StarTalk Radio - The Evolution of Personal Technology, with Marques Brownlee

Episode Date: February 9, 2018

How has personal technology changed our world? Neil deGrasse Tyson sits down with tech vlogger and YouTube star Marques Brownlee, comic co-host Chuck Nice, and tech journalist Clive Thompson to explore Internet identity, hacking, Moore’s law, self-driving cars, and technological evolution.Image Credit: robypangy/iStock.NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/season-premiere-the-evolution-of-personal-technology-with-marques-brownlee/ Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome to StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and I'm also the director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. And I got with me my coach, Chuck Nice. That's right. Chuck Nice comic, tweeting. Thank you, sir. Yes, that is indeed correct.

There you go. At Chuck Nice comic. Was there a Chuck Nice already taken? Is that what happened? Yes, it was me. Or did you? I actually didn't like myself enough to cancel that. Was there a Chuck Nice already taken? Is that what happened? Yes, it was me. Or did you? I actually didn't like myself enough to cancel that. And so I just started a whole new one called, I'm starting all over again, Chuck Nice Comic. In case you didn't laugh at my tweet, just remember that it's Chuck Nice Comic.

Right, exactly. That's how that works. Exactly. You're also host of a spinoff of StarTalk that we're all quite proud of. Yes. Playing with science. Playing with science. Yeah, because what happened was we had, of our guests,

the portfolio of our guests, the ones that were professional athletes developed their own following, basically. And we figured, let's spawn that into its own show. I have spawned with professional athletes. Never thought I'd be able to say those words. Yes. And your co-host on that is Gary O'Reilly, who is a former professional footballer.

Footballer for the UK. For the UK. Crystal Palace. Very cool. Top man. And today we're talking about the evolution of personal technology. Wow. Indeed.

That's a very rapid evolution. Yes, it is. And I'm featuring my interview with YouTube vlogger and all-around sensation in this niche. We have Marques Brownlee. That's featuring my interview. The kid? Yes. That kid?

Yes. Who does all the unboxing and stuff? Yes. I love that kid. And he's also known online as what? MKB? MKB HD. There you go.

I love that kid. There you go. Featuring my interview with him. Cool. That was fun. Because I feel like, you know, okay, go to bed now and say, pass your bed. I feel like being his father. But no, he's got his own world.

Yeah, man. He created his own world. He's big stuff. Now, since I only have marginal expertise in this, generally we go out and find the real expertise, as we did today. In studio, we have science and tech writer for the New York Times and other outlets, including Wired, Clive Thompson. Clive, good to be here, my friend. Welcome. It's great to be here.

Dude. Dude. So you have a book from a few years ago. Yeah. Smarter Than You Think. Yep. How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better. Yes, sir.

Wow, that is so counterintuitive. You are the only one. I didn't know. Exactly. I'm the only one holding down that argument. You know, everybody else thinks it's making us dumber. If you need that book, I have one for you. Yeah, all right, all right.

None of us agree with whatever you could have possibly put in there. So in my interview with Marques Brownlee, he runs a YouTube channel, MKBHD. Yeah. It's a YouTube channel. Five million subscribers, 700 million video views. And he reviews new tech and gadgets that you might think of buying or that you already bought and then you learned you shouldn't have. So any idea what makes it so popular? Because I'm not a first adopter, so I don't have to chase the latest unwrapping.

But see, that's what makes it so popular. Why? Is what you just said. I'm not a first adopter. He is the first adopter in your stead. Somebody has to be. Somebody's got to be I'm not a first adopter. He is the first adopter in your stead. Somebody has to be the first. Somebody's gotta be the first. The first adopter.

And that's what this kid does. And also, frankly, I mean- I gotta stop calling him a kid. He's a grown man. I'm just old. Yeah, yeah. Okay, go ahead. He's also, I think he's sort of an exemplar of what's happening, this new generation of

broadcasters who are growing up not on TV, but on online and And they're really I mean there he's really good at it. You look at it. It's like it's just beautifully shot He's just oozing charisma. So in modern times one perhaps shouldn't even make the distinction between being on TV or being on Well, yeah in a weird way me YouTube is such a funny old phrase, right? Because to me who actually watching YouTube remembers a two a two none of them none of them yeah i barely do it's so like you know i've got a couple young kids in grade school middle school and you know for them you know what they watch where they learn things from is youtube like you know they not once we got a tv box it hooked up to youtube it's just youtube on tv like there's no actual tv being watched

well they don't make the distinction that's right YouTube on TV. There's no actual TV being watched. They don't make the distinction. That's right. So that's an emergent fact. I think it's beyond just not making the distinction because I have also an 11-year-old and he is resistant to television.

The fact that he has to do it on their time and their schedule. And sit down in front of a thing attached to the wall. It upsets him. It's like, how dare you? And there's also sort of, I mean, I think there's kind of an authenticity that comes, or apparent authenticity.

Hard to say how authentic it really is. But from seeing someone who looks maybe more like someone you might actually know doing this. My kids watch all these Minecraft videos. And so it's just someone doing Minecraft and they have a little box up in the corner showing them in their crappy little room. That's what my son does. There you go.

