Modern Wisdom - #110 - Dr Sarah Jones - The Future Of Virtual Reality

Episode Date: October 10, 2019

Dr Sarah Jones is an immersive storyteller using AR, VR and 360. For the last 50 years or so, storytelling hasn't massively changed its form, but with the advent of increasingly portable devices, the platforms we use are all changing. How will Virtual Reality enable us to tell stories in a new way? Should we be worried about the control that these technologies could have over us? Are sci-fi predictions about holographic humans realistic? -  Extra Stuff: Follow Dr Jones on Twitter - https://twitter.com/VirtualSarahJ Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello there humans, hope you are well. My guest today is Dr. Sarah Jones, and she has recently received the world's first PhD in immersive storytelling. It's a very complex title, but essentially she's playing around with virtual reality, augmented reality, holographics, and a whole bunch of other different platforms that people can use to tell stories. So today we get to learn all about what the future of VR and AR and holographics has in store for us. Some of the most exciting projects that are going on right now. Some cool suggestions for where you can go to actually

experience some of these things. And some ethical implications as well to do with how effectively these new platforms can change people's opinions and influence what they think. Obviously, everyone's quite concerned at the moment about what social media's doing to us. Make that into a 3D world that essentially replicates reality and you can already see why there might be some concerns about where we're going. Please welcome Dr. Sarah Jones. I am joined by Dr. Sarah Jones and before the podcast we've been nerding out on all of the different gadgets and stuff that we've got floating around our house. So that is going to be the continuation of today's episode, Sarah, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having me.

It's a pleasure to have you on. You have the world's first PhD in immersive storytelling. Correct. What's that? What does that mean? I'm sure I won't be the only one for very long. I'm sure there'll be lots more coming up right behind me with regards to immersive storytelling. I usually say it's immersive story living as a way to kind of define it a little bit more. But basically, what I do is grab any tech that I can and break it to find a new way of having a story. So story living is all around that kind of immersive experience, where it's completely rooted in the experience, in the experiential. So therefore you can't really

have a told story. It's not really a directed narrative. So you've got to break it apart and then you live it in whatever way you want. Therefore it's story living. So yeah, I did my PhD, I got my PhD in story living, the first one. But yeah, it's pretty good. That's fun. So what are some of the examples of the kind of technologies that you work with? And I've always experimented with whatever I could get my hands on really. So my background was in television journalism. So I was a reporter for like 10 years, traveled all the way around the world, telling stories.

And I always wanted to just get closer to those stories. I wanted to find a way of really taking the audience and putting them in the heart of it. So I was right, the start of the mobile phone movement of mobile phone filmmaking and shooting and editing everything on your phones. And I found that that could get you closer, but it still wasn't close enough

because whenever you're watching anything, there's this barrier and that barrier's the screen and it's always in the way and then when I did my first kind of VR experience as I had this is it now I can take you the audience and I can plonk you in the center of the story and you're there and you experience it then yourself. So from all kinds of things, from normal film to AR to VR to 360 film, which is obviously the easiest way to experiment, but at the moment I'm really fascinated with holograms and what you can do with those. And I haven't made anything decent, but I will. So it's just the case of experimenting and breaking and trying to find how these

technologies see different mediums. That's interesting. So, are you coming at this from a tech coding side or are you coming at this from more of a grand perspective, what can it do, what's its capabilities side? I think the latter and certainly more of that kind of artistic side. I tried to learn how to code probably about five, six years ago. I saw, okay, I really need to do this. Clearly, I'm missing that skill. So I started learning and then I thought, you know what, there's people that are brilliant at this. I don't need to kill myself trying to do it. I just need to find those people and work with them. Especially if it's not in your wheelhouse.

So, exactly. Yeah, some guys who eat that stuff for breakfast, but would find the storytelling that you do like just crawling through glass, so you might as well. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I have a basic knowledge. I can understand it. I know what I need to do. But I think what's really interesting about working in kind of technology for the kind of artistic side, the narrative side, the experience side, is there has to be a collaboration? And that collaboration means you need

that specific group of people to make magic. And not one of those people can do it by themselves. You need everybody there. And that's what's really exciting really. I feed off everybody else's mind, you know, I need to be stimulated by all those minds to make something great. So it's quite quite good in that respect. But yeah, certainly that kind of artistic side looking at what can we really do with that? I think a lot of the problems and I've been quite critical of some people for doing it, is you get a new platform or new technology and you just apply old ways of thinking to it. That's really, I think, well, there was a prime example and I always name and shame them

as an example of sky. Yes, so, so, Sky News did their first VR experience, and it was the reporter on the migrant crisis doing a story on the beach. And they'd obviously filmed it for a live report first of as a flat version for traditional television. And then they filmed it with a 360 camera, say filmed it for VR, 360 capturing everything you can look around, tilt and rotate on your phone, whatever it might be. They did exactly the same thing. They didn't think about what can we do differently

because we have a spherical camera. How can we tell this story differently? What does it mean from the audience perspective of watching a story flat, having the narrative told you, or actually being there on the beach? How does that change what you do? And I was really critical of them for doing that. And then the next day they announced that they had a new sky VR studio.

