virtual reality right and then use them in virtual reality? So you want to build avatars. You want to build worlds. You want to build a table.

Starting point is 00:17:49 You want to build whatever it is. You can use his tools as a creator to create those 3D assets and then be able to use it, right? The next step is building those assets because they can transcend boundaries in the metaverse and go into different environments. But he's telling you to find that.

Starting point is 00:18:03 He's probably the only one out there who can really do that. So it's like build it from scratch though or use pre-existing pieces no you can you can literally draw and then build no pre-existing pieces too right but like you know you can literally create 3d assets in the metaverse for the metaverse because i'm thinking about like madden or one of those games we played growing up where you would you would go into player mode or whatever they call it now and you would build your own guy your own character but it's just taking every vr world though this one right they're just building your avatar and now they're talking about in the in the real actual vr world and we're talking about no you can literally by hand just like whoo yeah you're not using like so you're using shapes and things like

Starting point is 00:18:43 that but like you're building 3d assets like're using shapes and things like that, but like, yeah, you're building 3D assets. Like, and you can build all types of things. And like, you know, the world is moving at lightning speed in virtual reality. You can do, there's a lot of cool tools coming out that allow you to work in virtual reality, to prototype, to do mind maps and think about solutions, to meet people.

Starting point is 00:19:03 Productivity and business is at the forefront of this right now, right? And then the other tenement is gaming, right? And then you have a lot of other things coming together, like what does a music metaverse look like? What does a retail shopping metaverse look like? What does any of these things start to do? Because there's going to be a lot of use cases on why you want to do things in virtual reality's going to be a lot of use cases on why

Starting point is 00:19:25 you want to do things in virtual reality right and the metaverse transcends actually virtual reality that's one part of it is augmented reality right where it's like well how does things overlay in the real world yes and this is another one this has been on a previous podcast before but for people listening augmented reality virtual reality high level what's the virtual reality is full immersion in a world or environment that takes you out of your physical world and transports you to a new environment whilst augmented reality uses the technology to place different things what could be a dinosaur it could be an engine that you're working on. It could be whatever you could dream of into your environment. So there was a video I saw, like a quick social clip the other day where it was some company in China.

Starting point is 00:20:15 It looked pretty dope, not going to lie. But I don't have the video up right now. Maybe I can find it while you're talking. But essentially it showed like from the first person view someone walking through a street in beijing or something and then boom whatever glasses goggles went on now the street was there but it was all like colored up there were things all over the place ar yeah and that wasn't what it looked like to me is like i had to watch it a few times this is why i say it because i was like they're taking that environment but did they go full vr because it totally changed or am i just seeing so many

Starting point is 00:20:50 colors that it's absolutely ar and it's just like souped up that's ar and that's going to really become possible like 5g where verizon's doing to accessibility to internet anywhere isn't 5g supposed to kill everyone that's what the conspiracy i mean i don't buy it. But I think it makes everybody more connected. I mean, you know, like there's ways to use technology for advantage, right? The fears here are like, you know, you become a slave to this echo chamber of content and the world. And a lot of people are already doing that without VR and AR. You know, social media is the sucker that's, you know, consuming everybody. It's the bootloader.

Starting point is 00:21:24 Yeah. It's like literally how much you want and everybody it's the bootloader yeah it's it's like literally how much you want and how much you want to get out of it anything's about what you what and how you use it right yes um there's a lot of value in these technologies i think that we're going to see a lot of changes and how the the social the interactive the business paradigms change with it but um it's a lot to be discovered it's still very nascent man this is emerging technology that is at the beginning of definition right and from a user experiential paradigm to how people use it to what you can build with it to you know how far does it go right i mean what the fidelity

Starting point is 00:21:58 of those environments are what do you mean by that so right now i mean if you look at like certain vr headsets or even ar processing power, because these things are computers, right? Even your phone is a computer in your pocket. Yes. Right? How much can they output, right? How many polygons? Because a 3D object is made up of thousands of polys, polygons, right?

Starting point is 00:22:20 And there are ones that are of lower lower fidelity and there are ones of higher fidelity and quality yeah 100 so like photorealism right like you know you get into like gta or on a playstation now it looks very real yeah you're not gonna get that you know from virtual reality at this point right but you will get there for sure hmm i'm trying to think which of the 47 things you just mentioned there i want to ask about next but let's stay with the last one you just gave which is like the gta example so before any of this metaverse happened and this is what i've been thinking about a lot recently we had the rise of video games where let's say from especially 2001 to i'll even cap it a little bit and say 2015 the realism of what everything looked

Starting point is 00:23:15 like just went to all i mean the polygons were insane obviously whatever was going on there we got to a point pretty quickly even early early on, where kids, especially playing video games, couldn't, they couldn't comprehend that what they were doing isn't reality, right? They were so immersed in it that like, even things like GTA, if a 10 year old was playing GTA, they're like, oh no, this is normal. We're just going around fucking beating people up and killing them. And that obviously has led to some interesting emotional intelligence fallacies in the real world but if you still consider the fact that during all those years these kids had to sit there and use a remote control

Starting point is 00:23:56 a controller for for whatever whether it was a playstation xbox whatever and hook it into a tv and now we're talking about even not just for games but like in general just for life with like a quote-unquote metaverse which obviously i want you to define all that but now we're talking about moving into where no they are actually immersed in it and it's a part of it it's an article that came out about this earlier this week so this guy was um i gotta look it up i i don't remember exactly So this guy was, I got to look it up. I don't remember exactly where. So this guy was watching his kids. If you're looking to search the web privately

Starting point is 00:24:30 and not have all these websites track you when you leave, you know, you don't want to leave a digital footprint. You don't know what the future holds. You want to make sure you just have your privacy. Who knows?

Starting point is 00:24:38 Maybe the government's watching. You don't want that to happen. Check out my friends over. No, don't check them out. Buy my friend's product over at Privato VPN. If you use the link in my description for Privato, you will go to the Trendify homepage at their site and you will see a plan for $4.99 a month. That is the same one I use. And the best part is you won't even notice it's there. You lose no speed. You can access

Starting point is 00:25:00 whatever servers they have around the world. And you know what? You can also use it on 10 different devices at a time. I have two, but I can use it on two seamlessly. No problems. So check them out. Use that link. Hit that $4.99 plan and let me know what you think. And they were like, you know, preteens and whatnot, and they were playing a game. And, you know, like in the game, it was quite violent, right? And this kid was actually, you know, you're immersed. So like, it looks like when you look down, actually you know you're immersed so like it looks like when you're look down it looks like you're using your own hands right so this guy's now using his own hands in virtual reality holding a gun that's

Starting point is 00:25:33 obviously and he's shooting people right so this father he was like whoa he's like you can't play this right he's like yeah it's not distorting the lines of an 11 year old that thinks it's okay he has a gun and he's going to shoot things and shoot people, right? And like, obviously, where society has gone, some of the challenges we've had with gun violence. This guy was like, no, no, no. He's like, you know, if he was watching or playing a video game on a PS5 or an Xbox, right? You know, at least he has a controller and he's disconnected from this. In these scenarios, it's almost like this is you, right like you're first person you are that body you look down those

Starting point is 00:26:09 are your hands right the gun is in your hand yeah wow i mean there's definitely going to be some rules around these things and if you start to start to see it like you know like there are no real rules on age and usage i mean there's some definition, oh, you shouldn't let somebody who's under a certain age use a VR headset or whatnot. It's not for under 13 or whatever it is. But it's becoming more accessible. Just look at what Christmas was, right? After December 25th, what was the number one app

Starting point is 00:26:41 in the Google Play and the Apple Store? The Oculus app. So what does that infer, right? 25th, what was the number one app in the Google Play and the Apple Store? The Oculus app. Really? So what does that infer, right? On Christmas Day, what was part of the most gifted gifts? Yeah. An Oculus. That's why everybody was setting up their Oculus and pairing it with theirs.

Starting point is 00:26:54 So all of a sudden, you saw a spike in demand. So you see a lot of people getting these devices, and you're going to see it more and more in households, which is inevitable. Now, Oculus is owned by facebook because they bought it yeah excuse me i'm never gonna get used to that but it's owned by meta because they bought it several years ago they bought it a while ago they bought it what oculus they bought it yeah they bought it a while ago yeah because they've been trying i mean i was talking to people who are in the world like you years ago who were like oh yeah

Starting point is 00:27:26 facebook they're not a social media company like they are right now but they're not trying to be this is what they're trying they're trying to build the actual what became the metaverse they weren't using that word back then but like this sale when they did it put them at the forefront of essentially building this vr industry because because Oculus was the biggest brand name. They still obviously have the biggest market share and everything. But what, because you brought up a little while ago, like some different companies who are doing this, and now Apple's like looking at getting into it,

Starting point is 00:27:58 which is going to be interesting. But what makes Oculus so much better, or is it, than some of the other ones you mentioned so I mean from a hardware standpoint I don't know if there's the you know they were they were the first to really get to an untethered state where you didn't need a PC that's one right so they had a competitive advantage in that way and it started with the Go the Go was definitely not the way it is it was a seated experience it didn't have as much um freedom so you know like it's three off and you know whatnot that was it was more that side of the spectrum

Starting point is 00:28:31 where like you are limited in your movement and how freely you can move it you know um today they've built something that allows you to move freely within a space you define right it has inside eye tracking so you're not running into the wall. So they got to a critical mass of that from a technical standpoint, hardware standpoint, at an afford-a-bill price, right? So like, you're buying-

Starting point is 00:28:53 How much are they going for? 300 bucks right now. Jesus, that's not bad. So it's quite cheap to buy a computer that's strapped onto your head. So that's one part of it, right? I mean, there are other great devices- How many slaves are making that in foreign countries? I'm not sure. A lot. Probably. But like, you know, there's a lot of it, right? I mean, there are other great devices. How many slaves are making that in foreign countries?

Starting point is 00:29:05 I'm not sure. A lot. Probably. Yeah. But there's a lot of great devices, like the Vario, the Valve Index, the HTC Vive, all great devices, right? Even the Pico is a great device. The Neo 2i is excellent, right? Well, the Pico today in America is not a consumer device device the neo2i is excellent right well the pico today in america

Starting point is 00:29:26 it's not a consumer device in china it is right so like it's pretty widely adopted there um so you're seeing segmentation with that but what makes oculus the best to be honest with you is the same reason why you buy an iphone right you buy an iphone at least for up front now android's caught up is because of the ecosystem right how polished it is how you know and then how much apps you have and the accessibility of the content and that so oculus has you know got to a point where you know the best apps the richest app store it's all available through them and there's other ways to get apps through other devices there's steam which is like a third party app store store that is like partnered with all these other headsets.

Starting point is 00:30:05 They're side-loading these apps so you can do things where like there's a whole marketplace of apps that couldn't get it. Oculus wouldn't admit them into the app store because they're a little bit stringent about who gets in there and how you get in there and the approval process that you are like, you know, just indie creators, I'd say. But like, yeah, it's just a richest ecosystem, right?

Starting point is 00:30:27 And it's also the most affordable device for a consumer. And because of how user-friendly it is and how accessible it is, it's there, right? It also, Meta has so much damn money that they can buy eyeballs and adoption and strike deals. But they have their own challenges man like you know they built an app called venues right and this app venues is like i guess the equivalent of what a madison square garden or whatever it is right there's music shows going

Starting point is 00:30:57 on there you can go watch a basketball game they've struck a deal the nba you can go watch some wwe fights right now yeah you watch the nba on there right now yeah but like it's is it cartoonish or like it's not cartoonish so they're they're using um you know certain types of camera to capture um content that is you know it's not volumetric but it's stereoscopic in a way that like you, you can, it feels like you're sitting courtside. Okay? Got it. Or in one of the seats.

Starting point is 00:31:30 You know, it's definitely not as good as sitting courtside. I mean, as somebody who's sat courtside, you know, it's just not, right? It's cool. But, like, even the concerts, like, you know, and there was an article that dropped last week about, you know, why venues, Facebook's venues app or Meta's face venues app is failing, right? That's because, you know, go facebook's venues app or meta space venues app is failing right that's because you know they go watch a young thug show it's it's it's poor at best right it's poorly thought they didn't think about spatial design paradigms what do you mean by that so you can design for 2d right which is what you're defining on an iphone or a computer it's just that you design differently for a computer for an iphone, whatever. But you're no longer in 2D when you're using VR.

Starting point is 00:32:07 You're in 3D. You're providing for a three-dimensional world, right? And they're not doing that effectively. No. Basically, when you go into venues and you go see a live concert, they put you on a balcony and, like, Young Thug. They did one with Jaden Smith earlier on. I think he was the first one.

Starting point is 00:32:22 They've done concerts. They've done DJ sets. You're looking at them in a distance and like the young thug case he's a giant but like you know he's in front of you and like you there's nothing you gotta think about vr's experiences it's an experience economy you're coming to those things for an experience right and beyond that they did a poor job like you know i couldn't go watch a show with you effectively like you know i can't like it just it just poorly thought. I can't. It just poorly thought. You can see that it wasn't thought about for a spatial first experience. Because, well, my first question would be from the way you described that,

Starting point is 00:32:52 maybe I'm misunderstanding it, but why, if you're going to do VR with a concert, why do they not have you in the front row right there in the experience? I mean, he's huge in front of you. You basically are. But you said you're on a balcony. Yeah, you're on a balcony. It's a balcony type thing., he's huge in front of you. You basically are. But you said you're on a balcony. Yeah, you're on a balcony. It's a balcony type thing. But there's nothing in front of you.