My son does. It's how to play that game better. That's right, yeah. Right, right. So YouTube feels more authentic and more, you know, like there's a real person there than a very glossy TV show.

And they get like 12 million views. Yeah, yeah. I know. On how to execute some maneuver in that situation. Right. So I sat down with Mar yeah. I'm a million people. On how to execute some maneuver in that situation. All right. So I sat down with Marques. So he's well known on the web, of course.

And I just asked him how he got started on YouTube. So let's check it out. So Marques, so apparently you've been doing this since you were three years old or something, is that right? For a while. A number of years. More than a majority of my life. Most of your life, yeah. So more than half your life.

And how old are you now? So I'm 22. You're getting old. Yeah. I'll tell you. Yeah. I'll tell you how it happens later on. It's just downhill from 22.

Yeah. So you're into gadgets. Yeah, into all kinds of tech. I got into cameras and I got into all the tech around me. And then just sort of merged into making videos about the tech. On a YouTube channel that's a hugely popular place for people to go. Right. And it didn't start that way.

It started as just me making videos for myself just to have that exist somewhere. And then slowly people started to discover it and then it sort of grew from that. It doesn't cost money. To review a gadget, you gotta own the gadget. Right. Or somehow obtain it. Right. So what'd you do? I was in school, so I was using a laptop for school, so I reviewed the laptop.

And I reviewed a bunch of free software on the laptop. And then I started reviewing paid things that I bought, maybe the cooler for the laptop. That's the kind of stuff that got you off the ground and then you sort of proceed to check out more elaborate or extravagant things. And then people come to depend on you. A little bit, a little bit, yeah. I'm not buying it unless Mark has. When it's something you use as daily as like a smartphone, for example, that's the kind of thing you do actually put a lot of research into and watch a whole bunch of videos on before you actually

buy it. So when did you realize you started having a following? I think one of the turning points is a video I did about a web browser when Safari by Apple came to Windows. I made a video about that, woke up the next morning and it had a couple of thousand views from people who weren't subscribed. That was kind of a light bulb moment, like, oh, people actually kind of care about this timely information. And by then you had just turned five years old.

I think I was probably about 15, so I'll give myself that. Same difference! I just wondered, did your parents worry about you? If you're just playing with gadgets, he'll never amount to anything. He's just playing with these toys. I gotta guess yes. I don't actually know the answer, but I would guess yeah.

Such is always the case when a next generation Gotta guess yes. I don't actually know the answer, but I would guess yeah. Such is always the case when the next generation defines what the future will be. So Clive, how would you distinguish your childhood from his? Because you started writing and you cared about the same gadgets and software that he did, but not in that era. That's right. Yeah. I mean, this is like, you know, I grew up in the 80s. And then when I get out of college in the 90s there's there's no uh no smartphones yet there's barely an intranet right there was like a lot of these text bbs i'll go ahead to invent it

first yeah absolutely yeah message boards yeah that's what it was yeah yeah so i kind of had them and like so i could see the future coming with message boards i could sort of figure out what was happening right but yeah my my youth is very, very different. And I think, you know... Wait, wait. You would have come of age during the earliest cell phones then, correct? Oh, you know, I was... Mid-90s was that? No, no. I was well into my 20s when the mobile phones came out, basically. So I was...

Did you have the shoulder-mounted one? Exactly, yeah. The ones you can use to deflect bullets. Yeah, I know. Some people are calling Mars. That's right deflect bullets. Yeah, I know. It's what they're calling Mars. That's right. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I think it was very different.

And I think there's some things I would have liked about it. I mean, I look at the online world now, and I think I wish I had some of this stuff. I was in a band in high school, right? So, you know, we make a couple, you know, a small EP of music. Who heard that? No one, right? Absolutely nobody. So you wish you were born 15 years later.

Yeah, I'd say. That's really what you're saying. In some respects, yes. His band would have put the thing out on YouTube and it ended up on Ellen. Okay. Ellen sees it. Ellen would have found it.

Then before you know it, it's just like, whoa, look at us. So I try to take a cosmic view on these matters. And I just try to imagine in 20 years, Marques Brownlee saying, gee, I wish I was born 15 years later. Right. Because it's something else.

What else would it be? That would have made some next generation even more potent. YouTube of the mind. Of the mind, yeah. But yeah, hard, you know, USB into the...

Exactly, you just jack in and you close your eyes. You don't even have to close your eyes. And just sends it to wherever it's gotta be. Right, right. Implants it in wherever it's got to be. Right, right. Implants it in people.

And we're looking back in these days as how archaic they were. Yeah. So I'm just curious, in terms of YouTube as a site, are there other sites now? As I understand it, Facebook is now a huge access point for videos. I would say also Snapchat, actually, or Snap Snap as they now call it, is a really big deal. They started this channel, it's kind of like where people do semi-professional videos, but there's people that have just kind of blown up on Snap. I have trouble calling it Snap, on Snapchat. That's a very, very big video area for young people now too. YouTube

is still the gorilla in the room, but there are others. So Snapchat, the thing about Snapchat, right? Crackle, pop, that's what I know when I say Snap. But Snap, the thing is that it seems like all of their technology, they're quite innovative. But it seems like all their technology just gets stolen by these other sites

that's right yeah how are they going to stay in business i don't know yeah because facebook basically instagram essentially copied everything they did and now it turns out that instagram's blowing up because people are doing that kind of quick viral video thing on instagram i i that's a good question i don't know okay okay if you don't know who what give me the guy who does know. Wheel him in. So with phones coming out, the next generation of phones look pretty expensive. The next iPhone is going to be up there. How influential do you think those reviews are in people's buying decisions? Oh, I think they're awfully big.