And so my timing wasn't great. But I hold treats to that belief that it's just really lazy. And my background is in journalism and it always reminds me of when online journalism started and it was just simply, you know, you get your story and you copy and you paste and you put it online and then you upload the video. And you don't think it's a different audience and they're consuming it in a different way. They need it to be different. So I think that's really where a lot of the mistakes are. So I try and do this stuff on that blank canvas. I think what can I do that I can only do because of this technology? So it's not really technology for technology's sake. It's more

thinking. We owe it to the tech to make it great and to break it and find new ways of using it. So how would you how would you characterize the difference between the use of something for traditional flat screens and that for VR. If you were designing it, if you were the lady that was at sky that day on that beach, how does it look different? What do you do? It's about the experience. Whenever I'm planning a shoot on anything, it's always the first part of call. Whereas in Flack you would kind of do a storyboard. You think of you star in the middle of your end. When you're doing something for VR or 360, it's closing your eyes and thinking,

what's that experience that you're trying to get somebody to experience? What is it about being in that specific place, a you need to capture, and then how can you capture it? So that is something a couple of years ago in Hong Kong, in chunking mansions which is this crazy, crazy, huge international kind of market scene. It's the most insane place in the world. Totally chaotic. 4,000 people stay there in all these really cheap hostels, like the cheapest place you can stay. And going in there, it's dark, it's dingy.

There's so many different smells and noises and everything is going on. So for me being in that environment, I was like, I need to capture that and capturing an experience and a feeling is really difficult to do. It's not like just telling the story like, you know, all the smells are so intense and these people are doing this. You can't do that. You've got to put someone in the heart of it. So to do that, I broke all of the kind of very early introductory editing conventions in VR. I had a lot of moving shots because I wanted people to feel disjointed and uneasy. I had various kind of carrying shots to your different levels. I had lots of quick edits and to make people

feel jarred. And that was how you could capture the experience. So it's all coming down to that really. Instead of what is the story that I'm trying to tell, what is the experience I'm trying to create. And that is a real shift in the mindset. It's really hard to try and think in that way. It can be easier in some ways, but a lot harder in others. I suppose thinking about it,

that when you are trying to capture something for flat screen, your position in terms of camera is framing the scene as is best appropriate. Whereas for VR, it's literally the point of view. It's what is the optimal point of view. Is that the distinction between the two? Yeah, absolutely. And there is no frame.

The frame has gone. You always have this frame in front of you on a flat screen. And then suddenly that's gone. I can make something and have 10 different people watch it in 10 completely different ways, taking different narratives from it. It doesn't always have to be that way and a lot of people do try and direct the narrative and use cues like lights and sounds and force the gaze to different places, but I tend to argue against that and think, no, I want people to just experience it, and we all experience things in different ways.

So let's forget about that and put the trust in the audience to just let them create their own experience. It might be me being lazy, but it's not as if you can't watch it again as well. I got an Oculus Rift, actually off an X misses, I got an Oculus Rift, I've sold it now. But I got an Oculus Rift off an X misses. One of the things that I found myself doing was watching the same sequence multiple times because you can only see however much is in your field of vision. And I'll go back and I'll have a look, I'll see what happens if I look that way for a...

Yeah. Whereas once you've watched a flat screen, that's it, right? There's no more new ones, really. There's a lot less new ones at least. Yeah, I mean, you can go back in a minute. I remember watching Breaking Bad and then watching it so many times, having read all the different colour cues and all those kinds of things, but that's very, very different. Certainly in VR, you can have different people watch it in

totally different ways. And that's really exciting. It's really hard if you're trying to direct something and you want the controls. So for control freaks, it's awful. But it is really interesting just letting go and thinking, yeah, people will experience it however they want, so let's let them. So yeah, I mean, what's really interesting, you mentioned that the RIF, the new Oculus Quest is a game- What's that one, yeah. So the Oculus Quest came out, I think maybe about two months ago, which is one of the first real standalone VR headset. I had a go. I had a go. Sorry, I had an Oculus Go. Oh, okay. So the quest is the next step up from the go. So the quest you've got two controllers. And you've got a space around you. You can play Beat Saber, which is one of the greatest

games in VR. What's the first big Saber? Beat Saber is like, remember the 90s, or maybe the Noughties, the dance challenge mats in our caves where you have to jump and you're right foot on your left foot and dance around. It's like that, but in VR, but you're hitting these things. So to watch other people doing it, it's a little bit weird. But you watch them, and you're just like banging to different music with beats. And it's awesome, it's an incredible exercise. But it's really, really cool. So I highly recommend anybody playing Beat Saber. And that's probably

one of the things that's driving sales of Oculus Quest because everyone wants to play beat saber and now you don't need a huge laptop or PC to run it, it just runs. So I think with that and then Vive have their own one coming out as well where again you don't need to be tell the tour machine. That's all massive. This is huge really. It might actually allow the tech to be more accessible, which is good. Like that has to be a good thing. Yeah, I think one of the things that I noticed to have seen floating around for a while,

PlayStation VR, and when Oculus first came out, I think it was like you needed an Android phone or something to link it up to and other bits. And I was just thinking it just feels quite clunky and it's not really that cool. And then even the Oculus go, I mean, that's, I didn't pay for it, but even the Oculus go that I had last year, I thought was cool.