Starting point is 00:33:08 Do you see the real people who are there? There's no real people below you. It's just him. Yeah, just him. Oh, so it's like very... And the thing is... It's like simulated. It feels like that.

Starting point is 00:33:18 And the weird part is like, you know, when you go into that, you're expecting something out of this world, an experience of some sort, right? Something that is, you know, creating something better than you can do in the real world. You go into virtual reality, do things you can't do in the real world. But they also don't have – I'm just thinking about this now, like trying to visualize it. They also don't have like haptics yet, so you don't feel the rush of the crowd when they lose their fucking mind when he comes out and does whatever song.

Starting point is 00:33:43 It's like you're watching – it's almost like they just souped up a home theater experience for that kind of but like you know they could have done so much better they could but it'd take more time and effort right you'd have to design unique things each time that people try to tackle this right now um you know we we are we are looking at tackling it right also right i mean some tracks yeah i mean we, we're not doing it yet, but it's something that we've been, you know, in discussions to do with a couple different groups, right? While I have you on that, this is a good time to do it, just for clarity. You had been explaining very early on that you had had this company, OAB. You sold it, like, four or five years ago, you said. Yes, correct.

Starting point is 00:34:21 And it sold to Semtrex. Correct. Which you now run what at semtrex and i serve as the general manager of semtrex xr which is uh you know the the sub organization of semtrex that's focused on building ar vr technology for work for hire investing in organizations that we believe are helping to find the future of that space. We have acquired companies that have done things that we believe could be built upon and adopted for these technologies. We are building our own game called Starforce Battle of Brazil,

Starting point is 00:35:01 where we've licensed a series of books created by B.V. Larson, who is this amazing sci-fi author. And he's written some great books. And we're turning those into FPS first-person shooters. And that first beta should go live, I think. Oh, so exactly what we were talking about with the kid shooting. Yeah. It's pretty gnarly. But we're looking at you shooting robots and stuff like that and not other people.

Starting point is 00:35:32 Okay. So it's a little bit different, right? It's futuristic, out-of-this-world type things. We're not trying to make you go create violence of other people of your own breed. Good. We're thinking about it a little bit differently. We're thinking about putting people into really metaverse-y type experiences. Things you couldn't do in real life, right?

Starting point is 00:35:55 Yeah. So we're doing a number of things at CXR. So I serve as the GM of CXR. I'm also the general manager of Semtrex Labs, which is what was birthed out of OAB, which is a creative technology focused on strategy, design, development, deployment of web, mobile applications that leverage cloud computing, AI, ML. So very focused on that as well. And we're looking to spin out some of those services and focus towards one of our largest group customer segments, SME, Small and Medium Enterprises, called Good Tech, which we'll be launching in the coming months,

Starting point is 00:36:34 which is a subsect of what we do at Semtrex Labs, but very focused on a certain persona of a buyer type. And what specifically would you be doing for them? Would you be building? So I'll use an example. have a buyer type and and what specifically would you be doing for them would you be building so i'll use an example if you were working with a company that sold physical product x maybe they sell clothes or something would you be integrating how they build applications within like the oculus universe or things like that to move towards ar slash vr marketing We do that for some organizations where we help them think about what's the future of commerce for them and the future of retail.

Starting point is 00:37:10 There's other organizations that we're helping them upskill their infrastructure from an ad tech standpoint to use their ad tech to create more revenue, which is like a science of how do you serve those ads and what order, what load speeds, migrating from one cloud infrastructure to another to save money or get better speed on your site. We do a number of those things that are more brass tacks, doing full-on audits and recalibrations of applications because if you build them a couple years later,

Starting point is 00:37:47 you need to maintain them, you need to make sure they're good, you need to use the most updated standards for code and SDKs and whatnot. And then we're obviously on the VR, AR side, right? Like we're helping medical companies think about how they can use technology to augment doctors. Augment doctors. Yeah, imagine if a doctor had a HoloLens on his face and he could help look at a Botox treatment plan

Starting point is 00:38:13 or design a treatment plan for a patient. Well, you just said augmented. So where my mind went when you said that was a doctor doesn't have to be there they just they throw on goggles and they're in one country but they're in the other country when they throw them on no we're not in that case okay that is coming absolutely i don't know if you saw the robots at ces that you use vr to actually control pretty gnarly no i haven't seen that yeah yeah there was a robot at ces that you can literally put on a VR headset and you could control your robot. I mean, he's for more like general purpose house things right now.

Starting point is 00:38:48 But the dexterity and like the fineness of his fingers and what he can do, like he could pinch a grain of salt and sprinkle it as he's cooking for you, right? So like you're getting to like pretty interesting stuff. But like, yeah, I mean, truth be told, like, you know, eventually you're going to be able to do that. What was the example you were given, though, I mean, truth be told, like, you know, eventually you're going to be able to do that. And like, you know. What was the example you were given though, where the doctor has. So say a doctor has, he has a HoloLens, right? Yeah. And he is a plastic surgeon and he does Botox.

Starting point is 00:39:15 And, you know, he has patient come in and he uses the AR glasses, the HoloLens to map this human's face. Then look at a treatment plan to think about where do they need injections for Botox. And then he creates such treatment plan, and he can use that as a guide. What do you mean map the human's face with the AR glasses? How does that work? He can place different points on somebody's face, right?

Starting point is 00:39:46 To basically identify nose, cheekbone, jawline, whatnot, right? And it's like a saved file. It's not like when they draw it with the actual marker. Correct. Got it. And then on top of that, once he's now mapped the face, he can start going and being like, okay, we're going to inject here here here here and he can create a treatment plan and he can play with it and kind of simulate it in real life it would

Starting point is 00:40:09 fight in real time in real time too holy i mean that that still has limitations don't get me wrong the whole lens isn't perfect but it's getting there what so that's like a that's a selective treatment botox with that example but is this also already applicable to things that are more like life-saving treatments and stuff like that? In what case? Like you've had a heart attack or? Yeah, maybe. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:40:35 I don't know if you'd be using it in that scenario. I mean, eventually you would for diagnostic-type things or things of that nature. There are many use cases of how the HoloLens is being used in medical devices today and medical workflows. I mean, it's being used in so many different types of things for skilled workers to doctors, right? I mean, it's gone quite far in the last – well, we're at HoloLens DK2. So, you know, it was limited to DK1, but it's getting better. But, yeah, you can use it for all types of different things.

Starting point is 00:41:06 Do you think that some of this, though, is also going to automate away doctors in the next two decades in certain facets? I'm not saying all doctors at all. Not that. I'm saying like in certain facets where now things that were previously done by doctor of x whatever it is now you know some sitting at a desk can do it i don't know if that's still the case there's this precision right like it would like say the treatment plan somebody can map your face and do it maybe a nurse can now do that and he can do see more patients but the guy who's actually injecting your face you know they're gonna have to have some certification or training. Yeah, that kind of thing, I would think that.

Starting point is 00:41:46 Or even like if you're Mr. Anesthesia and you need to put that injection in or an epidural. All those things require precision. But if the computer can simulate it according to bulk data and do it itself, that's what scares me. Eventually, yes, they will get there. Wow. But I think the computer is going to be able to do a lot of things.

Starting point is 00:42:05 Yeah. Yeah, I had a buddy who he was, I'll just say, very closely involved with a company and got involved with them four or five years ago. It's been a while. essentially will long-term whether it's them or someone else who wins in the space will take away the need for a lot of radiologists because what they were doing was using artificial intelligence to review the scans yeah and and they could they could run it through like Google was poking around trying to buy them early on because they're like oh we just will give access to all the data, right? And they didn't sell it.

Starting point is 00:42:47 But it's like they would just run it through all the previous scans on various data sets of different backgrounds as far as like age, ethnicity, all these different things to be able to give a percentage reading of what the potential diagnoses would be but ultimately it's gonna be more accurate than a human that's what i'm saying it i don't see how it doesn't get there it does it gets 100 why wouldn't it right like you know data doesn't lie that is a truth teller right so if you feed the engine data and you have enough data on it and then why why wouldn't you right big big data is inevitable are we gonna have anything left to do in 50 years are we just all like little cyborgs like fucking plugged up sitting in some room in a little shack

Starting point is 00:43:31 because that's the only thing we own and we just fuck around in the metaverse and get high over there um depends on what you do with life i mean there's always gonna be big thinkers and guys that solve real problems right i mean yeah the guy's building it. Yeah, sure. I mean, there's all types of fun things you can do, but the world evolves. Technology evolves, right? I mean, you're going to see a lot of things become more technology-oriented, for sure, and you're going to see a lot of automation,

Starting point is 00:43:57 whether it's driving a truck or a car or having centralized kitchens to make thousands of recipes and run delivery. More of the skilled workers are going to become more in that way, right? For sure. More precision things and more specialized things will definitely. Yeah, like the last things that could be replaced by AI when you run these simulations of where it's going to go.

Starting point is 00:44:25 They often talk about things like being a gardener being a chef the stuff that requires all kinds of movement in all different lateral and vertical direction whatever well you see that they're already messing with chefs right you saw this already they're robots they're cooking meals there are centralized kitchens out there in fact travis kalanick when he left um we left uber that's what he's been tackling centralized kitchens right so like i i guess the example with chefs was like more fine dining yes very specialized chefs like people who are actually like they went to school for it like the whole night i don't think a robot's ever making me a meal from per se that's what i'm saying or or one of these fine restaurants like you know, there's a reason why those chefs are winning Michelin stars, right?

Starting point is 00:45:08 Yes. And hitting those pedigrees. They're mastering their craft in a different level that a robot couldn't do it. And part of it's also just the culture, the vibe, things that you can't mimic by AI. Right. But no, man, there's a lot of AI, ML, robotics that will come into the world and into our lives at a more greater level, right? I mean, people are already using these things in quite large use cases, right? I mean, there's a lot of organizations that haven't had good cadence in managing their data or keeping their data.

Starting point is 00:45:45 So they're not ready to be able to use machine learning and AI, right? Because those types of things are only as good as the data you feed it. Similar to the radiology use case you're saying, right? Impossible to have large data sets. You need big data. Billions. Data warehouses. Billions.

Starting point is 00:46:00 Exactly. You need billions of data points. So everything is about data right to be able to feed those types of things and it's interesting just because when people talk about like oh we became the product with web 2.0 and social media the reason where the product is not just like getting into our privacy with our data but like the data itself also then bootloads those billions and trillions of points for simulations of everything yeah the great web 3 100 and it's like you know when you start to talk about web 3 some people are like well what even is this and everything to me and

Starting point is 00:46:39 now there's like the whole argument of like jack dorsey's trying to say like oh that's just a venture capital bullshit name that's not really what it's going to be. But to me, it seems like Web 3 has a couple different, almost like, it's got like a paradox to it. And here's why I say this. On the one hand, Web 1.0 took us to the internet and said, congratulations, you're all connected. Web 2.0 said, congratulations, now you don't have to type in www.whatever.com to go to a very specific thing. You can still do that if you want. But now there's going to be central hubs where people have their digital presence.

Starting point is 00:47:19 You have your profile with your pictures and your life and everything in there. So that is what it is, whether it's even a video video platform like youtube which i wouldn't have called pure social media but like that's where people put video content to be creative user generated content yes so facebook all this stuff in web 3 there's such a focus and there's a lot here obviously but there's such a focus on decentralization with it and allow putting power back into the hands of the users who are now also connected in the virtual world far more than they were at the beginning of web 2 and we're also literally creating this virtual world the cranes virtual we're decentralizing contracts we're using

Starting point is 00:47:59 dows we're using cryptocurrency to change the way banking institutions are we're transferring the way ownership is created and authenticity. Yeah, I mean there's a lot to unpack there. But everything you just mentioned, this is what I want to get at. Everything you just mentioned is that decentralized portion which, just to make it oversimplified, puts power back in the hands of the people to decide. Sort of, kind of. Sort of, kind of of depending on what it is to decide what they want to do with various parts of their life be it finance be it the actual

Starting point is 00:48:31 money they use be it their presence online etc these platforms though that built 2.0 we're part of building 2.0 be it apple with the mobile building the phone and all that facebook being the main social point with instagram youtube run through google which is our search they lose all their power if people suddenly don't need to use what they have because they're no longer a hub and everything is quote unquote decentralized because these are centralized platforms and so when facebook comes out and i'm not even going to get to the final point i was going to make here because let's stay with this this is this is more important when facebook comes out and says like oh we're meta now and we're building the metaverse the the context is well now we're going to make sure that we get enough users into our metaverse however that

Starting point is 00:49:23 looks that we control and we have final say over what goes on here because it's our private entity creating it that we are going to take away the ability for competition to go create all their own metaverse side because people aren't going to go there they're going to go here i don't know if that's going to really work in meta's favor i hope it doesn't know but why because you see all these other communities popping up like decentraland and all these other places where people are buying land in the metaverse, and they're creating these sub-communities and stuff like that. Facebook is a very primitive way of looking at the metaverse, to be honest with you. I like to hear that.