I mean, like, when I talk to people and ask them how they learn about things, like, I'll ask them, and they're like, yeah, it's all YouTube. All YouTube. Like they immediately go there to try and figure out what something looks like, what it feels like, what it works like and whether or not they should spend money on it. So YouTube has become the conduit for learning about something before you buy it. Absolutely. So I asked Marques to just sort of reflect on how technology has evolved over his short number of years reviewing it.

So let's check it out. So you're 22 now. So in your long career as a reviewer, what would you say has changed most since you were 15, let's say, or that has impressed you most for what has changed? I'll give two things. One, I talk about a lot of handheld electronics like smartphones, tablets, laptops. Displays have impressed me a lot.

The quality and resolution. The quality, the detail, the crispiness, all that stuff a lot in the last couple years. And also more recently, cameras. Cameras in smartphones, cameras in laptops, the front facing cameras, but especially in smartphones have gotten a lot better. But the number one thing I'd say is the displays. And quality of displays has enabled a whole industry to land in that medium. Isn't that correct?

Yeah. It's not just making what you saw previously better. It is opening up entire new industries. Is that a fair statement? Virtual reality is an example where you wouldn't have a super high resolution display right up against your face with a lens to focus on it to put you in another world. That would not be possible with the displays four or five years ago. Because that close to your face,

the lower resolution would be unsellable to you. Is that a fair? Yeah. Okay, so we've crossed certain thresholds of device innovation. Yeah, Apple might use the term retina display to describe a display where the pixel density is so great that your eye cannot discern individual pixels. Pretty much every phone has a retina display to describe a display where the pixel density is so great that your eye cannot discern individual pixels.

Pretty much every phone has a retina display at this point, where five years ago that was not the case. And even the photos you take with the cameras getting so detailed and such high resolution that again, the type of images you can take out of a camera on your smartphone are often better than something you get from a dedicated camera like seven, eight years ago. Yeah, so Clive, can you explain why this is happening? Yeah, I mean, it's just demand and supply, right? So once...

No, I didn't know to demand stuff that I'm buying now. It's like, oh my gosh, I guess that's kind of cool. Once people started... once the iPhone came out and people realized that they wanted, not just, 10 years ago, right, iPhone comes out and they don't want a little flip phone anymore. They want something that has a screen on it, right? So that produces an enormous demand for those screens. And over in Asia, the factories start working and working, working, working. The price drops dramatically.

And so the high end is always chasing more and more pixels and more resolution and greater brightness. But even that has dropped and dropped and dropped and dropped to the point where like, you know, it's an expensive part of the phone, but it's amazing how cheap you can get really nice screens now over in Asia. So now I have a nice screen, but like I said, this, I never would have imagined using my cell phone saying, gee, I want to take a picture with my cell phone. Oh, I see what you mean. This was not an urge.

Yeah, that's right. I don't think anybody had that urge. Nope, nope. I think what might have driven that- In fact, I thought they were forcing it on me initially. Yeah, they did. Right. They were, if you remember.

And I think what did it was, believe it or not, apps. The advent of apps and these photo apps that allowed you to do your own little like um photoshopping and to manipulate images and then post them you it's like yeah i mean i think in many ways the tipping point was probably instagram right so that was the first uh first thing where you could take a picture and you could do you put a filter on it and make it look prettier than what you did right and this was an intentional thing that kevin sistrom the guy that invented it uh was talking about with his girlfriend when he was designing it about sharing photos and she said to him they were talking about it and she was like the problem is i don't want to share my photos they don't look as good as yours he's a big you know analog

camera guy and and he said well that's because i'm using all these these films that produce these lovely filtering effects he said well you need to put some filters in that thing lo and behold that's exactly what worked. Because you could take pictures, make them look pretty, instantly share them, that took off. Are we going to go up against, is there some Moore's Law of personal technology? Yeah, there is.

And is that going to end? Is that going to level off? Well, first of all, guys, let me just say that there are some people who may not be familiar with what Moore's Law is. I mean, I know what it is. Well, some other people might not know. You know, those other people may not. But what is Moore's Law? In brief, Moore's Law is. I mean, I know what it is. Well, those other people might not know. Those other people may not. But what is Moore's Law?

In brief, Moore's Law is the observation several decades ago that computer chips were getting basically twice as fast every 18 months, right? And that's because they could make the components smaller and smaller and smaller. They are now at the atomic level. Those wires are so tiny,

you can't make them any smaller. That is what's called the end of Moore's Law. So will the devices stop getting faster? And this is moore gordon moore that's right yeah one of the founders of uh hewlett packard i think uh yeah yeah oh boy uh you're putting me on the spot here um was it either that mr tech journalist or fairchild semiconductor i'm i'm blanking here anyway um the point being uh that uh the question is you you know. But you know the issue. When the wires are so small and they reach atomic distances, then quantum effects between wires start taking over. That's right.