And I enjoyed watching things, but what I was conscious of and I did a little bit of reading. Can you explain to the listeners what happens to the resolution of video when you then start to wrap it into the headset? Because I instantly noticed some of the videos I was watching look lower quality, but apparently that was more to do with the way that it needs to communicate to your eyes. Is that right? Yeah, it can be. So different headsets and it'll all be whether you download them or whether you're streaming them and however you're doing it. I always get questions around, you know, I want to make something in 360, I want a 360 camera which one shall I buy?

And I want to make something in 360, I want a 360 camera, which one shall I buy? And there's one camera that I use all the time as a basic entry level kind of prosumac camera, which is the Insta360 One X. Insta360 make a great range of cameras, really, really great company. And there's, it now says the 1x is 5.7k. So you think, really, and this is really good, like this is going to be great in a headset. But those 5.7k pixels of being, you know, if you're watching something flat, it's in front of you in that resolution. We now have to put all of those resolution, that those pixels all the way around us. So it's in front of you in that resolution. We now have to put all of those resolution, those pixels all the way around us.

So it's the 360 degree image that's made up of all of those pixels. So it's never gonna be as good as watching ultra-HD television, flat, massive screen, all that kind of thing. It's just not. But it is getting better. I was going to say, where's the tech at now? What's it progressing to?

I think the stats, when I had a goal, were that if you downloaded something, weren't streaming it, had it on optimal resolution, all this sort of stuff, it could get to about 720p. Is that right? No, I think you'd be it's 1080 on the quest and it isn't bad. It's good. I just got so spoiled with 4k and Samsung's super dutch shop. Absolutely. I mean, I would say that after a couple of minutes in it, you get used to it. Your eyes are just to it. And then it all becomes normal. So I lived in VR for 48 hours a couple of years ago. One of those crazy things he decided on a day after you're going to do.

I had a five minute comfort break every hour. Okay, cool. Yeah. Right. What about eating and a headset, drinking and a headset, sleeping and a headset, working in a headset, racing car driving in a headset in real life but with like the look through camera through through the headset, all those kinds of things. I did it with a colleague of VR colleague of mine, Dean Johnson, we did it together. He got a tattoo wearing a headset to monitor the difference in half-ray based on your, where there could be a pain-reducer, wearing a headset, which it did,

is half-ray, went down dramatically when he was wearing the headset. So all those kinds of things, really, really interesting. But when I was doing that, I generally don't like cartoon-y things in VR. I like photogrammetry, I like realism, I like to feel like it's real. But we were doing a boxing thing with this real cartoonish dude. He looked like one of the characters from the Incredibles. And I was like, you know, I don't believe it's real at all. But after a couple of minutes, Boxingham, it really felt real.

And there was some things there around the haptics, like there was a vibration as you were punching him. The screen would go black as if you'd, like when you got knocked, as if you were like, you know, a little bit starry eyed and losing your vision slightly. So there were loads of things like that, they really tricked your mind

and you kind of get used to it. So yeah, the resolution's not all that great, but it's getting there, getting better. Yeah, I mean, it's a hell of a lot. I don't get me wrong, it's a hell of a lot more immersive than watching something on a TV that's at the end of your bed or in the mounted on the wall in the living room.

It's definitely a very different sort of experience. So what do you think at the moment if you were to put your money where your mouth was and someone let's say someone has a V.I. headset at home and they want to see the coolest thing or the most impressive thing or just your favorite thing right now Where would you direct them? What should they watch and what is it and why? This is really difficult because the last couple of years I've been really bored As a huge advocate for the technology. I have been really bored.

Why? Because I felt like there's been a lot of pressure on people to make stuff, obviously for commercial reasons, and to find an audience, and to do all that kind of stuff. And it doesn't allow people the time to be creative and break things a little bit and understand the different things that you can do. And you need that time, you know, it's a new tech work, it's not a new technology, it's been around since the 1965 was the first headset. So it's been around forever. But you need time to really find the good stuff. And that's quite hard to find.

So I mean, there are great, like Beat Saber is a great game. I really, really good. If you'd like to have social VR, you can go into Netflix in a head serve and watch something as if you're in the cinema. And that might be to some people's tastes. I don't understand it personally,

because I would just watch Netflix on my TV, but it can happen. So there's things like that. but you know it can happen. So there's things like that. I like VR less so for being at home, but in a social experience and an event. So I'm a big fan of that full kind of immersive experience. There's something on in London at the moment that's the immersive experience of War of the Worlds. And it's a two, three hour experience. It's an event as if you're going to the theatre.

There are actors there that sweep you around along and take you into different places. You go through one area and then suddenly people are throwing a rock sack on your back, a subpack, and strapping a headset to you. Oh my god. And then you're on somewhere else. Are the tickets still available for this? Yeah, they've just released new dates and it's on until January.

So it's definitely worth checking out. That is it. Yeah. I'm going to put it in now. I'm going to put it in. It's dot. Dot, the creators and it's a proper experience. If you're going to the theatre. Have they got anything to do with the Star Wars one that was on?

No. Do you remember that one? That was the void. Yes, that was the void. So the void did Ghostbusters as well. The void are a huge company. They're being bought by Disney now. Obviously, but they do those big immersive experiences. And for me, that's where the technology really comes alive because you've got it as a group,

but you can add so much to the experience by having it in a headset. So, you jump into a frame of a boat in real life, but then you put on a headset and then you would be in the boat. So you've got all these different things going on in those various life projections and holograms and that kind of stuff as well. And you have an interval when you're in this bar and all the tables changing color and lighting up and everything else. And then you carry on with the experience. And that kind of thing is great.