Starting point is 00:49:57 Explain this. No, because they've created – well, they didn't even create an operating system because they actually announced yesterday that they're pulling back because they couldn't get it done. But they have this infrastructure and this interface that makes it easily accessible for people to go into three-dimensional games or whatever it is.

Starting point is 00:50:19 But beyond that, if you're thinking about the connectivity of the metaverse at that level where you're talking about, I think we're going to see a lot of other players in there and a lot of other places where people buy land and have experiences or have their retail presence. And we're going to see some worlds be more popular than others, right? Does that phase out Facebook, though, over time? I don't think it phases out Facebook. I think meta evolves.

Starting point is 00:50:44 And I think they have a real part to play in this i mean you know i don't think they're going anywhere but i don't think they they corner they corner the the world of it right like it doesn't it doesn't become that you know everybody bows to them and everybody goes to them right but this is my one problem thinking about it this way because the way you're painting it right there is that as you said multiplayers different places to go our world in the tech era just to really broaden it has moved more and more to winner take all monopolies right there's a reason that people use google and google is a verb s jeeves isn't around anymore. I mean there are people now that are building tools that you can like earn money in Bitcoin or whatever currency for your searches.

Starting point is 00:51:33 So it's no longer a pass to get along to Google that you're making money off your own searches. Okay, so let's stay with that. People are starting to do things like that. So let's say that something like that comes up. Now they win. Now they take it all. You see what I'm i'm saying no you own your data in that case and you have the right to monetize it or not and you can collect um but that's the platform right but that's whatever platform created that the profiteers of it so they have and i don't know if that's going to be fully

Starting point is 00:52:00 decentralized so they don't have control to say who comes on it who doesn't i'm not sure about that but you can anybody can go get the plug-in put it on their browser and then you anybody has the right if they should choose to want to sell their their data and their search history then they can cash in and then then it gets sold when you say sell it through their search history though is that that's through a separate browser right like a separate it's not google it's a plug-in on top of chrome so it's still using Google Chrome nobody yeah you can control permissions you do you don't have to have Chrome track you I thought there's ways to control that but you when you search something you're still using Google once again

Starting point is 00:52:35 permissions right so if you don't give a permission you're not searching anything I mean you are searching but it's just not tracking it so Google has no idea what you just typed in yeah, it depends how you control your permissions Do you actually believe that's true? Yeah? I mean, I don't think they're just stealing data on that way. They don't need to Why don't they need to that's what they run? Billions of people using it. There's not did not enough people have adopted this yet. It's not a problem, but that's it's not a problem Right now, but they got to be thinking three four five years out things move slowly then all of a sudden i don't know man i think a lot of these companies uh are diversifying and thinking about the how they play within the metaverse too right i mean i think some of it is you know shifting paradigms

Starting point is 00:53:21 and they're gonna need to adopt it don't get me. I don't think Web3 is all that it's promised to be just yet, right? And I don't think that the decentralization is scientific at this point. There are some beginnings of it. There are some thoughts around it. There's some catalysts like Bitcoin and smart contracts and Ethereum, you know, using Ethereum for certain things. And we're seeing it more with like DAOs pop up. Can you tell people

Starting point is 00:53:45 what a dao is i don't know what the exact acronym is and i can look it up it's digital autonomous organization yeah i think i don't want i don't want to say that wrong but this is like a term that's being thrown around especially in crypto communities decentralized yeah i'm sorry decentralized autonomous organization yeah so like an example of. Decentralized autonomous organization. Yeah. So like an example of a DAO is like... Just keep that mic pointed towards you if you don't mind. Yeah, there you go. Now you're good.

Starting point is 00:54:12 So, you know, like give you a good example of like a DAO, decentralized autonomous organization. So say you have a platform and actually this is something that we're working on of a partnership. And, you know, that platform allows you to ask a question. Now, you own that question, and you've put out a bounty on that question. So that question could be anything, right?

Starting point is 00:54:35 Where could I find an eight-foot basketball hoop? Right? Because maybe you want to play with your kid, or you want to do it, right? There's not so many parks that have that, right? And somebody will come on and be like, oh, I know where that is. I know how to get that. And there's a couple people that think they know.

Starting point is 00:54:52 Now, they're going to submit their answers to hopefully win that bounty, right? Oh, you're paying for the answer. You're paying for the answer. Got it. Okay. And then they submit their answers, right? But there's a judge there or somebody that's judging it or a board or a council. Now, they're going to be, okay, this one is the best one.

Starting point is 00:55:14 They awarded the bounty. Now, you get those answers. But once you've gotten those answers, that group set of answers is now on there and it's a proof set of questions you know other people can come get them and pay for that right this is scary right and now they've paid for that information right but every time they somebody else buys it you as the person who asked the question put the bounty get get a fee from that for a basic question and then you know um the guy who got the correct answers that the judge was like yes this is the right answers he's getting paid every time what's people's hold on what's people's incentive

Starting point is 00:55:49 to do this you people use quora they you can get things for free online why are people suddenly get good data there's a lot of bullshit out there there's a lot of bullshit but like yeah this also combing the web of all the fake need fake data that becomes increasingly hard as the world goes on absolutely but the way you just explained that is that there are people who decide what's right and wrong here could you not see how people could be biased to whatever the the question is to control what information they want that's why you have a group right like sort of like a jury okay you know you hope that like what if the jury all thinks the same uh you know that's the same thing that happens

Starting point is 00:56:26 when you take somebody to court, right? Or somebody's on trial. Yeah, I don't think information flow, though, should be treated like a trial. I mean, a lot of things are going to be treated like that in this world where, like, they've got to validate authenticity, and then when it's authentic,

Starting point is 00:56:43 it's going to live on on a chain and then you're going to have access to it how does that tie into so when when you're bringing up these things it's like smart contracts right yes yes this is basically a smart contract paradigm that i'm sharing with you so how does a smart contract which is has to do with blockchain technology and how it's integrated how does that work within the confines of the metaverse i that are going to be created oh yeah i mean this is this is gonna go this is the juicy stuff the juicy stuff this is is where the world starts going wild yeah chuck just lit up over here um so like you gotta think about it there are already games coming out there where you can buy your character you own him you pick pay pay a couple coins for him then you're in the world

Starting point is 00:57:31 and you're earning money as you're playing and you're you're doing all these crazy things and you know like so you start doing that right I mean it's it's everywhere right now with nfts obviously but like you know it becomes more interesting when you start buying different NFTs that are usable. Maybe they go on your avatar. Maybe you buy them in the metaverse and they wear your avatar. Or maybe you buy art that can decorate your, well, this is already happening, your plot of land that you've bought. And you have a one-on-one or a one-of-ten. And maybe there's real-world value too.

Starting point is 00:58:05 Maybe if you buy this art object, you're getting it in the real world and the metaverse, right? And you're going to start to see things like that happen, and it's already happening. Not that you're going to see. If you look close enough, it's happening, right? And it's going to happen all over the ecosystem, where you're one for your MMO game where, you know.

Starting point is 00:58:28 Your what? An MMO is a type of game that you're, let me think of a good example of an MMO. Daring to Father is not an MMO, I think. Fortnite? Fortnite's an MMO? I don't know. it just i gotta look at this one second and you're saying what was the context on that so um when i'm saying this uh world of warcraft was the example i was looking for okay and i think we've all played world of

Starting point is 00:59:00 warcraft or final fantasy or any of that right so an mmo is a multiplayer online game right and like you know basically when you're when you start thinking about um you know these things so you're you're playing a multiplayer game right you own your avatar you own your character you own the clothes he's wearing you own the car he's driving and and you know you you could do all types of things, right? And so if there's a one-of-one of it, it is proven because it's legislated on the chain. Exactly. And you're going to start to see that.

Starting point is 00:59:33 People are going to decorate their environments. They're going to have virtual worlds. You could be anything you want to be in those worlds, right? And people have all types of ideas or paradigms. But it's going to go beyond that, right? Say there's pop-up shops. all types of ideas or paradigms but like you know it's going to go beyond that right say say there's pop-up shops you know you can buy pop-up shops in the metaverse maybe brands are doing it i mean there's already brands building nfts you can look at like you know richmond and several others are from consortiums where they're building and building 3d assets around all their

Starting point is 01:00:00 products right so you can buy you know car you could discard a assets or like you know chloe bags or whatever it is and all these guys are starting to do that right so you're going to have these 3d assets that are tied to the blockchain that are nfts and these things are you know they're basically and entities values determined by scarcity right like and rarity yeah among other things yeah but the largest the largest things are that right like if it's not rare for the sake of argument let's use that yeah if it's not rare it's worth i mean look there are some and it's still within rarity in defense of your argument there but like even you look at the board ap yacht club there are some

Starting point is 01:00:41 apes that are not rare at all but they're're actually some of the more, quote-unquote, expensive or sought-after ones because people created a story around them outside of it, and it became like a movement. So it's like a weird thing, but your point's taken. I understand what you mean. Ultimately, the Borda ape, even the one that's the least rare because basically they're using an algorithm of the same baseline. The way they designed those basically is they go into a creator tool, they make them all as independent layers, right? So there's tons of different objects

Starting point is 01:01:12 and they use an algorithm to generate these different variants, right? And then there's more common... Yeah, the traits. And there's more common ones that share more traits and there's more rare ones that have more rare things.

Starting point is 01:01:24 And maybe it's a certain hat or a certain eye or whatever it is. And then you can increase rarity by your serum or whatever it is. But even the least rare bored ape, if you think about how many bored apes they are and given the demand in the community now because of all the celebrities involved,

Starting point is 01:01:41 it's still very rare. Oh yeah, 100%. Especially in the growing scale of what that nft is you're talking about the highest end of like collectibles i know that i'm saying like even within that though there's a weird thing that can go around so then if you extrapolate that out outside of like just rarity of a project itself you know beauty is in the eye of the beholder right like people are gonna they're they're gonna run in and this is actually a good symbol too for like how i'm trying to think about

Starting point is 01:02:12 who's gonna win the metaverse and like volume but people are gonna run to where the volume and attention is it's no different than anything else so like foot traffic yes so like if if metas metaverse somehow over the next three years as it's starting to get built gets 80 of the foot traffic i mean they're going to be hard to unseat but i i will come back to that i want to stay with the nft point like when people are looking at this space and particularly because we started this talking about on chain and nfts as I believe are are certainly like the connector into that world when when we're talking about blockchain integration with a metaverse and a future digital universe but you know leads together I had Mitch laxamana in here a month and a half ago

Starting point is 01:02:57 something like that who he's a couple different things but one one of his main trades right now is he's an nft trader and he is brutally honest about it so he's like you know some of these projects it's like whoa okay this has real integration here's why here's what it could be here's how you could use it whatever and then he's like a lot of them it's like a lot of vaporware out there exactly people going there i see volume i see numbers i go i'm in i'm out like a machine and that's that's a money-making operation thing with bitcoin though right everybody built their own tokens and there's a lot of bullshit tokens oh yes yes same car exactly people are always going to try to to ride a lot make a

Starting point is 01:03:34 quick buck and then you know it deflates exactly so ignore that's what i'm saying ignore that let's call it 90 at least the projects that are like that and it's vaporware i like that term so ignore the vapor the stuff that's not maybe even board apes right like which is like the top dog of the collections sure there's doodle there's a bunch yeah absolutely but the stuff that's not people in my opinion they're gonna find a way to like keep building steps on this so it's not just oh i own this board ape so i can hang it in my virtual house but it also gives them access to various places or like almost like a like a like a pass in the metaverse yeah it's like a you have pass you got it to go to Soho House. Yes. There's going to be accessibility things.

Starting point is 01:04:26 There's going to be things for only owners of that. There's going to be communities around it. There's going to be things that you can do because you have one of those. That's definitely going to happen, right? People are always looking for ways to level up or layer things in. It's more than just decorating your metaverse or your board game. People are doing silly things now. They're putting it on chains right they're wearing it around it's it's social cloud they're using it as their their um you know their their profile picture but then

Starting point is 01:04:54 it also goes to other things right like buy nft art you know use an nft frame hang it in your house now you have you have different art in your house too because these collectors are using it in the real world um you know maybe said community board apps launches a mobile app maybe you can do certain things with that like you know um you know there's there's definitely all types of things people are trying to layer on these things right now and think about how to add more value for sure and like you know i mean people are not just buying 2d art or 3d art and trying to keep it in their metaverse apartment yeah and their meta home yes yes yes and depending on what it even is or how long it lasts for some of them because it's like like i look at some of these projects that clearly offer nothing other than

Starting point is 01:05:38 a randomized piece of digital sometimes looks like total shit that they just made and they say oh yeah and it's to me like some of them are just straight up pyramid schemes when the only real thing they offer is like staking because staking on the crypto side when you're talking about like a ethereum or things like that it's it's i'm way oversimplifying it but it's essentially like earning money on your money like lending out your money for just like in the real world yes but in a in a in a fair predetermined community oriented way so people know exactly what they're getting when they borrow that today it is that's scary but i'll i'll stay with this so within nfts you see some of these projects they'll drop a collectible project that's 10,000 pieces.