Sweet. It is sweet. That is awesome. So the wire can no longer know that it's independent of the wire sitting next to it. Absolutely. Because the wave function talks to them both. Dude, that's amazing. I love it.

Ooh. Ooh, look at physics. I love it. Ooh. Ooh, look at physics. Just f***ing up technology. I'm sorry. So, yeah. So, they're essentially having to figure out how to make things faster without making them smaller. Okay. So, fine.

So, even if you do level off at Moore's Law, are there... Fine. But presumably, design can change. Are there, fine, but presumably design can change. Are there other limits? Price, cultural, design? 06.00 00.01 00.01 00.01

00.01 00.01 00.01 00.01 00.01 00.01 00.01 00.01

00.01 00.01 00.01 00.01 00.01 00.01's like cable TV. That's right. You know what I mean? They talk about how great your cable is and we have this fiber optic and whatever and it's like, yeah, I still got copper running into my house. Who gives a damn? I actually fell for that crap and I was just like, this is the exact same cable I had before. So can we think of the smartphones as augmenting our human physiology?

Absolutely. Sure. I mean, every technology we've had has to a certain extent, as Marshall McLuhan put it, been an extension of man, right? You know, so TV extended our vision. The phone extended our ability

to speak and talk. These things are the strongest extensions of humanity that we've ever had. And I would say that you could think of them almost like a sense apparatus. They're like a form of ESP by which we tap into what not espn yeah not espn exactly okay but a form of esp yeah that you could think of them as a form of esp by which we sense what

other people are thinking and talking about and doing like all the time for good and for ill right because on the one hand wow you learn a lot of great things on the other hand it's almost like having telepathy and being able to shut being unable to shut other people's voices off in your head in fact when i tweet and i look at the responses to that too i usually tweet something yeah educational right that's my intent and i try to add a little funny in it if i can't do a little job, I'm going to say. I'm sorry? Yeah, I'm not going to blow the smoke. I get B plus? I get B plus? I get B plus, yeah. Okay. So I look at the response to it, and that informs, I see that as a neurosynaptic snapshot

of the instantaneous reaction to words I use, to phrases I compose, to ideas I put out there. And then when I give a public talk, I fold those in, and I'm a way better communicator. Sure, yeah. So that's my ESP, in a sense. Yeah, that those in. And I'm a way better communicator. So that's my ESP in a sense. Getting inside the head of a million people. I just figured out I'm doing Twitter all wrong. Well, so coming up, more of my interview with Marquez. And his capacity to tell us what's going down in the technology spectrum

when StarTalk returns. We're back on StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, co-host Chuck Nice. In studio guest today, Clive Thompson, a tech writer for the New York Times and Wired and other venues. A few others. A few others. We feature my interview with Marques Brownlee. He's a 20-something, early 20s reviewer of tech devices that you might think of getting.

He does this on the internet, has millions of followers. And so I got here sort of an interesting sort of perspective, okay, on what role these portable technologies might play today. So I just had to ask him what that relationship was between these technologies and our lives. Let's check it out. relationship was between these technologies and our lives. Let's check it out. You've only really ever known the internet as a thing in your life, rather than having to have transitioned from walking to the library to get information and data.

So to you, your life is practically defined,, by information you get on the internet, what those apps do for you as you conduct your life. So there's a certain amount of trust that you place in this information, in the integrity of this information. Yeah. I have an app on my phone called Google Now. And if I go to class enough times with my phone in my pocket, it knows that I go there every day. So it puts that down as where I work,

but it knows I go there every day. And if it's far enough away that I drive there every day, it'll start to show me a card in the morning of when I should leave based on traffic to get there on time because I go there the same time every day. So now it's helping me get there on time

because it knows where I go every day. If there's an accident, it'll wake me up earlier to tell me you should head out earlier. Because there's an accident on the road there. Because there's an accident on the road you're about to take to get to the place you're about to go. And you're okay with all this? I'm okay with all of it because it's helping me.

If they're, you know, people don't like to think that, you know, Google knows all this about us, they're gonna use this information, or even the machines that are collecting the information can turn and use it. I feel like if they're giving back this information to help me in this way that's actually really useful, I'm okay with it. So I'm the senior citizen among the three of us. In my day, privacy was paramount. Absolutely. And I don't know that this next generation gives a rat's ass about privacy.

Not at all. All their stuff is on internet. You know, their height, their weight, their sexual preference, their gender pronoun. And can you just offer some reflections on the meaning of privacy in the era of, quote, helpful apps? Helpful apps? It's definitely changed a lot for exactly the reasons we've been talking about. It is sort of impossible if you're young right now to have a social life without participating in, you know, all these apps.

You know, you're... Social apps. Social apps, exactly. Like whether that's Snapchat or Facebook or whatever, you're kind of off the grid. And there are abstainers. It's kind of funny. You will find young people who are like, I will have no truck with this.