Yeah, that's good. Because you are sharing it. Even me and as nerdy as I am, I don't sit at home in the evening. Okay, you know what, I'm gonna stick on my head to that for a bit and jump into that world. Watching the loose women from today on whatever. Yeah, exactly.

It's like, I just want to TV. Yeah, there's something that I don't, it's a lot of effort. And also, if you think about how awful a lot of people are now, we watch TV at the same time as we might be working on our laptop in the evening, at the same time that we might be Instagramming something else or checking someone else's social. And we do multiple things at the time at one time. In a headset, you can't do that.

You're stuck. So you've got to be really in something. I'm going to be watching something, doing it all that attention. Yeah, you can't be watching something boring. No, but I mean there are some, there's a great experience at the Sachi and all of these are experiences that you go to. Charlotte McAlbert did a great flight of the future experience where you're in this kind of sphere kind of light up thing and you're leaning against something and you had to flap your wings to become a bird and learn to how to fly. So you started to fly and then it took you on the whole journey of flights, so from the first flight up until

a future flight. It was all sponsored by British Airways. And that was really interesting again. So you had these different experiences. You added in different scents. You added in heat. There was wind. So you had this full kind of immersion on lots of different levels.

And that was really cool. So there are really good things being done, but sitting at home saying, oh, I must watch this, I must watch that. It's still quite limited, I think. Yeah, I found, I found like, I think last year I was watching sport on Facebook live in the headset. And there was a part of me that thought, there's novelty to this, but there was another part of me that was thinking, I don't think this is that cool or fun. It's just a bit novel.

And I should, I should I be thinking it's cooler because everyone else thinks VR's like the future. And yeah, you're right. It's repurposing existing content in an existing format and just putting it in a worse resolution but close to your eyes. Yeah. That's what that is. And then yeah, in the flip side of that, the Star Trek, Star Wars Void thing that I desperately

tried to get to, the cohosts, Joni and you, you have to go to, I'm going to force them to go to this war of the world's things, the business, I'm going to hold them accountable and we'll talk about it on a future podcast. That, you know, that sounds really, really cool. We were at a Freshers event earlier on this week and they had one of the stalls there. I don't even know, I don't think it would have been anything tremendously sophisticated, but this brand just had a VR headset and they would come over and you can Race a car or do whatever it is. So I think there's still so much novelty and so few people have been exposed to the technology

That you can just put off the shelf probably Headset pop it on someone and be like look like this is this is how crazy and quirky we are as a company Yeah, so yeah, I guess there's a lot of low-hanging fruit for people to do that. And one of the things that I noticed again with the Oculus Go was the file size of these videos is insane. Like for especially for the long ones, there's a Jurassic Park one. Did you see that one? Yeah, you. And that's, that was awesome. That was my favorite one. I thought that was really cool. It's huge, isn't it? The file size is terrifying. It's only three or four minutes long

with this file size is insane. And even with that, you can only move, you don't move, you are moved on a track through this particular film. So you can imagine that you're walking through a jungle and stuff happens and you can pan around with your headset, but you can't control the motion. If you were to start to create worlds

that were rendered to that sort of resolution, plus were being created as you go, I'm gonna guess that's technology that's not quite ready yet, is that right? Well, no, I mean, it is if you're tethered to a computer, so if you've got the rift or the vibe, and certainly to some degree, you've got that on the quest as well, which is really good. So you are starting to open up those kind of multiple worlds, not infinite obviously, but different ways that you can move around and explore different areas. So that's really happening now, which is great, because that's what's needed. It's really difficult in things,

if I work with film and I work with 360, then you can't really do it with that. It's not really that. There's ways to add interactivity, but not freedom, really of space. You need to be using kind of photogrammetry where you're taking like millions of images of one thing and spicing altogether, squishing altogether to create a digital image.

So you can start doing that, but it is moving really quickly, obviously starting back in 1965, but it now it's moving really quickly. It's picking up pace. It's picking up pace. It's weird with this stuff though, right? Because we're seeing in front of our eyes how multiple areas of technology need to be able to come together to enable something. So with this, let's say that X number of years ago,

we would have had the lens capability to have been able to show what was going on. But because of the file sizes, you actually need the storage, and then potentially if you want to have something which is stand alone you need a battery the battery on the Oculus Go was terrible. There was periods where I couldn't get the Oculus Go to charge because it didn't have enough battery to start up and it, that was weird. Yeah. Yeah, I saw that in the money. But yeah, and looking at these file sizes, we need better storage, we need to be able to make sure that that's able to happen and stuff like that.

So yeah, it's weird how all of these you were talking earlier on about how everyone needs to play a role. Yeah. And that's cool. I mean, now with like 5G and all that kind of stuff, that's going to make things really like that will help, that will make things better. And it is getting easier. I mean I remember when I first started filming things having to try and stitch it all together manually. So I would film on Rital, so I've just dropped you there.

I'd film on Rigs of Lose of GoPro's and then I would have to put it through software to stitch each of those images together to create one spherical image. And now it's mostly done that there's lots of programs you can put things through and it does it all for you. I still try and manually stitch because it took me so long to learn how to do it flawlessly. But the algorithms are great, you know, it just happens. But those are those kinds of things

that through a group working within this space is getting easier. I did a, I worked with Google on a couple of different experiences. They gave me one of their, their Google Odyssey cameras. This jump, I was one of their jump creators. And it was basically 16 GoPro Rick. It's huge. It was massive. The power bank that ran off was like this massive kind of huge.