Starting point is 01:06:27 So it's got 10,000 rarity of whatever it is. And now they got to drive demand to the project at launch. So to drive demand, they got to build a community. They got to build people who want to buy. And so they may come out, shit project X, and say, oh, we're going to offer staking and what staking does is when the people like the investor takes hold of the object the piece of art whatever it's minted and you have it it's minted and they have it they then can can take that piece give it back to the company where they still own it loan it back to the company for a predetermined set rate

Starting point is 01:07:05 where they're paid you know three percent four percent while they own it and this then artificially it incentivizes decreasing supply to artificially increase demand and then they have nothing else behind the project and there's and there's nothing exciting about using it in the metaverse and i look at these and i'm like you know some of these projects a lot of these projects excuse me aren't doxxed you have no idea who the people are who made it they're completely hidden to no government's getting to them and it's like a fraud there's a lot of that out there scary man it was in other segments of the world too before you had digital over your nft there were other scams you know you just gotta if you're gonna invest money in anything you know educate yourself yes you know take the time to learn about what the

Starting point is 01:07:57 hell you're doing don't buy it because it's buzz right and a lot of people get hyped by the buzz it's a reality but like you know i think think there is inherent value to what an NFT is, the blockchain is, and how it starts to blur the lines of value within the metaverse, within the digital currency ecosystem. And it can have real-world value if you've done correctly. So I think I can start to blur lines I don't think every project's thinking about it that way a lot of a lot of creators think about quick money that

Starting point is 01:08:30 year and they're like I can mint an nft on open C no problem yep it was a guy who sold 10 000 selfies of himself and made tons of all that silly it's crazy and it's what and it's like it's so obvious man like some of them are just so that guy literally took selfies of i guess it's himself maybe it's a fake person but i assume it's himself right so you know i look at that and i go well currently these things aren't treated like securities there's no existing law on them or whatever but i always not that i like this because this is a horrible precedent, but unfortunately it is true. I always say if the government wants to figure out how to make a case, they'll change the law to make a case.

Starting point is 01:09:11 So like if you – They've done it before. Yeah. They do it again. Oh, they do it all the time. So like I'm looking at these and I'm like saying a prayer for some of these guys. Like, oh, my God. Like there's – I don't see how when that deflating bubble happens where all the bullshit just taken out in a second

Starting point is 01:09:26 i don't see how those guys aren't in chains in prisons i mean it happened so many ways think about junk bonds think about all these different patterns right it happens as we're through it's all cyclical right and like there's there's cycles where things peak and then they valley and you know new new types of business takes them a while to catch up. They're big. They're behemoth. They're not focused on this yet. It's not a problem yet.

Starting point is 01:09:49 Not yet. And then people lose money and it'll be a problem. Exactly. I was kind of surprised though because back in 2018 when the initial ICO bubble burst within crypto, there were far fewer cases

Starting point is 01:10:04 and quote-unquote prosecutions or even like volume around hearing news around that than i expected like a lot fewer because there were so many i mean i'm sure you remember that but the second half of 2017 fucking everyone was selling something in blockchain you couldn't tell the real from the not real i know is one of my good friends was one of the initial guys like inventing the space like as legit as it gets and he had a very zealous project that was overzealous in a way because it was ahead of its time but it was fantastic and yes at one point it involved like some sort of ico with it once these other people started coming in and just ruining the space done no one wanted to hear about it and he had to be like well this

Starting point is 01:10:51 is over like we can't even it doesn't matter what value it has no one cares and that's that is a danger with that quote unquote my 10 of nfts that i'm looking at i do think about that because i'm like is it just going to become have you bought you bought any yeah yeah i own some that happens right i mean yeah yeah you hope that you're choosing wisely exactly exactly and like you know obviously like i've had a front row seat to one of the projects i think we were talking which has about with smiles yeah and what they've done it's incredible work well he's a great artist oh God. He's amazing. And that is a real one. And I worry about sometimes, like, oh, would Waheed lose out on his company?

Starting point is 01:11:32 Like, he and Giovanni, would they lose out because of all these other assholes who have no value behind it just suddenly screwing everyone over? It's a thought. It'll level, for sure. Yeah. If they have something real behind it then you know

Starting point is 01:11:47 it'll keep some value but it'll market a level for sure there's going to become you know a part of this where there's levels um it's without a doubt yeah when you had the tech bubble in 2000 2001 apple amazon all these companies existed their stock prices all got hurt in the short term because everyone got hurt, but they were legit and they lived on. And I like to think, and I actually do believe that, that the high end of NFTs will do that

Starting point is 01:12:13 because I think this technology is so important to integrate in the metaverse. If they continue to think about how to, you know, be part of the ecosystem and grow of the ecosystem, some of them could probably get away with just being art. There's doubt about that if it's good yeah sure and there's a story behind it it's actual it's it's real it's not just tossed together but like you you talk about this buzz that that's that i like that word you used a few minutes ago where you're talking about like people are just trying to get in on the new thing with stuff and they have to be a part of it

Starting point is 01:12:44 we're seeing it right now obviously with nfts and big companies but you know you've been looking at this stuff since your brother brought home the whatever it was nine years ago yeah cardboard and so you you've been seeing in a lot of ways before other people even talking about like where this this boat's moving and now you at least have a lot of regular boomers out there in in the business world who are they may not understand it but they're asking questions because they're like okay right less than you would think to be honest with you i think really i think there's a lot of a lot of um you know big businesses and enterprises that are very curious about ar vr and they're experimenting they're starting to invest you know big businesses and enterprises that are very curious about ar vr and they're experimenting

Starting point is 01:13:25 they're starting to invest you know but if you start asking like you know people that are boomers quote unquote about nfts or you know the blockchain or something there's a foreign concept still to them right i think i think ar vr is more near near term in their minds i mean you gotta think about everybody has an ar device in their pocket for the most part right if you're living in the first world predominantly america europe you know parts of southeast asia or whatnot your smartphone can do ar you can and you have all these young guns that are playing pokemon go and other things like that so there's been a couple aha moments and a couple of things with the way the technology is shifted and what's accessible to the end user to make it more real and more understandable. Well, that's specifically what I wanted to ask about is the AR side.

Starting point is 01:14:17 Forget the NFTs and the blockchain for me. I completely agree with what you just said. So many people, not even like boomers like people my friends right like some of them who aren't looking at it like they they're like all right it's some word people throw around we don't understand it we don't care there's a lot of people like that but people have at least been they've known even if they don't understand it they've known the term vr for years most people right been around for a long time a lot of people if they didn't understand it at least have heard the term ar and they know it's related some loose way sure so you were working with that like early on and now when i'm talking about buzz i'm talking about these

Starting point is 01:14:56 conversations with companies coming to you like do they actually does it occur to you that a lot of these a lot of clients a lot of people who are looking into it are just trying to get in on it because they they know that whatever however it's going to look the action is going to be there or is there a lot more of people are they see it they understand like oh wait we have product y and we could sell it here through this other thing that people use to go into this universe where now suddenly we have a new customer vertical. Yeah, I don't think – not many people are thinking about it in that way. When you're thinking about enterprise today, they're thinking about AR and VR as tools to their business, whether it's like a production line or a trade show or training, simulation, things of that nature. They're looking for things that they're already doing in their business

Starting point is 01:15:50 that they could do better by using these technologies. If you ask a lot of these organizations, if they're thinking about selling their products in the metaverse, there's only a few, like Nike and some of these bigger dogs that are really forward- and betting long term. And what's Nike? How's Nike betting right now? Oh, my God.

Starting point is 01:16:09 They bought a huge plot of land in the metaverse. They're hiring wildfire for people to be able to build in these roads. And what metaverse did they buy? I believe it's Decentraland. Okay. So not Metis? No. You can't buy land in Facebook. yeah they're not they're not trying

Starting point is 01:16:27 to sell they're not even trying to do that right they're not even getting into that game right there's a lot of these sub communities that are selling land right doesn't that but wait hold on a second just so i don't miss that point if they're never going to get into that game they're not in today doesn't that totally give them a competitive disadvantage? I don't know. I think a lot of times you're going to have these places to be jump-off points, right? And you're going to go into these other worlds.

Starting point is 01:16:55 They're basically a content ecosystem today, right? If I think about what Oculus is in the purest form, it's a hardware company that's building top-line virtual reality hardware, right? Okay, and that hardware allows you to gain access to curated experiences. Yes, it has access to a browser. You can go to the web.

Starting point is 01:17:20 You can look at things. And eventually, more spatial experiences will be browser-based, so you'll be able to get to all those things but like you know they basically have curated a content ecosystem of games productivity tools yada yada that really enable you know a user to to access some of the best, you know, experiences. I think that's really, really what it's been and what their focus has been, right? And they have some of their own native apps

Starting point is 01:17:53 that they're focused on, like venues that I was talking about, like Horizon Workspaces. You know, they've definitely built some of their own tools, but they've focused on a subsect of tools. They're not trying to build all the tools. And they focused on, you know, productivity and entertainment. But like, yeah, you know, they haven't been looking to sell land in the metaverse. That hasn't been Facebook's mission objective.

Starting point is 01:18:17 And they've never made no state. They've never made any statements about, you know, buy land in Facebook's metaverse or meta's metaverse, right? But, yeah, no. I don't know. This is really surprising for me to hear just because I'm always very suspicious of Mark Zuckerberg. As most people are. I assume that, like, there's a bigger game here.

Starting point is 01:18:41 There's some sort of control. I mean, he's not like the founder of MySpace. You know, the guy came along, taught us all a little bit of coding. Shout out to Myspace Tom. Myspace Tom, dude. Shout out to... He never monetized anything or anybody. He did make money, though.

Starting point is 01:18:57 He did, 100%. He sold it. He sold it and who knows where he is, enjoying life somewhere. Lucky guy. Son of a bitch. I'm going to find him and get him in here. I want to to my space the guy's a legend total legend um so he's the opposite but you can understand why the actions have said not so much for mark zuckerberg i mean there's a

Starting point is 01:19:15 reason why he's been dragged up to uh dc and had to go go through all those gamuts of things the guy's spending his time you know influencing elections trying to decide the fate of the people right uh it doesn't doesn't leave much to trust right but like the truth of it is as much as much bad as you want to look at like so my guy horo hit me up this week and for all the og fans out there you remember him from episode 17 but horo is also the chief of staff over at eight sleep who is a sponsor of the show. He was like, Julian, you had a couple sales last week. Usually, we just get one once in a while because it's an expensive product.

Starting point is 01:19:51 But I'm starting to think that we're breaking through on people realizing that you should probably have an 8sleep Pod Pro Cover. I always tell you, you can use that link in my description along with the code TRENDFIRE at checkout. That's T-R-E-N-D-I-F-I-E-R to get $100 off your own Eight Sleep Pod Pro Cover. But I also tell you that the reason you should do this is because you will add hours to your sleep without adding hours to your sleep. That's because Eight Sleep's Pod Pro Cover goes right on top of your queen of king size mattress.

Starting point is 01:20:17 You get to pick the size you want and it ties right into Eight Sleep's proprietary app to measure things like your body temperature, your sleep stages, which you and I don't understand, but that's a real scientific thing, and other things throughout the night, including your heart rate, to determine how you can get the best, deepest sleep possible, and therefore wake up with the most energy. So once again, use that link in my description, along with the code TRENDFIRE at checkout. That's T-R-E-N-D-I-F-I-E-R. You can get $100

Starting point is 01:20:44 off your own eight sleep pod pro cover today and join the other listeners who are joining the party we love seeing that also supports the podcast so huge help thank you to all of you who have bought in i remember facebook being one of the i think we were one of like the first 50 or 100 universities when it came out and i was a freshman in college, where it was just pictures, adding friends, poking people, which today is taboo. Don't poke anybody. Oh, my God.

Starting point is 01:21:12 I remember the pokes. People claim all types of things. You poke them these days. It was just innocent back then. Facebook was innocent. But you can't help. But he has investors. There's a business to be run.

Starting point is 01:21:23 He's not the only one you know uh selling data or or collecting data true right you know there's it's it's easy to single him out right and i'm not saying that you know whoo mark zarkovic's the greatest guy like you know i mean you know i i i don't agree with everything he does but I think overwhelmingly he's made smart decisions as a businessman. He's bought some great assets along the way, whether it be Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus. He's cornered a lot of the future of communication and technology. They might get broken up.

Starting point is 01:22:04 They might break it all apart but like you know the truth of it is i get why why you're gun shy about trusting mark zuckerberg well i'm never going to trust them yeah but like this what you're saying to me this is why this sounds weird because this guy i like how you just said as a businessman i agree with you as a businessman he's been very smart in in determining good assets to buy based on where the volume of attention and needs are going to go with with you monetize those assets though he what you need to monetize those assets absolutely but now I'm looking at this one which you would think same pattern and it sounds like just to me from the outside it sounds like he's putting himself

Starting point is 01:22:45 at a competitive disadvantage if he does not allow people to build and buy within that world the same way that they can in other worlds is he though because every time somebody buys an app in the app store similar to apple did he gets 30 percent right of of the app cost, of the digital transactions you make with him. If they're in his metaverse. I mean, not quote-unquote his metaverse. You're using his app store, right?