But they're the ones who are like kind of the iconic class who don't really care about having a big group of friends. So I think one of the problems young people have is that it's not even necessarily that they have a fundamentally different attitude towards privacy, but they have no choice but to do these types of things in the same way that maybe for us when we were younger, not getting a driver's license was sort of basically a vow of I'm never going anywhere that the cool

kids are going, right? You could have said, hey, I think- I grew up in New York City. Yeah, okay. I grew up in suburban Toronto, so you needed to drive. But fine, there you go. Yeah. And so, back then, if you opted out from that technology, you had a real social trouble, right? So these are cultural social forces operating. Yeah, absolutely.

And if you're in the middle of it, you don't even know that there was another option. Yep. But my problem is that you heard in his statement was resident a certain amount of trust in the responsibility that Google has. Yeah, he's trusting these companies. He was very trusting. Do you trust? What's your trust level? Wow. You know, I don't trust anybody. He's very trusting. Do you trust? What's your trust level? Wow.

You know, I don't trust anybody. That's what I'm saying. Not in a conspiracy way. It's just, I don't want you knowing this about me. Because it's power, and we all know power corrupts. That's what I'm saying. Knowledge about you is power over you. See, you know, Franklin Ford is like old people under the porch.

I know. I was about to say, let me tell you something. The only way this could have got worse. Here's Google. Okay, especially in the black community. Here's Google if it had been invented 25 years ago. Google in the black community. Why don't you mind your damn business?

That's basically, that's the response. But go ahead. Franklin Ford just came up with a book uh he talks about big tech right and he means the great big huge companies that have massive amounts of power you know facebook apple microsoft uh and google and he makes a distinction between that and like kind of smaller tech which are companies that you might actually know and trust and i think that's a good distinction because you know what you guys are no but all those big ones used to be little. Don't tell me that.

No, no, no. They're just big now. I agree. But like, so the problem we have- They were born big. The problem we have, but there's small tech you can completely trust, like open source stuff like the Tor project, right?

Right. Their whole point is to try and make it easier for you to have privacy online. And it's open source, and it's like a run for nonprofit, civic-minded hackers. There is technology out there that you can trust. It's not the stuff that is big and is rewarded heavily by the market.

By commercial entities. Exactly. It's all about the commercial entities. And advertising. All right, advertising. Is there anything out there that you've said, all right, that crosses the line? Oh, yeah, sure. I'll give you an example. I came home from a summer vacation, and I opened up my Android phone, and Google said,

hey, we just put together a slideshow of photos and points on a map of all that I'd done the last two weeks, just because we thought you might like it. And it was so creepy, right? It was creepy. It was super creepy. And I always turn my locations off, okay? But sometimes you forget, and I got that same doggone slideshow,

and it freaked me out. It doesn't matter, I'll tell you why. Why? I'll tell you why. Oh no. As I understand it, okay? Can't Google now, if you put your picture up in the cloud, it can do an image recognition of your surroundings yeah compare

it with all their satellite and say oh was this in the plaza de piazza of the da and shall we id it that way absolutely in fact actually if you ask me like of course if you ask me for the technology right now that most unsettles me it's the galloping rollout of face recognition technology into everything into everything. Into everything. And so I'm like, I don't want my microwave recognizing my face. I don't want omnipresent face recognition all over the place. But it's getting so easy to do. I mean, just the other day, Google helpfully said, hey, guys, we just made TensorFlow our AI framework so it can run

on basically a Raspberry Pi. Ah, that's crazy. That's crazy. That's insane, by the way. And let me tell you something else. Here's what really scares me about the facial recognition. Aside from the fact that, like you said, I don't want my microwave recognizing my face, you know, is the fact that once somebody learns how to hack that and make my face, like face off, okay, now they can just walk around and be me.

However, as I understand it, it's not just, it's better than what you would think, it's better than how you would do thinking that you're looking at yourself. Because it's actually measuring ratios of dimensions of your face that are extremely hard to duplicate. Oh no, I'm not talking about the, I'm talking about going beyond the actual facial recognition where that I go in and tell the software that... So, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. You hack it.

I hack it and say... So, now everywhere Neil deGrasse... Wherever I go... You're Neil deGrasse. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. You've hacked it to fake that. I've hacked into... You know what I'm saying?

That's what's scary. That will happen. That's what's scary. That will happen. That's going to happen. This brings us to, because you can't out-program it, you can just hack it in the back end. Always go around. So this brings me to the concept of internet identity. Who are you on the internet and how?

Privacy breaches, this sort of thing. And so I had to ask him, Marques Brownlee, just is the internet not only helping us but now defining us? Defining our identities and what it's going to do. Let's check out the interview. So is your life being defined by all the ways the internet inserts its way into your routine? Because in my generation, it's still this, it's a luxury, it's a convenience, it's a tool. It is not me. Right.

Has it become you? So I would say yes. I would say the internet is part of our life and always has been in a way that other generations exist alongside the internet and may go over and use it once in a while. Everything we do now, whether it's communication or sharing anything with anyone, whether it's someone I know or just posting something for the world, all of it goes through the internet. The convenience stuff, like I said, where a normal going to work routine would have

no internet involved in it in 1990. Today it's relying upon Google Maps and my alarm clock on my phone and everything telling me when to wake up and when to leave and how to get there. So in that way I do think we are completely tuned into the internet in a way that's not the same as any other generation. Yeah. But can I say, it's not that so much you're tuned into the internet in a way that's not the same as any other generation. But can I say, it's not that so much you're tuned into the internet, the internet's tuned into you. That also is true.