You got this big backpack on there. Yeah, well, you couldn't even carry icon on carry it. You know, it was not mobile filmmaking whatsoever. But then it was great. And with all of that, they developed their software, or filmmaking whatsoever. But then it was great. And with all of that, they developed their software, they just plugged it all in, and it went up to the cloud, and they stitched it,

and then they told you when it was ready. The file size is meant that it took bit anywhere between five and seven days to stitch these cameras together. Wow. And you're just like, this is how big it was. I've had things like rendering for about 16 hours at a time. But it is getting so much better. Yeah, I mean, we believe you, honestly, Dr. Jones, we believe you that it's getting better. I know it is. Obviously. Is there ever going to be a time where we're going to see Blockbuster films, films in full

VR, or do you think that the inherent difficulty in all of the added elements that you need to be able to control is just going to make that a no-no? No, I think they will. I think there's one feature length VR film has come out that one of the longest films kind of that I've seen I think is a good length was around 18 minutes. That was a piece called Control CTRL which was one of the most powerful pieces that I've seen as a good few years ago. And it was all, it was around the gaming community, eSports, but there was lots of

darkness around, I don't want to say team machine case anymore, man, just to see it, because it's really, really powerful. So that's the kind of maximum length that you get for love experiences that kind of 18 minutes max, most around 8 to 10 for kind of the normal experience. But I think there will, but it might not be film as we know it.

So it might not be sitting down and watching something for 120 minutes. It might involve more movement or activity. So that's quite different then. So yes, but not as we know it. And I don't think we would go to the cinema and then on the seat in front of us, there would be a headset that we would then put on.

But I could see that happening more in kind of theatre companies, but there's part of, and I know there are a lot of theatre companies that have experimented with that, but there's part of a production that might be augmented, or there might be a different layer of technology use. And that's really exciting. For me, the biggest uses will be VR within those kinds of immersive experiences, theatre, art galleries, shared experiences.

And then more use will be with augmented reality. Because it's easy, it's on our phones. You know, we can engage, it's on our phones. We can engage with different things on our phones. We will eventually have holograms in our eyes. We can project whatever we want on the wall. We could be watching the same television but watching two different programs,

just to see whatever our lenses will program to do. But that's what I think will happen. Like I think that's where we will go. And that's much more likely to happen than people sticking headsets on, because it's too intrusive. Yeah. And they're still heavy, and it ruins your hair, and it leaves marks around your face.

Does it look like you've been punched? Yeah, looks like you've been punched a lot. Imagine we look like after 48 hours. Oh my God. Yeah, did you have to peel it off? You had to like, No, I never liked breathing. Pull it off.

We were swapping with lots of different headsets. We were using the GER VR headsets is in the day when Sonsfen was still great in VR. We were using the rift, we were using the Vive, we were using the PlayStation that had just come out. So we had lots of different headsets. So you mentioned the very start, you mentioned holograms. For me, a hologram is the security seal on the back of my driving license.

And that thing that brought Michael Jackson back to life that one time. And I think they brought two pack back as well. Yeah, well, two pack back. Yeah. Well, let's talk at the moment. There was meant to be an Amy Winehouse hologram tour. And, you know, the technology that's being used for holograms is really interesting. And a little creepy, maybe.

How does it work? and a little creepy, maybe. Oh, it's a little. So it works in a number of different ways. So they can use old footage and they can also recreate and get mannerisms right, some use big green screens and motion capture. Others are using loads of digital images from past footage and putting them all together. And then it's just projections. It's like a normal hologram that you would do with a CD case and projecting lights in and creating things that you might do if you're an idea at home.

Which I'm sure everybody does. So, yes, so that's, you know, I'd say it's really, really simple. It's obviously not. It's hugely technical and costs a fortune. But I think with the technology farm, Holly Lens and obviously Microsoft have been working on it, you can really start to think and obviously Microsoft have been working on it. You can really start to think how might you use holograms as a storytelling technique, interacting in different ways. And there was a really interesting experience which I cannot remember the name of it.

I can see the poster for you. It's a Sheffield Dock fest around two years ago. I will let you know, it is really really interesting. Where it was an immigration officer and you had to decide whether to let people into the country or not based on their stories. So you were grilling them and it was all on the hollow lens. So more of an augmented reality you can see through. It's a glasses and it's projecting in front of you. So it's not a VR headset. Okay. So you're not watching something, you're seeing the real world and then is it overlaying?

What's the difference between that hologram and AR then? It's very similar technology. So yeah, the hologram is simply the way that it's projected. So, the light beams coming down on there and projecting on there, where with AR, it's more that digital representation. But they were using the hollow lens to have these characters that you had to interview to decide whether they would get into the country or not and determine by your language you were choosing to use and the decisions you made, the holograms would get more real, they'd get more vibrant or they would be slowly withering away. And I thought that was a really interesting way. It's very

early days, like two years ago, a shaffield. But it was a really interesting way of how you might use that technology to interact with things. So I do think with augmented reality and with holograms, you can start seeing things a little bit differently. I'm watching, and that might be interesting. The other day I started watching the new Blade Runner which has just gone up on Netflix and in that Ryan Gosling. Yeah, Ryan Gosling. He's one of the Ryan's. Ryan's someone. It's not Ryan Reynolds., it's Ryan Gosling. He's got a fake girlfriend that's supplied to him by this company and she's walking through and we've seen this in films

Million times right that is that is that going to be possible to be able to have that to be able to project something 3D into the air which is Broadly opaque as well and is able to move through, because obviously the hologram at the moment, I didn't quite know that it was still essentially just that CDK's projector type thing. You can't have this big backdrop moving around or else it's going to start clattering into your tables and chairs when it's supposed to be sitting down. Yes.