Starting point is 01:23:14 Like, similar to how you would use an iPhone app store. And it's what he says could be in the app store. And, you know, it's curated. And that's basically it. Have you put out an Oculus ever? No. You should get one. Yeah. Just, it's, you know, basically it have you put out an oculus ever no you should get one um just it's you know basically you launch it you go to your home world it's basically like your room

Starting point is 01:23:32 right from there you have a couple different options in the bottom one is the app store one is your app library facebook's app store it's oculus's yeah yeah um one is your friend so you can add your friends you can message your friends what is to go to the web and search the web so you can just go browser-based searching but you know that's that's really it today right um and within that app store you can buy all types of things productivity tools you can buy games you can buy experiences you can buy games, you can buy experiences, you can get to content, right? But like, you know, he's not selling, you know, a place within that app store or priority or land or any of those things, right? There are other ecosystems that are focused on building, quote unquotequote environments of land digital land that you could buy a

Starting point is 01:24:27 transact to buy and then have people visit and whatnot right you know that hasn't been he's at least not openly right it's charged so far well here's a question then so you said Nike bought their big plot of land on Decentraland I believe so I think it's Decentraland. Okay. Either way, it wasn't on whatever Meta's is. Could Meta set it up such that if you're using Oculus goggles, you can't access Decentraland? That's too communist. I don't think they'll ever do that.

Starting point is 01:25:02 Okay. So maybe I'm thinking of some of this wrong maybe because i listened to him talk about it and i took away that like they're trying to build the actual space too where people go and their metaverse is the one that people are in maybe i'm slightly wrong about that and what he's looking at is more when he talks about that he's saying like the metaverse in general but we want to build all the tools that people use yeah i think that's a lot of it don't get me wrong he's definitely trying to try i'm sure he'll get to get into a place where he has you know environments and worlds and things that you could go around i mean if he sells land in his world i'm not sure

Starting point is 01:25:39 i mean it's never been something that's been offered to the public today right um but you know i bet you'd go to decentraland and you'd go there you might go to snoop dog's little world or whatever it is right he just bought a big plot right yeah and then he broke it up but he has all the other creators in there whatnot right you might go to snoop's party you might only be able to get the snoop's party if you have a bored ape what do you know right i mean you know there's um there's all types of paradigms that are coming right but the truth of it is right i don't think that anything's going to limit you from asking the central land

Starting point is 01:26:09 within there i think you're gonna go to all different parts of the metaverse you know and you're gonna experience different things and you're gonna live the reality that you want to within those things right have you have you ever heard of this guy sean pory i think is how you pronounce his name i've heard of him but he rings a bell he's like the twitch guy oh yeah yeah so i have a thread behind you and i know we read this on a previous podcast but it's a short thread and i want to read it again because you're going right into this territory. So this guy occasionally puts out like a thought dump theory on something that has a lot of attention. It seems like he does it a couple times a year.

Starting point is 01:26:54 I don't really know. But he got on my radar when he put out a thread about Clubhouse on March 15th. And let me tell you, to a fucking T. I've never been a big clubhouse user i mean we were early on i had some concerns but i was like wow great tool and this guy was like hey obviously march 15th was turned out to be the top of the app he's like looks great i'm rooting for him i don't root against people but here's all the reasons i think it's going to fail and hypothetically and nailed it so he comes out with this thread on october 29th about the metaverse and this was a much

Starting point is 01:27:31 shorter thread but here's what it was he goes hot take everyone is wrong about the metaverse here's my three-part theory part one everyone is wrong most people think the metaverse is a virtual place like in the movie ready player one a virtual world like, Roblox, or like Zuck showed in the Facebook demo yesterday. But what if it's not a place? Part two, it's not a place, it's a time. A time? What the fuck? Yes, a moment in time. You know in artificial intelligence there's an idea of the quote-unquote singularity?

Starting point is 01:28:02 It's a moment in time where AI becomes smarter than humans the moment when artificial intelligence is greater than human intelligence part three what it is the metaverse is the moment in time where our digital life is worth more than just our physical life this is not an overnight change or an invention by some steve jobs type it's a gradual change that's been happening for 20 years i web 1 web 2 and well and at web 1 towards the front end of web 2 every important part of life is going digital work from factories to laptops boardrooms to zooms friends from neighbors to followers where do you find like-minded people Twitter Reddit etc games more people play fortnight than basketball and football combined identity

Starting point is 01:28:43 filters are the new makeup stories are your personal billboard to broadcast who you are what matters more what you look like in real life or what you look like on instagram the pic on the left is what they see and it's the one that matters and i'll put that i put that in the corner last time we read this with mitchell xamana but i'll put it in the corner again it's an instagram influencer and she looks horrible on the left and horrible on the right and great on the left on Instagram. Everything goes digital, your friends, your job, your identity. And now with crypto, your assets are online too. Bored apes are the new Rolex. Fortnite skins are the new skinny jeans. If everyone hangs out online all the time, then your fixes need to be digital. So if you play this forward another 10 to 20 years, we will cross into the metaverse, the moment in time where

Starting point is 01:29:23 digital matters more to us than physical. Our attention to be 99 on our physical environment tvs drop that to 85 computers down to 70 phones 50 our attention has been sucked from physical to digital and where attention goes energy flows if 50 of our attention is on digital screen and 50 of our energy will go will then go into our digital life. Today, it takes some effort to take out our phone from our pocket and look at it. Soon, some company will make smart glasses that sit in front of our eyes all day, which they've already been making for a long time. We will go from 50% attention to screens to 90% plus. That's the moment in time where the metaverse starts because at that moment, our virtual life will become more important than our real life.

Starting point is 01:30:07 Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Like anything else, it's neither good nor bad. It's just a thing, a very different thing. I agree with him 100% to be honest with you. I think that we haven't had the aha moment where we have glasses or contacts that augment us 24-7. I think like technology, it's as much and as productive as you use it, right? There's a lot of people that are basically slaves

Starting point is 01:30:30 to their phones or social media. I'm somebody who has uninstalled every social media app on his phone. I've sat here with you. I haven't taken out my phone to look at it. Probably great things happening there. Probably things i probably need to

Starting point is 01:30:45 respond to but you know i mean i think you know the value of a relationship is to focus you give that person or the conversation you have and the time you spend right i think there's not enough value given to those things and that's because that's societal thing where society's going but i agree with them right like it's going to start to blur the lines right the real world and the digital world are going to bleed in a real way. And even down to what you know about somebody, who you know, what the world looks like to you when you walk down the street. So it's going to change your perception of reality.

Starting point is 01:31:17 It's also going to have negative effects to mental health and all these different things, right? Yeah, man. I don't think he's wrong. I think 20 years is when it really hits that tipping point. I think it's already in process, but we have the early adopters that are really on this wave right now, and they're really experimenting with top technology.

Starting point is 01:31:41 And then 20 years from now, people like me will be the equivalent of what boomers are today. the top technology and then you know 20 years from now people like me will be you know what the equivalent of what boomers are today you know which is scary to think about i mean i the way i took it and i'm inferring this part but he used like that 10 to 20 year timeline for the full crossover i then extrapolate that in the way he's looking at it to 50 years beyond that not for what he's saying but for a fuller timeline and what i mean by that is does that mean that we move to this as the metaverse and then whatever's after the metaverse is the thing that's 50 years away per se and in that case is the difference really that's where it's the matrix and you're plugged into a machine and you know 900 pounds you mean you're a link well that's scary to say but i'm

Starting point is 01:32:30 saying like is that where like do we get there and the metaverse is the thing where we just get used to integrating walking around in the real world with you know the technological i think yeah i think it's twofold it's ar and vr and becomes a mixed reality right there's times where you'll be walking around the real world and it will be augmenting your real world there are times where you will be totally immersed and i think the metaverse blurs both lines in fact i hate the term metaverse to be honest with you but um i think it's just too broad and not specific enough and it's too lofty three syllables too they should have done better it's a lot of work a lot of work a lot of work the same stating that every time right metaverse i mean it rolls pretty

Starting point is 01:33:11 well but it's it's it's long no but like you know i think that um you know i mean we're gonna have computers that are more integrated into our lives these are the core of the computers that have vision to them right? When do we lose the phone? I mean, you know, I think it's akin to the metaverse adoption or the ARVR adoption curve, to be honest with you. You know, it's crazy, right? Like, you start thinking about adoption curves. You think about, like, when I was a kid, right,

Starting point is 01:33:44 and I'm a little bit older than you. People are like, I'm never going to carry a computer around with me. This is crazy. Why would I have a computer on my back? Why do I need a computer? Five years later. I don't need one in my house. I'll go to the library.

Starting point is 01:33:59 And then it started shifting. And then people started getting more connected to it. And it becomes more accessible right and then you know you have people that have flip phones even before the flip phone i remember my dad that he was in technology space too but like you know driving any sports car he had one of those classic car phones i don't know if you know what a car phone is oh yeah i remember that a little bit with that out he talked on his car phone. He clicked it down. People would call him. People still had that when cell phones came out, too.

Starting point is 01:34:28 They did. They would have both. It was kind of weird. They would. Before there was the actual cell phone, there was satellite phone. There was all these types of things. The Gordon Gekko phone. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:34:38 They didn't have good enough bandwidth and whatever it is. You needed the car phone to augment that, right? To get more connected. And those people were the geeks or like, you know, the futurist. But, you know, today you have people, like my niece's generation is younger than me. It's like, she doesn't even need a laptop.

Starting point is 01:34:57 Like she's typing on a screen and you know, when phones came out, they're like, you'll never type faster on a touchscreen and on a phone than you will on a computer. Like, no, you you do like you type much faster on a phone now we're like you know some people don't but like it's the adoption the learning curve and the younger generation they make the word for speech that you you you were typing on mavis beacon in the 90s look silly right mavis it looks silly yeah right like but like um yeah man you know i mean

Starting point is 01:35:28 and then like you know now everybody's using ipads or tablets and they're not using laptops and you know they have their phone or people can do their whole day of their whole workflow never touching a computer just working on a phone right and there are a lot of people like i like you know um but you did you deleted all your social media? I mean, I have accounts. I don't go on it. It's always interesting. I'll check Instagram, to be honest with you.

Starting point is 01:35:53 Because I do find a lot of cool shit on Instagram. And a lot of stupid things, too. But, like, because, like, you know, I think social media is the devil, to be honest with you. I disagree. Like, you know, they basically, they're playing to your dopamine, right? And this whole cycle, right? Basically, you're basically taking drugs. Every time you swipe up on TikTok, that's a hit.

Starting point is 01:36:14 Oh, yeah. Right? And like, it's designed to addict people, right? But like, you're slaves to it because, one, you're not even looking at things you want. You're just like zombie scrolling right the other thing is you're looking for social validation from people that don't they don't mean a damn to you like i don't give a shit if they're like-minded or whatever it is those people mean nothing they've never met them they have no you're not vested in my life they they they mean nothing they literally mean nothing they're you know they're they're part of the

Starting point is 01:36:44 problem to be honest with you. And you think you have influence. What influence? You have no influence. Those people are not going to save anybody for you or save you when you're hurting yourself or whatever it is. Well, influence depending on what you define influence for. Yes. Right?

Starting point is 01:36:58 So people influence culture by having a lot of attention on these things. There's a reason that the fucking Island Boys are out there, which is a disaster. I mean they're not – nothing personal, but like that's not an example you'll want. But it's a free society and they're out there with their crazy fucking faces all fucked up and whatever that hair is and people – they get attention and now they and here's the thing like they were incentivized to be crazy like that because other people on social media in other ways were crazy before them and monetized it the jackass yeah right um but you know the truth of it is like honestly like as fast as those things come they go and like to be honest with you like there's no real value to that to be honest with you but at the same time you could have made that argument at the beginning of social

Starting point is 01:37:50 media for like influence of things and then we had an election determined like every election since 2008 has been determined on it it's not it's because of actually um it's not because of that man it's because of of that, man. It's because of how the algorithm worked and what they were serving you, right? That's sort of like, it's a little bit different than that. That is an engineer and a team, a layered in of an algorithm

Starting point is 01:38:16 that is determining what you'd see that would influence you, right? But you have to see things. Yeah, but it's not really you choosing that to some degree, right? Like not really you choosing that to some degree right some of those things that you saw like I think there's a lot of nonsense

Starting point is 01:38:31 that went into that to be honest with you there is you go to my social media I'm not being served those things because I've never looked at those things but other people are a lot of other people are that's what people are. A lot of other people are. That's what I'm saying.

Starting point is 01:38:46 Like, I think- And a lot of it's fake, right? And a lot of it's- It's fake, but it determines, it then, it's the causation of real actions in the real world. Yeah, it's psychological because you're fucking with people's minds. Yes. So that's what I'm saying. That's where I'll disagree.

Starting point is 01:39:01 It has significant cultural influence. I mean, you look at it. Obama was the first, quote-unquote, social media president because he used a brilliant – and, like, I think he would have won anyway. I mean, that was the easiest election of all time. People like me on his trail going door-to-door in places like Pennsylvania to get people to buy into him well before that. I mean, he was following up arguably the most damaging presidency we ever had of course like i don't know if you could still claim that anymore i would 100 claim that after trump trump is trump is a disaster of a guy when when it comes to everything pr around it and then you can add policies as well wrecking ball totally agree very damaging he

Starting point is 01:39:45 about what he did to the capital every not a riot not disagreeing every single thing that has occurred every single thing had prime causation in those eight bush years foreign policy domestic policy size of government as far as like a bureaucratic agency constitutional bias against the people right that when that's what i mean when i say size of government the the oh my god like the the financials obviously like it all happened under his watch and we inflated the i mean have you ever looked at george bush's debt ceiling or whatever the they call it go look at his next to to Barack Obama, who I might add inherited. Inherited the lowest it's ever been.