Do you have an identity outside of how you are represented on the internet? You've got a Facebook page, this is what I am, this is how I want the world to see. It's almost like a pair of identities where you have your your social life, but you have your social media life as well And sometimes they're different you'd be surprised how different they are with a single person having an online life versus an offline life Which is kind of weird. Okay, how close are the two for you for me? I'm the same person will be the Will be the judge. I mean you can you can look it up. I'm out there. It's all the same You can look it up. I'm out there.

It's all the same. So I wonder if one of my favorite comics from the 1990s New Yorker, there's a dog at the computer. You know what I'm talking about. And he says to the dog next to him, good thing about the internet, no one knows you're a dog. That's pretty awesome yeah so so what does it mean and how real is it for people to just have a dual identity the internet identity and then their actual selves well i'll bite that far i'll bite that off first um i mean we've always had multiple identities um in fact you know in the in the early 20th century uh in the late 19th century,

you had a migration of people from small towns to cities. And one of the things I loved about it was in the small town, everyone knew your business. And it was sort of impossible to reinvent yourself or to discover other sides of yourself. Because everyone's like, no, that's not who you really are. I know who you are, Clive Thompson, right? You go to the big city and suddenly it was like, lo and behold, wow, I could be someone different. Or I could be a couple of different people. I'm one person at work and then I go off and I do my thing with my crowd. Just a quick thing. There are people who say, uh, the city is so crowded. I want to go out into a rural suburban area where no one will know me. Yeah. No, it's the opposite. They will figure you out in 15 minutes. Yes. Whereas in a city,

no one gives a, nobody cares. There's too many people to care. Nobody cares to know you. Yeah, right, right. So I think having multiple identities is actually healthy and a good thing, frankly. You just said, repeat that. I think having multiple identities, you know, as long as they're not, you know, sociopathic and you have like a different postal box where you

sort of, you know, order. Chuck! For a moment I thought I was getting approval. All right. So anyway, that's healthy. And there's an extent to which I think you see people trying to do that online and kind of failing

because large corporations don't want you to have that. They want to know everything about you. They want to assemble it all in one place so they can target ads at you. Like in Mark Zuckerberg's original statement of Facebook, having different selves is a sign of inauthenticity. And of course he's going to say that because he wants to have everything about you so he can target ads at you. Right. And but what he's where he's, I was about to say failing miserably, but then I thought this is who I am and I'm saying that he's failing

so that doesn't make sense uh but I think what he's not taking into account is the fact that when you do have your different selves they can also be authentic sure absolutely you can have different selves that are authentic selves that's my point see like so I play in I play in bands I'm a journalist often those two crowds have no idea about the other part of me, right? Like when I go and hang with musicians, some of them don't read the stuff I do. They're just, that's Clive, the guitar player, right? Exactly. Right.

So ultimately, are there legal ramifications to access to your private information? Well, I mean, that's a good question. I'm not a lawyer. And by the way, who reads the, you know? Yeah. The disclaimer. The legal disclaimer that when you and i always thought that when you click yes i agree that some type of really weird things should happen like you hear a knock on the door and somebody's like yeah we're here for your wife and you're like what yeah man when you click that agree oh that's crazy stuff.

I mean, so I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to give you a good legal answer. But it's definitely true that I think one of the big issues right now is like, you know, what protections, legal protections do we have for the way our data is used? Right now, over in Europe, they actually have a much different view. Germany particularly, because they have the Stasi, right? So they have a lot of laws, and Google runs against these and hates them and lobbies against them. You know, I think we probably need much, much better protections in this country. Can and should an employer hold your social media life against you? I don't think they should, no. I really don't think they should most of the time, particularly at the hiring level, right?

That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, sure. At the level of hiring, okay. And then they say, what have they posted and what drunken pictures yeah you know I don't think I don't think

I don't think they should be doing that stuff because that's tantamount to in the pre-injured era say hey can we come home and just rummage around your house you know

and that you know that was that was considered unreasonable back then it should be similarly considered unreasonable now that's why I'm a comedian today

because all my stuff on social media I can't get a job. What's happening? Tell jokes about it. Exactly. We've got to take a break.

But coming up, more on the future of technology. StarTalk Returns. We're back on StarTalk, and I've got my expert guest, Wired Magazine and New York Times columnist, Clive Thompson. Hey there. We're talking about the future of technology. Chuck Nice. That's right, sir. So we're not experts at this, but we have strong opinions on it.

Yes. And he's got expertise, so we're good. And we're featuring my interview with Marques Brownlee. He's the 20-something-year- old who's been reviewing technology for everybody on the internet. So I had to ask him, where does he think technology is headed? Let's check it out. So what are you going to be telling your kids? And you say, back in my day when I was 22, look what we had to do. Oh my gosh. Can I have sympathy, please? Honestly, I'm thinking cars. I'm hoping cars.