Is there anything on the horizon that allows us to do anything like that? I'm sure there's lots of people working on that. And certainly, when you're looking at kind of lenses in your eyes and different glasses that you might be wearing, which is what? Holiday, Microsoft's holiday lenses and magic leap and all of those. That's what they're working on.

Always hugely top-secre. But that kind of technology is allowing that. I mean, simply if you look at, I was in the real kind of craft-based version, when you've got Pokemon Go and you're playing with the little little things around and they're in the house and they might be might be in your room. You've got them obviously through the lens of your phone. But if that's being projected in different ways, you can see that. But then is there any different then to cyber relationships in the 80s or the 90s? It's just a case of scaling that technology either up or down however you want to look at it so that you've got it always on potentially in your eyes, potentially always overlaid over

the top of things. You are right. I guess what we're talking about with this hologram, the Blade Runner holog hologram versus Pokemon Go, is simply a case of convenience, is it in your eyes, is it always on? Do you actually have this sense that you're doing something or is it just a part of your day-to-day life? Well, as Google Glass been discontinued, did I get stuck? Yeah. What do they do with that? they're just, they're just, they're just fuck it. Yeah, I was a glass hole. I tried glass. Great word. Yeah, I was one of those.

I've got lots of photos of me, you know, with my glass on going. Working out the weather. Yeah. And I kind of felt really sad for them because I thought the ambition is there. The technology isn't. Okay, so what was the stomach? That's the problem. And first of all, you look like a glass hoe. It wasn't very comfortable. For me, I felt like, you know, it's quite an aruglass and you had to look up constantly to see what was being projected. So if you had like your normal glass you were looking up here all the time

and that's really quite uncomfortable. It's a bit, what am I doing? Oh, I'm doing, I kind of look really gormilous because I'm looking up all the time. But the intention was there. You know, what Snapchat have done with their Snapchat glasses and filming from the glasses all the time. And being able to broadcast whatever is it or seeing at any time, that was quite similar to what glass we're doing. So if you went into filming mode with glass, it would be filming you cycling on your way to work, which is just what Snapchat's done with their lenses. So there's quite a few people kind of experimenting with what is it like, but there is still that huge kind of privacy issue, that concern around, what are you capturing all the time? You know, that's

really hard and it's really hard to navigate that. They're on, they're on enough kind of laws or regulations in place to be able to govern all of that or onto any of those concerns. And that's a massive question. Is it weird that people would naturally have inclination against that, but probably 50% of people got a smart speaker in the home now. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's being glass with what, 2012, so maybe it would be different. Not sure. I think it's something to do with the visual. So in James Clears book, Atomic Habitsy gives a great fact that he says in the human body there's about 14 million cells that are dedicated to sense and 11 million of them are dedicated

to sight. That's how highly we discriminate our site over other other senses. And there was a, someone will be able to tell me what this is. There was a YouTube video that I watched not long ago where it was trying to show people how uncomfortable they felt when they realized they were under surveillance. And this person went in and sat down straight in front of a couple at a restaurant and just had the camera like that and just didn't say anything.

And people started freaking out. Started just losing their shit. I'd sit down next to someone who was reading the paper at a park bench and just put the camera in the face. And the difference is that it was a camera across the street. It's a camera in the corner of the shop, it's a camera, whatever, whatever. But there's something very, very invasive, that's creepy and visceral and just weird about knowing that someone's watching in a way that knowing that someone's listening isn't.

And even in the way that knowing that someone's watching statically isn't as well, I think, there's some big hurdles for that sort of technology to overcome. Yeah, yeah, and I think, I mean, we give ourselves away so freely online, constantly, but there is still that we're just a little bit uneasy with. I think that goes back to that problem of accessibility with VR, that it's still too close, it's intrusive, it's on our head, it's uncomfortable, so you have all of that kind of playing out constantly. But yeah, I do think the light of the technology gets,

the easier it gets to use. I used to have a clip on VR lens that would be clipped onto my phone, so I could watch VR content through like a clip on double lens. Okay. So you put in your eyes, putting your phone up to your face like that? Yes, so you'd have your phone there and these lenses would adapt on to it to make it into a VR view. So I've got my little VR view wherever I am. I'm obviously with you know cardboard headsets and all those kinds of things.