Starting point is 01:40:31 Inherited a disaster of an economy. And so he had to spend a lot of money and people were like, oh my God, Obama spent so much money, raised the debt ceiling. Obama's percentage raise of the debt ceiling, I believe, in his eight years and I'm gonna round these numbers with my photographic memory in my head, but it was around 67 percent increase versus George Bush's previous 119 percent increase and again He was the one spending the money in January February March April 2009 when shit was at the bottom So to put that in perspective like people will say like Oh Democrats spend a lot more money or whatever Republicans are more conservative Not in this case. That's not how this went down

Starting point is 01:41:12 So when I say like the damaging years and I know we got sidetracked here But it's an important cultural point that whole wealth gap split the fuck open from that sure Obama Did what he could do to fix the financial crisis? It was fucked though and like he didn't fix it and frankly I don't think he mortgaged your debt of the mortgage the future of others 100 i don't i don't get down the road yeah i don't think a human being really had an opportunity to fix it at that point it was this had been going yeah you know so like it's like manageable for that moment right and like but it's not fixable but he ran the original point was he ran a brilliant that was when facebook was at its dawn sure for the public so 06 07 08 which is when he was coming through

Starting point is 01:41:50 he ran a brilliant campaign on there was a very different ecosystem at that point very different ecosystem but at the initial facebook 1.0 he ran a brilliant campaign and that after that point forward every political campaign in some way it increased in use case but it used utilize social media more and more and more and then by the time the targeting and ad spend and algorithms you know it's gotten increasingly more complicated right and you know increasingly more it can force biases it can do all types of things right you can manipulate that algorithm in in so many ways right and manipulate the way Content is packaged for sure like you look at how forget like the whole foreign governments

Starting point is 01:42:33 Basically creating dummy accounts and stuff and and hacking into our content in that way in our consumption That's one issue. The other issue is you look at how even in 2016 the two campaigns ran their data and frankly trump's team did a better job with this it's part of the reason why they won they were able to utilize down to sentence and coloration placement within one specific little microchip ad right that's not really a term but you know what i mean like that that changed the game between people feeling like they connected with this or connected with a sore spot versus it didn't. And so even if that's something that's digitized. You played to human emotion in a very scientific way.

Starting point is 01:43:15 Even if that's digitized in the sense that they set that up and they randomize it according to the algorithm and the data of the people which they did it's still a piece of content that's consumed on this platform that therefore then directly affects the top of the culture the fucking oval office you know it did in this case that's what people are trying to fix but i don't know if it's fixable and fixing is tough with that and this is where i get worried about the centralization of the decentralized landscape because someone has to fix it. And Mark Zuckerberg's control of it? Yeah. Fuck yeah.

Starting point is 01:43:50 I don't like how you're assuming the control of it. I don't want anyone to have it. That's what decentralization is supposed to avoid. But some of this is yet to be seen. I mean, I think there are people fighting for this to change and shift with Web3 and smart contracts and just the way the decentralized economy and ecosystem is growing. But, you know, I mean, you got to out of the old at this point, right? And there's a lot of legacy that's kind of baggage that's coming with it, to be honest with you. Yes. What is the whole – this was something I was going to bring up earlier, and then I started going into other porn.

Starting point is 01:44:34 I was like, let's stick with it, but I want to go to the finishing ideology here, like with Web3. What is the – I don't want to use the word endgame because no one knows that, but how do we balance the fact that Web 3.0 is so focused on decentralization when decentralization is actually not convenient in certain ways? And I'll explain what I mean by that. With Web 1.0, as we said earlier, it was www.com, whatever.com. Web 2.0 said, here's the four or five places you go for different types of content.

Starting point is 01:45:14 That'll then, everyone's a community there and they'll bring in all the other places that you could go. So it's done for you and curated. Web 3.0 says, oh, we gave too much power to those platforms. Like the ideology of it is supposed to be, let's give it all back to the people and the people have such and such dot whatever all that shit is doesn't that then take this blockchain run web 3 decentralized world and

Starting point is 01:45:39 give us the inconvenience again once again of web.0, where everyone's on their own individual node, and therefore finding communities of people all in one place to share information now can't happen. It can happen, and it will happen. How? There will be new design paradigms for that, right? I mean, it's not going to be centralized, but there's going to be other facets of community and different things that we're like-minded people gathering and different ways to access things. How would that work? I mean, you think about these different things that were like-minded people gathering and different ways to access things. How would that work?

Starting point is 01:46:06 And you think about these different things. Like, Nike's going to have a space within the metaverse. What resources will they have, right? Certain brands will take and put a stake in the ground and have that, right? I mean, they're not going to be relegated to being found in that manner, but they'll have a presence right um i think some

Starting point is 01:46:26 of these paradigms are yet to be seen but i think that the decentralization i mean doesn't mean that it's not accessible i think it's how you access it is different hmm it's actually a really succinct but solid answer i know i'm going to listen to that a few times back when i go through this because it look and i'm sitting here i'm sitting across from that a few times back when i go through this because it look and i'm sitting here i'm sitting across from an expert but it doesn't matter who you are there there is no matter how you crack this there's a fuck ton of unknown you know they always are always you're talking about emerging edges nothing that's pre-built you're thinking about things if it was then it'd be done right exactly everybody was building in it who was thinking about things. If it was, then it'd be done, right? Exactly. Everybody who was building in it, who was thinking about it,

Starting point is 01:47:07 who was a futurist around it or experimenting of all these technologies we're talking about, they're learning. Expertise is, and being an expert is subjective, in my opinion, in this space, right? Everybody here, well, if you're a student of technology and what you're doing and playing with emerging technology, you're a learner, you're a builder, nothing's ready-made, right? And we together as the people who are working in the metaverse here are designing what are those interaction layers?

Starting point is 01:47:36 What are those commerce layers of it, right? How does it tie to the chain? How does it create value? All of these things are so open-ended today. And I think that there are things that people are still trying to figure out, but it's our job to be ethical when we do it, right? To think about it, to apply ethics, to build for the people. And don't get me wrong to do this is

Starting point is 01:48:08 for profit also right like it's always for profit like we're a capitalist company everything is and we're a capitalist country right like just it's it's about like you know empathy and ethics and thinking about how you're going to build things that are for people and serve value and create value for those people. Right? I mean, I think that there's a lot of unknowns and there's going to continue to be unknowns. There's always going to be when you're playing with the bleeding edge. Right? You know, and like, you're going to have to continue to be learners, builders, and doers.

Starting point is 01:48:40 Right? How do you separate the two for yourself though? Because like, as you've said, if you allow social media is toxic, it's, it grabs you, it's the hit of dopamine and all that. What makes, you know, the cynic would listen to that and say, well, this is the guy, one of the dudes now working on building the next facet of things here, working on building things in the metaverse, moving us towards the VR, AR world. What makes that so different from a humanity effect to you? Because I think if you design empathy and ethics, it can be different. Social media didn't have to be that way, right? It's always got to be sticky. You want people to come back.

Starting point is 01:49:19 You want people to keep using it. But it's got to add value, right? And value is defined as for the people right and for your users in in the sense of like social media today value is defined by for profit right and don't get me wrong profit's important but like they're giving you that hit of dopamine not because it's benefiting you because benefiting them don't you think in a free market though because i like how you look at that i agree with you i think that's the way to do it but don't you think in a free market there's going to be enough people even if it's not many but i'll

Starting point is 01:49:47 say it's probably going to be a lot who don't think like you there's a lot of people that don't think right they're going to continue to think that way and so you're going to sit there and sacrifice some profits to build with empathy and ethics and other people are going to come in and they're going to build the next iteration of social media. Without a doubt. There's definitely going to be layers of that. It's about us, the people, giving them the power if we continue to use it, right? I mean, to me, I look at you. I'm not. You're not.

Starting point is 01:50:17 But you would agree a lot of people are. To be honest with you, I still have a Facebook account. I have a TikTok account. I was curious. I downloaded TikTok. I went on there. And for the first time, I got up and i was curious i downloaded tiktok i went on there you know and for first like you know i've got a person i can't screw up and i was like what the fuck am i doing this shit is nonsense like who gives a shit that that person's doing a dance or

Starting point is 01:50:33 what what is that gonna do to me how is that gonna benefit me or my children or my family like what am i doing like yeah this is silly it's literally silly you're you're sitting there watching people being like showing you silly things that are not doing anything. I mean, you can get some content. Don't get me wrong. I've been on TikTok before and I've gone through and like I've followed some guys who did real estate. I got a lot of cool information on real estate investing, right? And there's some things in there. Even on Instagram, you can find great content in there.

Starting point is 01:51:04 But most people are not following that because the algorithm isn't optimized for that for you, right? They optimize for the things that are going to keep coming back, right? The things that require the least number of brain cells to consume but get that rush of dopamine. Correct. Whether it's looking at somebody that's

Starting point is 01:51:19 beautiful, that entices you to want to look at more of it, or whatever it is, like, you know, it's the algorithm feeding you those things, right? And it's also what you search and what you follow, they're going to optimize towards it, right? If you follow positive news and these things, they're going to serve you more of it, right? But like, it's also, it's a time sink, right? To be honest with you, beyond the content on there, it's like if you think about your time

Starting point is 01:51:47 and how much time you have in a day and what's the value of your currency of your time and your attention, it's doing that for you, right? Most people are content making $40,000, $50,000 a year and being middle of the rung. It's true. It's going to be that way way even if they're not they convince themselves through the lens of their complaints

Starting point is 01:52:11 that like this is just how it is they accept it's not just how it is though they're accepting it it's not yes if they took that that add two hours a day that they were scrolling on social media and applied it to self-learning yes there'd be a hell of a lot better. And that's the thing. Like, they don't, for whatever reason, a lot of people don't take that step. Like, they don't think of it. They don't get to the point where they, yes. They're addicted to all these other things,

Starting point is 01:52:34 whether it's partying or going online, whatever it is, right? Like, human nature is a such, right? Is a what? Human nature is such. Humans naturally have addictive personalities for the most part, right? And, you know, they play towards their weakness. Yes.

Starting point is 01:52:54 Right? Weakness is comfort. Weakness is comfort. And the truth of it is, big business is going to play to that too because it's for profit. Yeah, you understand this well. I can't disagree with any of that i worry about it though you know i think i think you see and i'll be putting words in your mouth here so please correct me if i'm wrong i think you seem a little more i mean i am too but

Starting point is 01:53:17 you seem like a little more resigned to it and focused on hey your lane you're going to do what you do and do it for the right reasons and that's all you can control and then we'll go from there and i respect that it's just can't change and fix everybody you're one yeah you're going to do what you do and do it for the right reasons, and that's all you can control, and then we'll go from there. And I respect that. You can't change and fix everybody. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You're one guy. The number of people, empathy and ethics, they may put that on their headline, but that's not how they're going to do it.

Starting point is 01:53:38 It's buzzwords. It feels good to say. No, man. Honestly, I came up through a family that is hindu i went to quaker school quaker school yeah shout out friends academy and friends the friend schools all over i mean my kids go there today um you know i went to a friend's school in like first grade yeah it's different it's different yeah you know and like the the don't get me wrong they understand that you know you are here to

Starting point is 01:54:05 better yourself, better others but there's a way to do it without hurting others yes that's like the whole ideology of it to a degree I don't know, I don't remember it that way but when did did your parents come here?

Starting point is 01:54:21 did your grandparents come here? my parents came here from India no, my dad was born in Jakarta, Indonesia. He lived in India for a very small part of his life. God damn it, Chaz. What a fucker. And then he moved to Singapore.

Starting point is 01:54:37 My mom is born and raised in Singapore. They met there. My dad chose to move to America, brought my mom with him. They had me and my siblings and how many siblings yeah i have an elder sister an elder brother and i'm the youngest of three and your brother's the one who works with you yeah right yeah we said that he's um he's been coding since 11 boy smart and what what did your dad do again when you were here or when he came here you know he uh built novelty electronics he started an import export and then he specialized further

Starting point is 01:55:03 so i don't know if you've seen like Mickey Mouse telephones or Jeep boom boxes. No shit, yeah. Or the duck phone. All those novelty things. He made phones, desk lamps, night lights,

Starting point is 01:55:14 all kinds of it, but they were all licensed and, you know, branded and he... Was that his own business? It was his own business. Wow. So he basically got me

Starting point is 01:55:24 and my brother to be more business minded. I've never been the technologist like like um like an engineer i should say he had both obviously he was he was a he had engineering behind him and you know business smart i i'm savvy i i can read a crowd i can read room. I can retain knowledge and apply knowledge. And I understand business quite well, I'd say. You're fast, too. You're very fast. I'm not like, I can't code.