How we drive cars today and we- No, those would be really big gadgets. Does that count as something you would review? I count that. I count that. I say anything with an on button is game. Technically not every car has an on button, but if you look at some of the more high end cars today, they've got electric systems galore, plenty of high tech. I feel like a lot of the stuff we have now that's inside of a car that you have to control, like the steering wheel, even if you're in a self-driving car, they still want you at the controls in case something might go wrong because it's a computer and it's a system that could go wrong. That's funny because the fact that you say that implies that something would go wrong with the machine

that the human can correct rather than something going wrong with a human that the machine needs to correct. Yeah. Because last I checked, all those accidents on the street are humans messing up. For sure. But even the system's getting to the point where everyone has a car that is capable of driving itself. No one even needs that space of a steering wheel in the car. You just kind of sit down. It's maybe a bench facing another bench and you just kind of ride along to your destination. I feel like that's way down the road, where we're at the point where a car is sort of fusing into the next generation of vehicle at this point.

So if cars do all the driving on the road, then in principle, you can up the speed limit. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Right? Because you're not at risk of reaction time. Exactly. So I'm imagining you go 150, 200 miles an hour driving down the road.

No problem. And they'll just weave seamlessly within each other in a way that would be scary if a human was trying to do it, but it'll just be totally normal. That's right, because if all the cars are going 200, any high speed, then it's a moving coordinate system so that a car can move in and out of that that's the other thing all the cars are sort of talking to each other as as points in the matrix and all sort of avoid each other because they already know if car all the way on the right lane with a bunch of stuff in between it knows it wants to go to the left and car all the

way on the left knows it wants to go to the right they can tell the cars around it I'm trying to go to the right I'm trying to go to the left, and car all the way on the left knows it wants to go to the right, and they can tell the cars around it, I'm trying to go to the right, I'm trying to go to the left. Human couldn't do that with another car on the other side of the road. No, you can honk. And then you can try. You can try, but those machines can work with each other

much more efficiently than any human can. I never considered that. So it's a ballet on the freeway. It's a symphony. Symphony. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. on the freeway. It's a symphony. Symphony. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. That's really beautiful.

So, Clive, why do we get software updates? Because there are bugs that are found by the many users that often the testing is just let's put it out there and see what comes back. So self-driving cars where lives are at risk uh what is the risk of there being some kind of bug where it kills people uh or or on top of that what's the risk of hacking into a car to create the accident in the first place i think the hacking might be a bigger risk in the bugs i mean uh regulatorily it's going to be tricky for them to get those cars on the road because cars are pretty tightly regulated unless they can demonstrate pretty persuasively there's not a lot of bugs.

Now, hacking is a different thing because now you've got a human person that's trying actively to break something, right? And that's a much more volatile risk. There's already been situations where cars are out there and Wired hired a couple of hackers to literally take over a car while it's going down the highway, and they did it. And they did it. No problem.

Yes, they did. So I think I've driven in self-driving cars. It's the diabolical division. Yeah, exactly. Wired. Exactly, yeah. I've ridden in Google self-driving cars. Felt pretty comfortable.

They're actually, in a weird way, they're almost sort of cautious drivers. It's like being there with your grandmother at the at the wheel um right now could get faster as you point out but um overall you know if i were to compare it to the dangers of humans driving cars i'm probably okay you know with the self-driving cars if it's well regulated that's the big if right so that's the future i think so yeah i mean i i think it might be it might take longer than we think you're getting these rosy predictions of five years. Yeah, I don't see five years.

No, no. But the fact is that they are on the road right now. They do work. I forget the trucking company. Otto. Otto. So now Otto has gone cross country, traversed the country several times with their semi.

And the only thing the human being is doing is monitoring. They have a guy that sits there and monitors. That's it. And you could also, I mean, frankly, the other reason I'm kind of in favor of it is it has potentially great environmental benefits, right? Because you get way less idling. You get way less jackrabbit starts. These are things that burn huge amounts of CO2.

What's a jackrabbit start? You know, when you're at rest and you suddenly burst off, right? Because humans want to accelerate fast. Robot cars are like, no, I'm just going to ease forward. Boy humans. Testosterone-infused boy humans. There's that.

That's so true. I didn't learn how to drive until I was 25. And that's after the boy human testosterone forces have dissipated. Oh, nicely done. And you get lower insurance. You should not be able to do anything until they're 25. Oh, nicely done. Yeah, yeah. And you get lower insurance. All boys should not be able to do anything until they're 25. That's exactly right.

Let's be honest. We're three men sitting here. We know the deal. We know, right, right. If you're under 25 and you have a penis, you're effing crazy. That's all there is to it, okay? There is something deeply wrong with you. You need help.

You should talk to somebody. Okay, I'm sorry. Every single one of you. Every one of you. Every one of you, okay? So what intrigues me is when you have a self-driving car and it's talking to other cars, there are signals. I just learned that the Tesla talks to other Teslas. So if you come onto a bumpy road and then you make the adjustment to change your suspension, which of course you can do. That information goes to the next Tesla,

any other Tesla that will be on that road, and it'll pre-adjust the suspension before it enters the bumpy part of the road. See, this is where the stuff just gets creepy, man. This is what I'm talking about. Don't you want your car to know? I don't want my car talking to no other cars, okay? Do not talk to any other cars.