Yeah, I've got a whole collection and I've got a whole collection of headsets through history. whole collection, I've got a whole collection of headsets through history, but it's really fun. But yeah, it's quite interesting to see that those changes and as they get lighter and as they get more comfortable and easier, but still I'm just not sure if lots of people are going to stick on their heads there. It's not as if iPhone was the first touchscreen phone. It's the first one. It's the first one that was able to deliver the technology sufficiently seamlessly for people to adopt it. Yeah. And it's the same with this. What's the company? What's the company that is going to get first mover? And Apple, again, perfect example, they didn't have a phone until they did that. There have been loads of people who've been in the phone space who had dabbled with touchscreen phone, then Blackbreed had one that was like touch and keypad

and blah, blah, blah. But, you know, so it very well might be, and it could be Apple. Apple could come out with some VR and just totally storm the market, which is funny. And it's good that capitalism allows the best product to rise to the top. It always makes me feel sad for like Google Glass, like 2012, Slaven away, desperately trying to make it work. And then there's Apple 15 years later coming in with Apple Eyes or whatever they call it. And they'll nail it.

Yeah, I see, I do feel sorry for Google Glass. And I love the fact that they tied really hard, and it could have been great. And the thought, the intention was completely right. I don't think Apple are going to do much with the AI. I think that they are really buying into the AR market. And I think whatever they bring out, you know, you've got the AR kit on Apple.

There's lots of great things like reality composer where you can it's all open source, you can bring in digital objects and download their app to project those objects in your environment. There's great examples that some teachers are using, getting kids engaged with stuff and looking at road maps and kind of the solar system and holding planets in your hand and looking around them. And that kind of technology is brilliant and that's all being done through AR through ARK and things like reality composer that kids are using on their iPads and really really engaging with. So I think that's where Apple will be and whether they come out with glasses or whatever it might be. There's always lots of reemers and lots of leaks but you know, we will see. If it was Apple, they'd be able to trademark the I.I.

the I.I. and I'm from Newcastle, so I'm allowed to say that. The Y.I. I'm not sure, I, yeah, I'm not sure I could. Like I.I. That might be a bit rough. I.I. Yeah, I mean, it's quite funny when I came out with the watch and it was very much, it's not called the I watch, it's the watch. And yeah, so maybe it will just be eye.

All right, Tim Cook, it's going to be really serious. Everything else was eye. Yeah, exactly. One of the things that I heard, Sam Harris talk about a while ago, and I'm going to butcher it, but you'll know what I'm talking about. Sam's concern was, as technology allows us to become more immersive, there'd been some very, there'd been some studies done which showed AR and VR's ability to change people's political views, their views towards, I think, climate change or tree-felling. There was something as well.

Do you know what I'm talking about or am I just a little blown up? the time? No, no. Okay, can you tell the listeners what I'm on about? Because, yeah, I mean, there'd be loads of conversations and discussions and lots of things around this. So we basically say that VR, as an immersive immersive media has the capacity, the potential, to change perceptions, to change understandings. That's why we like it. So, you know, if you want to experience, you know, clouds over Cedro, an incredible piece done by Chris Milk a few years ago, one of the big kind of VRR 360 kind of experiences following the journey of a girl in a refugee camp in Jordan. So that was designed to drive empathy. It was meant to invoke that sense of, we need to take action. It know, it was designed to be shown to decision makers at the UN to get them to understand

more and change their minds and get them to do more. So, the technology has been used for all of that. It's been labelled as this empathy machine, which I think is a load of nonsense. But that's what it's been labelled as. of nonsense. But that's what it's been labelled as. If you take that argument that it can change minds, you can put the technology in other people's hands and get them to change minds in different ways. If the technology has that power to change what you're thinking about something. Where does it go with subliminal messaging? Where does it go with arguing for something else?

There's been really, really interesting studies around gender swapping in VR, getting to people to experience different genders, and then seeing how that changes attitudes and behavior in the workplace. They feel what it's like for a woman to be the only woman in a boardroom full of men, those kinds of scenarios. Some of them are really powerful, some of them have been shown to have impact. There was one around Stanford Virtual virtual human interaction lab where they did something around homelessness and they had two groups.

And one group just received information on flat screens and brochures and that kind of stuff. And the other one experienced it. The other group was experiencing homelessness in immersive experiences and connecting with people. And then they repeated it and then they looked at the data over who was still more empathetic, who was actually, who had changed their behavior

and all of the studies showed that it was the group that were exposed to it in an immersive way because they had that close relationship. So yeah, you are looking at a technology that can potentially change people's minds. If that is for the wrong way, how is that monitored, how is that regulated? We're talking pretty much in quite a unregulated industry.

So yeah, I think the concept of brain hacking and changing the mind to think, changing the brain and the way that you're thinking in your beliefs and your motivations is really interesting, but a little bit freaky. Yeah, well, I mean, the only thing that I, the only thing that, the analogy that I can kind of draw here is that

with social media, it, we had no idea that it was going to come. Social media was a change. The fact that you have a screen in your pocket, which is able to layer all sorts of different mental models and cognitive biases on top of itself, like an echo chamber and confirmation bias, and you know, all the different things that you have when you follow people on