Starting point is 01:55:53 I'm not building that way. I say today I know enough to be dangerous. But I'm fortunate to be in the position I am because I'm the younger brother of my older brother, Ash. And Ash is... Tech. He's always taught me things. He's always been like, look at this. Think about this. This is how this works. He has an interest and a passion

Starting point is 01:56:14 and he has... Yin and yang. He has ability to understand and apply from that level. He's also very business savvy, to be honest with you. I guess it's... know i just i have a good big brother who definitely understands how to build product and how to design product and how to how to use technology to enrich things and you know i mean i've learned a lot from him and like you know i i've learned a lot from from just being around technology my whole life it's very cool that

Starting point is 01:56:41 you two got to build something together and now you guys are building this company together that you guys became a part of and the leadership of this company is also very good right like the chairman and ceo i mean he uh he has a vision right and like he's enabled us to continue to build in this trajectory like you know he has a vision for where what role xr collective ar vr plays in here and and did he have that in place before you came there and he definitely was thinking about it yeah he was definitely already brewing in his mind you know I mean acquiring us was definitely helping him to move towards that in some of the technology goals um but yeah he definitely wasn't he he was already thinking about these things he wasn't doing it but he was definitely thinking about it and it was was just like, you know, power, you know, numbers, right?

Starting point is 01:57:26 Strength, strength of strength of like-minded people that are trying to solve problems in these ways. And like, you know, I mean, sometimes I think, you know, I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot to be desired still in these worlds, right? There's a lot to be built and there's a lot to be learned. What do you mean desired though? I feel like we're all thinking about it. We're all looking to solve different things.

Starting point is 01:57:46 But I think as a user, right, there's a lot of opportunity in that way. Okay. Yeah, because in looking and building it, like, obviously, you're a fantastic businessman. But the thing that strikes me talking to you for the first time today and going through this, obviously, Chaz told lot about you for a long time but the thing that strikes me is the visionary concept you understand very much how to see the application of not just how but why people are going to make certain decisions as a user of x y or z whatever it is and so that integrates in something like what you do when you're doing business and you're not necessarily the engineer but understanding what goes into that at least. If you can't do it yourself, your brother does it.

Starting point is 01:58:33 Other people around you do it. Understanding then how that moves to the people who are going to adopt it. Like you have a very good knack for that. And one of my favorite topics around adoption of anything like in history is the concept of how you simplify it because that's the only way things get adopted. It's got to be easy. eventually get on Facebook because once she realized she just put in her email and you know put in her name and then had her picture as a profile picture it's like okay you know there's a lot of things she's going to ask about but it's self-explanatory she can get in there herself you know the the iPhone I love the example you used earlier in another context where you were talking about I think maybe you were talking about your dad or something or your grandfather

Starting point is 01:59:23 something like that where it's like I'm not going gonna have a laptop back in the day where they then five years later did iphone same thing you know i remember my grandparents being like i'm never gonna have a smartphone like that five years later it's in their hand because the concept of it had at the time the home button obviously you hit that button after it's on boom you have a main screen there's a few squares you move your finger like this and you click one of them and it moves around the screens and that's it now you're connected to the internet like they can get that so when i look at like i'm not even going to go to crypto i want to stay with the metaverse and ar and vr when i look at this stuff my biggest question is how what's what the work right now in the industry from guys like you and many

Starting point is 02:00:07 others is such that we can make it more understandable right because like we hear all the different things you're explaining today i mean if people are listening to this it's like holy shit you know you're a textbook of information here but a lot of us including myself for for some of it it's like wait how does that work what is that how do i get access to that oh i got to do this we haven't seen that aha moment of vr here yet you haven't met the device that does that like you know you haven't met the iphone yet of that generation there will be one and it'll become easier it'll feel just like your glasses you just put it on your face in the morning and you know it's's like there'll be commands, voice commands that trigger things.

Starting point is 02:00:47 You know, you have certain preferences. You might be walking down the street, and you're looking for a slice of pizza in New York City, and you're like, yeah, where's the best pizza? They tell you five different ones. You're like, oh, let's go to that one. Around me there. You show up there, and it's like, oh, I have this coupon for you. Would you like to apply it? Sure.

Starting point is 02:01:03 You don't even take out your wallet. It knows that you're there. Transacting mobile Sure. You don't even take out your wallet. He knows that you're there. Transacting mobile payments. You don't even take your phone out. Pay for it. Eat your pizza. You walk on your merry way. You're walking down the street.

Starting point is 02:01:13 Maybe he knows that you've been shopping for, you know, a new purse or a new backpack or whatever it is. It's like, oh, you should go in here. They're having sales on these things. Or they have your favorite brand. You know, and it's like, okay. And it's like, oh, you have this call right. They're having sales on these things. Or they have your favorite brand. And it's like, okay. And it's like, oh, you have this call right now.

Starting point is 02:01:27 Take this call. You do that. It's like it's just going to be more connected. But the hardware is going to get sleeker and cleaner. The problem today is that it's a little bit cumbersome. It's a little bit clunky. It doesn't look cool. People have social phobia about putting something on there or not looking right or doing it wrong.

Starting point is 02:01:49 Do you worry about that with the glasses? No. No? You think people are just going to put it on? I think so. When it's the right design, it looks good. That's what I'm saying. Like how close – because, I mean, they got like Luxottica on it.

Starting point is 02:02:00 I mean, like they're bringing out the head antros here and creating like cool-looking shit. There's a company called North by Fcals that that i think google bought and they look like you know beautiful warby parker glasses and that ar built into them the only thing is and now i'm thinking overly simplistically but i like i like to do this just to try to picture it like with a phone you know it's inconvenient you got to take it out you got to unlock it you got to talking compared to future tech right but you can put it away it's in your pocket it's down lower on your body you don't have to have it giving you information all the time exactly you could no i'm talking about the glasses too but on but glasses still like you wear glasses right

Starting point is 02:02:37 i've never worn glasses in my life i wear sunglasses but i don't wear sunglasses indoors i take them off right like i may not want to have them on, and then where do you put them? And is it convenient to have something touching your face that you don't want to touch your face, or do you just get used to it like you did because you had to do it for your vision? It might be other devices, right? You have glasses. Some people might have contacts.

Starting point is 02:02:56 They're making smart contacts already that work with glasses. That I could see. It could be built into a hat maybe, and I have devices that I'll project out from the hat know, they could be other accessories. It started, you know, blaring the lines It's not always just gonna be glasses the class is just the tipping point in the starting point And there's a couple there's a several different companies developing glasses. Yeah, right Oh the one I mentioned I guess that was I can't remember if that was Facebook or Apple had that partnership I think it was Facebook with Luxottica.

Starting point is 02:03:25 I'm not sure. Maybe it was Google. It was one of them. I'm not surprised. Yeah, so there's several. There are a lot of people trying to tackle this, for sure. I mean, people have been trying to tackle this for a while. It was the Google Glass a while ago.

Starting point is 02:03:37 People were being made fun of when they were in New York City being called glassholes because they were riding on the street. Glassholes? Yeah, glassholes. holes because they'll be riding on the street assholes yeah glass holes um you know they're there's all types of communities out there that have been bred and brewed through the revolution right of these devices and i think um consumption is going to become easier devices are going to become sleeker um you know they're not all going to be glasses i think glasses are just the you know the little hanging fruit what's the coolest thing or idea that's being developed within vr and ar right now that no one's talking about and like yeah i think there's some cool

Starting point is 02:04:15 things we're doing but i can't talk about it okay besides what you're doing i'm saying like general products or like ideas that aren't what Semtrex is doing. But, I mean, you can tell us all if you want. I won't tell anyone except all the people listening. No. What do I think is cool? I do like that company I mentioned, Masterpiece Studio, that we're invested in. I think revolutionizing the way people create 3D assets for 3d in 3d is a big problem

Starting point is 02:04:47 yes that is worth solving i think that's really really cool um you know i think um yeah man i mean you know there's a lot of a lot of silly things out there not a lot of things that add value or solve real problems right there's some other tools that i like there's a tool called nota that's like um you know you can create mind maps it's? There's some other tools that I like. There's a tool called Noda that's like, you know, you can create mind maps. It's silly. It's not like... Is that its own company?

Starting point is 02:05:10 Yeah, Noda's a small company. They're tiny. But like, you know, I enjoy it to create mind maps. I think they're cool. What's a mind map? You know, when you create like flow diagrams and everything, you know, it's like, you know, I don't know how to define it.

Starting point is 02:05:22 Basically, you could put circles and arrows and put text within them and create these three-dimensional spatial mind maps that allow you to articulate ideas or solutions in more linear ways using these things. It's very simple, actually, when you look at it, but it's quite cool i hope so yeah it sounds kind of wild it is wild um i think some people are solving the challenges of data so you imagine not looking at data and 2d but looking at data and 3d and immersion i think that's really cool i've seen some companies doing that that are

Starting point is 02:05:59 really gnarly there's some cool games out there too i enjoy playing them well what's the tie too because like everyone always talks about like in nfts play to earn gaming and obviously you can look at the bootloader a major bootloader one of them to the quote-unquote metaverse as what we talked about earlier like the video game generation and how they got more and more real as as the innovation of graphics went on and those worlds became first person and such and such. But how much of the next layer are the big gamers? I don't game. How much of an advantage are they going to have?

Starting point is 02:06:37 They were the catalyst of VR, man. The reason why VR has gotten adoption the way it is. Up front, it was the gaming community. How much of an advantage they have i mean they have inherently a better knowledge of how to use the device and the tools right so they have the leg up there um yeah and i think you know like obviously like we said you know the world world physical and digital world start to blur right obviously they're gonna they're gonna have some advantages there too and gaming's not all that bad no it's not it's just i don't know like when you look at some of the the negatives associated with those communities which i don't like to look at i think

Starting point is 02:07:18 it's pretty cool what video games have become actually you know like people said like a lot of negatives associated with attention disorder yes like it's all fake it's all there's been a lot of studies that came out that like really nothing but what about like i guess this is kind of like a loss cause anyway but like interpersonal communication and stuff like that i i i beg to think that that's even beyond the the gamification oh 100 i think social media is that everybody. Yes, it is more than just gamification. To be honest with you, I think we'll see a level of growth in that for a lot of people, because you can be anything you want to be, right?

Starting point is 02:07:52 So you're comfortable. You can look how you want to look. Look how you want to look. You can be whatever character you want to be. You can be out of this world. So if I want to have an 18-inch dick in the metaverse, I have it you could theoretically hypothetically walk around with some new confidence it's crazy shit no but this is this people have a lot more confidence right

Starting point is 02:08:15 they could have like there could be living like in a 400 square foot studio well all of a sudden you know they have this mansion in the metaverse right and they're throwing mansion parties and like whatever it is right like I mean that's a silly example but like this is the truth but they gotta be able

Starting point is 02:08:30 to buy that I mean yeah depends on what in what metaverse there's some places where land is cheap but do then if land is cheap

Starting point is 02:08:37 in a metaverse is that because there's no user base there so people aren't there so they can have their mansion to themselves and no one

Starting point is 02:08:42 else is fucking there yeah but you can invite people there you can do all types of things. But are people going to, why are people going to be incentivized to come there versus leaving another metaverse?

Starting point is 02:08:51 It's literally just, you know, you're not walking physically. It's not like driving. I know that, but your attention is somewhere else. Sure. But like,

Starting point is 02:08:59 you met that person, right? And like, you know, he presented himself as something else and he can be anything he wants to be and you find it cool. You can go hang out with him right and like you start most people aren't going to find those people cool you know once you're talking about are like the

Starting point is 02:09:13 stereotypical example of what you just gave is is the the person who has no friends and they but they buy this mansion but maybe he doesn't have friends because he has lack of confidence because he in real life he doesn't look a certain way or he doesn't behave a certain way. Lack of confidence is true to so many different factors. Agreed. Right? Yeah. And now it's not the real world.

Starting point is 02:09:32 You can find your community a lot easier, right? You can. It just seems like it's exponential in a bad way. Like everyone will just build. They'll be incentivized to go build in their own spot. And just like there's, I don't know how many websites there are in the world but there's fucking millions of them, billions of them, right? Just like there's billions of websites doesn't mean that fucking whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, dot com, anyone is going there. suddenly people are going to go there because a guy who's ugly in the real world decides to make him just like everyone else who's not good looking in the metaverse he makes himself good looking and gives himself this big plot of land and bumblefuck community x and now he's going to invite people

Starting point is 02:10:12 there and they're going to be incentivized to come you see why that's that's the promise though that's that's one of the big value promises you can be anything you want to be in the metaverse and you could you could have any experience you want to have. But with real... You're saying that real people in the metaverse are going to come to that guy's party when there's a billion other parties like it, potentially, under this scenario. Maybe. Or you might find like-minded people like him.