How many times do I have to tell you? Don't talk to strangers, car. Okay? Stranger danger. I don't want that Tesla just like... Don't you want to know if there's a hazard in the road? No, what I don't want is that other Tesla saying, you know your owner doesn't love you. Right, exactly.

And the interesting point is going to be, will there come a point when the government decides that the self-driving cars are so much safer that it's illegal for a human to drive a car? They could surely do that. However, I've thought about this. You cannot take a horse on the interstate. Even though there's a day when horses were the only things that brought you around. Good point, good point. So now, if you like horses, you go to a stables.

Right, yeah, yeah. Where you can now ride a horse. So there's a place for you to ride. Exactly. So we'll have racetracks. We'll have racetracks. Interesting. Where then, if you're still a sports car collector, and you want to control your own car, you

take it to the sports, you have a berth at the sports track, at the driving track, and that's where you drive, and you get your thrills, just like the horseback riders do. So the Mustang will just be just like a real Mustang. You gotta go to the ranch. You got to go to the stables and pull your Mustang out of the garage and take it for a ride. Giddy up. Oh, man. I asked Marquez, is there any other future of technology that he's excited about or intrigued by?

Let's check it out. When you're the ripe old age of 32, how do you want to be living life? What technology do you want to be surrounding you? Well, 10 years from now, let's see. I hope car tech is on another level. I hope that's the most exciting part. And that's the right horizon for this to kick in if it's going to do it. All right. I hope the handheld devices we have are no longer handheld. And that's pretty ambitious for 10 years, I think.

But the communication... But where are they? Well, someone would argue they're, like, in your arm or, like, attached. You've seen wearable tech smartwatches that kind of shrink down and end up on your wrist or on your ear or on your neck or something like that.

But how about the biology technology interface? Interfusion? Yeah. It's a little USB thing right here. Yeah, right in your neck. They kind of did that in, no one called it that, but they were USB ponytails in Avatar. Oh, I see Avatar.

Remember that? Remember they take their hair and they plug it into the plant. Yeah, yeah. And they would communicate with one another. Yeah. That's the kind of thing I see, though, is like a much more portable but complete version of your digital self to just exist and be able to move around. So, Clive, how real is this interface of biology and technology? And I ask because do I need my iPhone neurologically attached to me

when it's sitting at my fingertips to begin with? I mean... Isn't that the same thing? It's awfully intimate right now, right? It's right there. Completely. Yeah, they talk about wearable technology. We already have wearable technology.

We're all carrying phones with us, right? It's in my pocket. You know, but there's people working on you know google's working on these you know like contact lenses that have like technology display technology in them they're working on that quite seriously so any ethical frontiers here that we don't know about yet um bioethical i mean the bioethical frontiers uh concerns are always do you produce something that's great for intelligence performance and ability but is it so expensive that only rich people get it right that that's great for intelligence performance and ability but is so expensive that only rich people get it right that that's okay that tends to be the answer the answer is yes

no i heard a rebuttal to that from ray kerswell because we had him on start talk sure yeah all right he said no that's not a problem that has and that has not and i said why he said because when it first comes out it never works well anyway and it's stupendously expensive and it's not and and so yes only a few people have it but only when it becomes mass market does it become truly functional yeah that's true yeah no he's right he's right uh when phones first came out you know you had to be pretty rich to get the first computers are pretty useless computers they're useless and the first phones are completely useless and the ones that are mass market are the ones that are most so that's why i don't see that as a problem.

Well, I mean, I hope he's right, shall we say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Clive, it's been great having you. Yeah, it's been great being on. Good conversation, guys. And we've got to bring you back. We'll surely find some other excuse. Yeah, you're much better than the other writers.

You call it. I appreciate it. Well, cool. Chuck, any final thoughts here? No, I just think that this is a very scary time. I'm a happy thought. Oh, I'm sorry. Technology is wonderful, and I'm so happy that we have it.

Yes. And I think the human race is so much better off now that we all have our faces stuck in some stupid phone instead of talking to one another. You know, I think we are still in our infancy. Do you know it took multiple centuries after the printing press before anyone figured out that you could make something called a newspaper? True. So it was, you had broadsheets and things, but a routinely produced newspaper.

A daily. A daily. That took like 400 years, 300 something years. So here we are at the dawn of the internet, even though it's 10, 15, 20 years old. I think we don't yet know. We're still playing with ourselves, right? And I don't think we have, I think there's a level of maturity of how to use the power of this technology that we have yet to attain.

I just love that you said level of maturity after you said playing with yourself. And I'm standing, I'm sitting here like, I can't help it. By the way, the number one thing that the internet causes people playing with themselves. So I just think there's a level of technological maturity that we have yet to achieve. And I don't know when, is it 50 years? Is it a hundred years? A hundred and 50 years? I don't know,

but only then can we really say that it doesn't own us. We own it. Nice. You've been watching and probably more likely listening to star talk. And I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, Chuck. Thanks for being here. Always a pleasure. Live. listening to StarTalk. And I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Chuck, thanks for being here.

Always a pleasure. Clive, good to have you. And I publicly thank Marques Brownlee for agreeing to that interview. And until next time, as always, I bid you to keep looking up.