Twitter and then the algorithm starts to re-deliver you more content, which either outrage or agreement or the two things, etc, etc. All that stuff. We didn't know what was going to go on with that. That happened. Now, I think everyone has realized we probably fucked up a bit with social media. We've probably ungoverned or there's not enough governance around are these things a platform or a pipeline? Are they a publisher? Should we be monitoring the content? Should they be allowed to do platform people if they're not breaking the law or all this sort of stuff. And I think a lot of the general public and sort of techy people are looking forward now with a little bit more mindfulness about what's going on. Are we about to unleash the next thing? And then the analogy some Harris

uses, it's really, really interesting. He talks about how he sees a ceiling. There's a ceiling on how much behavior change you can get from a two-dimensional phone that's in your hand, and that that ceiling gets raised. And we don't know by how much. How much does he get raised by AR? How much does he get raised by VR? How much does he get raised by, I guess, this always on VR holographic sort of stuff, which is between ARVR and and and something else. Yeah, I again, you know, before the Manhattan Project, you didn't need to have any legislation for nuclear bombs because there was no nuclear bombs. And inevitably with technology, the legislation always lags behind the actual technology coming out. You can't. And on top of that, once the genies out the bottle,

it's not going back in the cage. Yeah. So absolutely. Yeah. It's a space I'm glad I'm not having to legislate or govern it, and it sounds like it would be a bit messy. I mean, there was the government did a select committee looking at immersive technologies and addiction,

which started in January. So I gave evidence to it in January, which was all a little bit surreal. Was that awesome? Yeah, yeah, it was the DCMS. And the report was published only a few weeks ago. Yes, September the 12th, I think. So it's all online. And that's really interesting actually.

There's really interesting findings in there and it's gaming and addiction but also around immersive as well and one thing that I spoke a lot about was you know the impact and everything that we've learned from cyberbullying and social networks that need to be stopped before it starts and it's already starting in VR social spaces. And there was a really interesting study done last year with loads of people that were using social VR spaces and the amount of people, like 60% of people, felt that they'd been harassed in social spaces in VR, particularly women, but quite a high number of men as well. And I've always found social VR really creepy, like I don't like it. It always reminds me of that kind of early internet chat room where I just didn't know. Yeah, you didn't quite know who

was there and it was all a little bit weird. And that's what it's like in social VR when these weird kind of bodyless or armless or legless kind of avatars come creeping up to you and be like, hey Sarah, how are you? And it's just as well. Think about the people who have adopted that technology at this stage of its life. Oh, yeah, I'm one of them. Yeah, I know, I know. That's so polished. Wait, I'm going to make your guess feel nice and comfortable.

Yeah, thanks, but... I know, but you understand my point. You understand my point. It is selecting for something, and we don't know what it's selecting for. But it's definitely selecting for the first PhD in immersive storytelling. But we know there's only one of you.

Absolutely. So what are the rest of them, right? And you know know there's all that one of you. Absolutely. So what are the rest of them, right? And you know, there's going to be some people in there who are non-typical by virtue of the fact that there's not many of them. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And there are some great things being done in social VR spaces, and there's quite a lot now

with women only rooms. But you can also go to campfires, you can go on musical nights, you can do karaoke on a Friday night. It's very much the oasis in Ready Player One. It's very much that kind of world. You've got lots of different places to explore. But what the tech companies have done, which is really good, if you are in a social space and people are coming towards you and it's freaking you out, you can put a safety bubble around you. So you create this kind of, this is my personal space, you get out of my bubble kind of restriction. I run nightclubs, that's my job over at nightclubs for 13 years. And if I can get someone to create a real life version of that, my work life will be ten next in terms of its comfort.

Get out of my personal space. I need around about three feet in all directions, please. Thank you. Absolutely. Absolutely. I thought that was really interesting. Yes, it is. But again, it shows the fact that we have this sort of very visceral response to people and we can't

distinct because there's nothing to be afraid of. Like, it's just another chat room. You don't know if my bits are close to your like bits in the way that we're transferring information now, but because it's not represented visually in a way that our senses can tell, well, not that bothered. So it comes down to that question of how real is the virtual reality? And do we perceive it to be real or not? And if what we're trying to get to is a place where we cannot decipher what's real and what's not, then that can be, you know, it can be just as bad, you know, for somebody to, you know, harass you virtually, whether it's within a virtual reality environment or whether it's on a cyber bullying thing, it's still harassment.

So it's quite difficult to kind of comprehend and it's difficult for people to accept that it's just as bad, but it is. Well, anyone who knows about the rubber hand experiment, yeah, exactly. Those that you can literally trick your brain by using visual cues into feeling something physically. And forget how it feels emotionally. Yeah, really a bit of minefield, isn't it? Yeah, a little bit. Mm, you can always press your bubble.

Press your bubble, get your bubble on. Honestly, I want it for the real world. So Dr. Johns, today's been amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for having me. If the listeners want to find out some more things, are there any cool blogs or websites or where would you direct them

and where can they find you as well? Yeah, I say I want Twitter, live on Twitter, virtual social media, always online, or in a virtual world somewhere. But there are loads of really like all of the tech platforms, upload VR, all of those kinds of places are great for kind of immersive news. And just try and check out, so I'd always say, could try and check out, we've just had rain dance the last weekend, which has been full of really interesting VR experiences.

And if anyone is in Bristol, there's the first VR cinema based in Bristol, run by Catherine Allen, called Limini, it's Limini, I can't say it, that word, find it, Bristol's VR cinema, I can't say that word. Find it. Bristol's VR. I'll send it to you. Which is great and they have loads of great experiences. I want to see a really easy way to get people in.

So really good stuff there to you. Awesome. Dr. Jones, thank you so much for your time. Thanks to everything we've spoken about. We'll be in the show notes below. Virtual Sarah J on Twitter. If you have any questions, feel free to go and drop a message for now. Thank you very much. you