Starting point is 02:10:37 So statistically, a lot of these parties are going to be empty and someone's now just going to be empty in the fucking fake metaverse where they're good-looking and no one can look at them in a big house that they can't even be in but no one else is even going to be empty in the fucking fake metaverse where they're good looking and no one can look at them in a big house that they can't even be in but no one else is even going to be there in the metaverse itself and they're in square fucking zero it's going to happen as well see that's where i'm like that's not going to have a value to it it may not and things will

Starting point is 02:10:57 level like anything else but is it what some people like in their minds and they're theorizing right yeah and this is what they're they see as the inherent value yeah look if there's people there i mean it's there it's the same thing like social media right you saw that thing of that girl you showed it to me two seconds ago she looks beautiful in one picture right but you're like you turn to the most people are followers yeah and that's why she has such a big following yeah it's a bootloader there's no doubt about it no doubt about it what about countries though countries are adopting these things there are there's like uh there's uh several countries that are like committing to these things they're building embassies in the metaverse they're doing all types of things what what who's doing that i

Starting point is 02:11:42 can't remember i can look it up i'll look it up right now. Keep talking. Explain what you mean. So it's obviously in specific metaverse. I say metaverse-eye, by the way. That's my plural. But it's in specific metaverse-eye where maybe it's Decentraland. Sure, yeah. Saudi Arabia is building an embassy. There are countries building embassies in there. Straight up like, yeah, I can't remember. They were proud to be like, we're the first country building an embassy in the metaverse or you know um you're gonna see

Starting point is 02:12:09 more of that and then you're gonna be able to go to that embassy rather than having to go to physical embassy or can they arrest you in the metaverse maybe they haven't got to that yet they might arrest you for things you do in the metaverse they might be still and that's that's where it gets real this is where it just gets like down the chute for me i don't know what this looks yeah barbados barbados getting on the map out here barbados to become first sovereign nation with an embassy in the metaverse the caribbean nation is working with multiple metaverse companies to establish digital sovereign land i'll just read the first couple paragraphs here and what could be seen as a historic step toward the legitimization of the metaverse the island of barbados

Starting point is 02:12:50 sorry i lost my spot the island of nation of barbados is preparing to legally declare digital real estate sovereign land with the establishment of a metaverse embassy the barbadian ministry of foreign affairs and foreign trade signed an agreement on Sunday with decentraland that's where they did it among the largest and most popular crypto powered digital worlds for the establishment of a digital Embassy per a press release provided to coindesk the government is also finalizing agreements with Somnium space Super World and other metaverse other metaphors so the various projects will be assisting with identifying and purchasing land architecting the virtual embassies and consulates oh we're

Starting point is 02:13:29 going to consulates already too developing facilities to provide services such as e-visas and constructing a teleporter that will allow users to transport their avatars between the various other countries doing this too i get i'm not sure which one but there have been a couple of now i'll find it after but so all right the evs this thing perfect place to go so they're going to now create borders in the metaverse possible and now it's going to be like we talk about like our border here and people fight over who gets across or who doesn't now everything is going to be virtual so no one gets across a border if they don't have access it's like a video game 100 i think in the context of the e-visa that they're talking about is like rather than you having to go get a visa in real life you can get an e-visa and then you can use that to travel to actually barbados

Starting point is 02:14:18 you know like services like to the physical barbados they try to make convenience accessibility are they going to have to make in this case let's stay with their example a virtual actual barbados too like is that where we're headed no it's going to stay physical yeah i mean they could if they wanted to as a tourist type thing or something to prime people they want to come visit how close are we to the haptics end of this oh it's a while out it's very clunky right now when you say a while out 15 years 20 years 15 20 years that's not that long that's that dude september 11th was 20 years ago 20 and a half years ago time goes quick but the grand scheme you know like it's a fair amount of time so when we get to haptics that's where i'm like why have to physically get on a plane and go to the barbados and spend take

Starting point is 02:15:15 eight hours away from one day for all the travel and back and forth that you have to do go in the airport and everything when you can just have haptics and you can swim in the waves yeah it could feel like it but it's never going to be the same to be honest you think it will never be the same i just uh you know i'm a sucker for those things like you know like i hope you're right i grew up and there's a lot of people will never make it to barbados you understand yes that would be cool right they could do that but i've been fortunate to travel a lot of the world and like yeah the soft sand the order the food the people i don't know just something about the real thing so you and i understand that because you and i are i guess you're at the front end of millennials i'm at the back end of millennials but we're millennials and

Starting point is 02:15:57 so we knew what it was like to live in the nonet run social media world. Even if I was really young, I remember it clearly. So we still have that experience. The kids that were born after us though, boom. You brought a book into the car, you read it, you looked at the trees as you were driving by, you played board games, your friends came over, you shot hoops, you rode your bike around, right?

Starting point is 02:16:26 These kids, they don't know that world they know the world where the phone's in their hand so who's to say that what you're just saying right there i mean it won't die with it or it won't die immediately but it will die with us if we die we might be immortal might be the immortal i don't know i think it is about people and what you do right like my kids love youtube i can't say they don't they love their ipad and youtube but it doesn't you know i make them do different things they take gymnastics they you know they play outside they go to the beach they you know they swim in the pool like you know we make sure of those things right and i think it's exposure and how you nurture nature right yes how many parents really make sure that stuff though how many parents are actually good parents too there's

Starting point is 02:17:10 certainly a select that aren't you know how many of those kids then even if you're instilling that are just going to be like yeah you know and not do that for their kids because it's not as native to them maybe possible gets weird thinking about that going to a zombie culture we're going to a zombie culture and i can point to you if it happens this is one of the guys that did it it's just maybe contributed look i i like to be very positive about stuff and i also love technology i i think you know up to this point in history, it's actually been. It's valuable. Of course.

Starting point is 02:17:47 It's been far more valuable than having detractions. And that's why we keep investing in it, right? Yes. Because, you know, as I said, it's like how you use things, right? Like even like when I was doing social media, for example, whilst I don't love social media, you know, what you give is what you get, right, of anything. And there's always going to be people that are looking to use the system for profit, right? But like if we ourselves as the end user are not smart enough to be able to be like, this is benefiting me or not benefiting me, then it's on you to some degree, right? And so it will be because statistically, once again, that's going to be most people. And so it's a foregone conclusion that the benefit is going to be based on whoever the profit winner is versus what is the best for humanity experience and what good versus not good could be done.

Starting point is 02:18:34 Sure. Correct. It's very hard to say something like that. Here you say, sure, correct, which I knew was going to be your answer, and feel positive about it. I mean, I still feel positive about it i mean you know i still feel positive about it because i know there's value in the technology if used correctly if used correctly no like anything if so example in china their tiktok version they and this is where you know i don't like communism at all i fucking hate it it. And I think it's a horrible ideology. I think that they, you know, they do horrible things over there.

Starting point is 02:19:09 And what their government does to their people is completely unfair to the people. But this is one of the places where having a little communist power actually may help for some positivity in the rearing of your youngest generation wherein they they curate what their kids can watch like in the country on tiktok on their tiktok whatever it's called it's up to a parent to cure what their kids can watch too right you can set you can set all types of permissions and stuff but i'm saying in china they that's not even the case the government does it and so the kids aren't on there after 10 o'clock at night or something like that 10 11 o'clock at night and it's educational content it's like positive like using those 15 to 60 second blurbs for positive reinforcement of things that are going to allow them to then use skills in the world versus just the oh who has the best titties today right like that we let that happen it's the

Starting point is 02:20:03 joke but we do in our free society which again wouldn't trade that for the world this is one of the places where we get hurt because our free society says it's on the parents and a lot of parents they're busy with their lives they're not looking at their kid looking at the phone and so what are the kids looking at they're not learning about math on there that's true very true I mean it's up to it's up to you the individual to have that impact on your family or your whatever as the elder statesman or as the leader of the group or whatever it's up to you to make those decisions right and hopefully influence people or your family for positive right um you know they know there's going to be so much regulation that the

Starting point is 02:20:45 government can do especially in a capitalistic society like america it's just not it's not realistic to think that that's not going to be the case do you worry about as we're both americans sitting here do you worry about the what's the term i'm looking for suffice it to say since world war ii especially america's been like the world power or whatever and you know i think it's cool to be able to know that we live free and do our thing and can create and there's been aspects even as it's gotten harder the american dream exists it's beautiful thing we have we're a country made up of people from around the world who have come here in previous generations and continue to do that that's all awesome but you know things end and do you worry that because of the because of the lack of control over the development of

Starting point is 02:21:42 technology and now the universe i that we're creating in technology that that is going to directly lead to america no longer having no longer making its choice of its positioning in the world yes but they're supposed to be safeguard to that right like you know we see things go wrong the mic in just a little bit so they're supposed to be safeguards to that, right? Like, even if we saw what happened in the last election, right? And now they're trying to get to the root of that, try to make sure our organizations are ethical

Starting point is 02:22:14 and respecting things like that and not causing a bad influence on those things. You know, there's always like, you know, there's always a path and a body to, you know, regulate and things of that nature. I think that you got to let it be free unless it presents a problem, right? And that's what I worry about because someone has to decide. Someone has to decide. Like it's a government or it's the quasi-government.

Starting point is 02:22:40 It's platforms. And then you get groupthink of people deciding that no this is the way things go and inevitably you get yes that can root out a lot of negativity i i don't disagree with that but it never stops there and then it gets out of control and it leads to it leads to a synonymous ideological thought process across society because if you don't think along you know the whole wrong thing versus right thing type thing if if you have ideas that don't submit to what has been termed as acceptable you may have a perfectly seemingly acceptable idea it's not something bad or like misinformation or stuff like that and now it's not because it has

Starting point is 02:23:25 been legislated as such i worry about that it definitely does happen i mean that's what they do in china yeah for sure do we avoid that here though i think so i mean we're a democracy a capitalistic democracy unless we change some of the core tenements of what what we are as a people in a country, there's going to be places in the world that continue to legislate that. Right? Yes. And people that don't like this,

Starting point is 02:23:55 they may not stick around to see what transcends in these parts of the world that are free. Right? They may want things to have more regulated. But I think it's just too core to what america is and and what we are as a people to to to you know to to regulate it but but there are safeguards in place to should something get out of hand i hope you're right i i i think i i think I still think we have some of that and when we're going through situations where there's massive social changes happening, I think from anyone, whether it's me or a lot of other people out and move some of the noise. It's never fully here or fully there. But you know,'s going to be like significantly virtual beyond what we're used to right now and web ended web 2.0 you know do those safeguards continue to be stripped more and more i don't know i'm not 100 sure myself either but you know there's theories

Starting point is 02:25:21 like i think um i think that'll even out i really do i think that you know it there's theories. Like, I think that'll even out. I really do. I think that, you know, it's not going to go too far. I think that, you know, obviously, we as a people need to police ourselves and police each other. And as I told you, be ethical. Yeah. But, like, you know, and I think that ecosystems have tools for that to sort of prevent and protect and then you know beyond the ecosystems you know then you have institutions and bodies of the government that you know have the ability to step in should it need but you know i think the hope is that you know the self-policing within certain communities

Starting point is 02:25:56 or certain behaviors would take action there first right yeah i hope so too i i think you know there's always always find something that could have aspects of it go wrong. But what's the least worst scenario? Frankly, that's the way to look at it. And we've built a good history as a country building off that type of scenario. What's the least worst thing here? We've had a lot of success doing that. So I don't see why that's not possible. I agree. doing that so I don't see why that's not possible you know but what's what's the story obviously you can't talk about as you said like some of the deals you're

Starting point is 02:26:29 working on right now with some tricks but like where do you see you guys in over the next five years Oh loaded statement a loaded question you know the next five years I mean think we're going to continue to invest into AR, VR technology pretty heavily. And technology has simply changed the way we live, work, and play, whether it is software that eats hardware and IoT products, whether it's computer vision and cameras that aid to that,

Starting point is 02:27:03 and whether it's building technology that aids with simulation, training, entertainment, using AR and VR, I think, and also digital ownership and the value of that. So I think we're going to continue to tinker of emerging technology. That's our goal here. And the thesis of technology changes

Starting point is 02:27:25 the way we live work and play but you know i mean you know it's a it's a race we're going to continue to continue to to try to carve our peace what was that one vertical you talked about like right when you sat down today i think it was like work for hire or something like that you know i forget what it was but i you were going off on something i didn't want to stop you but i was curious because i wasn't entirely sure what you meant but you were talking about uh i think it was like i mean this was two and a half hours ago but i think it was like a specific space i don't remember fuck i'm sorry no worries i'll pull it up and i'll ask you afterwards and then oh yeah you have a call coming up right yeah it's right now all right

Starting point is 02:28:13 cool let's get you on this was this was very very dense today too so this is this is a very good spot then we we covered a ton of ground and we only talked for two and a half hours and i feel like we talked for four yeah it was really good fun listen lucky thank you for coming in man thanks for having great finally meeting you pleasure meeting glad to put a name with the face and a voice behind it so we'll do it again and everyone what's the ticker on semtrex c-e-t-x all right i'm gonna have anybody wants to talk metaverse uh v-r-a-r VR, AR, IoT, they can get at me on LinkedIn, Twitter. What's your Twitter at? LL Gobendrome.

Starting point is 02:28:49 Okay. And I'll put that in the description so people have it. Yeah, or you can just simply email me, luckyatsemtrex.com. Probably the fastest, best way to get rid of me. Excellent. Okay. Well, again, the man gave his email, too. It means business.

Starting point is 02:29:00 Yeah, I don't mind. I like talking to people. Thank you, sir. We will do it again. 100%. Thanks for having me. You're great at this. All right. Everyone else, you know what it is. Give talking to people. Thank you, sir. We will do it again. 100%. Thanks for having me. You're great at this. All right, everyone else, you know what it is.

Starting point is 02:29:08 Give it a thought. Get back to work. Peace.

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Julian Dorey Podcast - 🤖 #84 - The Morality In The Metaverse, The Future of Humanity, & The Web 3 Conundrum | Lucky Gobindram

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