History and Future of Communication through Augmented Reality (Janosch Amstutz, Beem)

Welcome to Chaotica, land of chaos, where imagination is the prevailing state of mind. This is Michelangelo from Stride Speaking, and today I'm talking to Janosch Amstutz. He's the founder of augmented reality platform Beam. He grew up in Australia in a hippie community with parents supporting counterculture. So his perception of human interactions and how we communicate is extremely interesting and different from what we see in normal society. And today I have him to explore the concept of Augmented reality, which is opposite to virtual reality where you shelter yourself. Augmented reality infers on top of the real world. A startup Beam has raised around $4.5 million from Ascension and Five Lion Ventures, and it enables users to communicate live or on demand between each other on augmented reality. So that would be me picking up my phone, pointing it somewhere, and I see a full-body image of whoever I want to talk to. They're completely platform agnostic, so I could be wearing my AR glasses and see someone. And now that we're slowly getting to more clear, transparent AR glasses design, you can see where this is going. I can have a hologram of my friend right in front of me talking to me. Thank you to partners of the show Citizen Nostalgia again for the incredible support. And as always, Before we dive into the beautiful world of artificial reality, augmented reality, and virtual reality, would love to start with your background because I think it's particularly unique and it's a good starting point to understand why you're focusing on augmented reality. So why don't you give us a segue of like your journey and where you started?

Sure, thanks. Most founders will always say they have an unorthodox founder story. Mine started off in Switzerland. I'm Swiss. My parents are Swiss. Switzerland is known for being very conservative, very kind of straight and narrow. You know, the biggest innovations out of Switzerland is, you know, finance and biotech.

Yeah.

And my parents didn't fit the mold of Switzerland. My parents were both black sheep of their respective families and lived a very alternative hippie lifestyle, even in Switzerland. So not necessarily the drug side of things, but more the utopian, you know, clean eating, clean living, you know, low impact on the environment lifestyle. And they'd always dreamed of moving somewhere to create their own new utopia. And Switzerland just didn't seem to fit the mold for that. Along came a nuclear power accident in the mid-'80s, Chernobyl, which spooked a lot of Europe at the time. And my parents used that as their excuse to set up a new life in Australia. So they moved as far away from their families and from Switzerland as possible. They kind of had this idea that if they were moving away, they would go all in. And so they flew as far away as they could, left Switzerland on Friday the 13th. Lucky day. I had no choice in the matter. I was just a child. And we landed in a small town called Byron Bay in Australia. If anyone knows Byron Bay, they know it's pretty alternative, but my parents went all in on that as well and purchased some land on a hippie community and built their own house, solar power, rainwater, veggie garden, chickens, a cow.

One.

One cow.

What was the name?

Bruna.

Bruna.

Was the name. She was a Swiss Brown. The running joke is that if Swiss people leave Switzerland, they will never trust the dairy of another country. So we had to create our own kind of yogurt and cheese and so on because the dairy products in Australia just weren't up to scratch for our very high bar of quality of Swiss.

That's how it goes. I feel the same here in the UK, I think.

Yeah. The cow was the bane of my existence because it meant I couldn't watch morning TV. I had to milk the cow. And, but for me, morning TV was different also because our solar power system couldn't handle a big color TV. We had this tiny black and white TV around about the size of an iPhone screen.

Wow. That's very small.

Yeah. So the The concept of don't sit too close to the TV or your eyes will get square didn't exist for us because we had to do it to be able to watch.

It was basically virtual reality in 3D.

It was almost that, yeah, full field of view. And for me, The Simpsons were grayscale, which was exciting when I went to my friends' places when I was a child and I could actually see which colors different cartoons were. Yeah, so basically I grew up as a very alternative child. My parents tried to be as kind of against the grain or counterculture as possible raising us and the way that kind of our lifestyle was as kids. And for all children growing up like that, you'd think retrospectively, Now in 2022, if someone hears that you grew up as a hippie child running around barefoot in the forest with, you know, organic fruit and vegetables from your garden, they'd say that would be— that would have been— that must have been amazing. You must have had such a great childhood. But for me, I felt like I was disadvantaged. I felt like I was being punished because I didn't get what all the other kids got. I didn't get a normal upbringing. I didn't get access to tech. I didn't have consumerism in my household. And so when I was old enough to leave home, when I finished my schooling, I rebelled and punished my parents for giving me such a shitty upbringing.

Cool.

And flew back to Europe and got a white-collar job, or as my parents would call it, being a global agent of destruction. So yeah, so like, you know, in a weird kind of happenstance, and I'd love to talk about this a little bit later in the discussion, but kind of Beam is me trying to come full circle to be doing something that aligns to how I grew up as a child and what sort of kind of morals and aspirations and thought processes, you know, my family had. Growing up on a hippie community.

No, but let's go there. I think it's interesting. And what kind of thought processes did you have as a hippie community? And what did they mean to you as a kid? And what do they mean to you right now?

So what was really interesting was for me, the hippie lifestyle was normal. It was what I knew and everything else was shiny and new and exciting, you know, like the normal city upbringing or You know, even having, you know, proper electronics, not having to switch the lights off at 7 PM. And what I knew as a, basically a hippie child, was a very communal and very intimate community of people living very close together. It was 40 families all living on this large forest block we had. infrastructure that, you know, the entire community built, a pottery kiln, a baker. We had, you know, dams for water, built the road system ourselves. And what was the most interesting and what I just thought was normal for the world was the way that we communicated and interacted with each other. Multifamily dinners. If it was someone's birthday, everyone would come from the entire community. music playing in the garden with live musicians and just like a really, really close relationship with other individuals. And our lack of technology was a huge benefit to that communication because we didn't have the telephone to call each other. There was just one two-way radio that the entire community would hear. So for example, if I would call my friend, You know, I was a child, he was, you know, the same age as me. If I'd call him and, you know, ask who wants to come and play, the entire community would know because the entire community has the same channel of the two-way radio. So communication was very, very intimate. So very close.

How do you use that? How do you know when you're actually allowed to use the radio channel?

Everyone just had respect for it. And if you have that communal way to interact with each other, there's that sense of respect. And so you don't say anything too intimate that the entire community needs to hear. If you want even more intimate communication, you do something very simple. You literally walk 2 minutes, 5 minutes down the forest track or down the road and you knock on their door and you have a conversation. And for me, that was normal, that we as human beings would just interact like that on a very intimate basis.

After how many people, because how big was the hippie community that you could still have a self-sufficient ecosystem where, you know, you were having everything that you needed, but also, you know, everything was very respectful in terms of communications. When do you think it becomes too large where that doesn't work anymore?

It's very interesting. I don't think it's got to do with size. And so we weren't entirely self-sufficient. It was more like supplementation.

Okay.

There was still the need to go to the grocery store and, you know, buy things. We didn't butcher animals apart from the chickens. So if we wanted meat, then we would buy it from the local store or the farmer's market or a farm close by. But what's interesting with these communal relationships is it's almost a test of time. So the time changed the dynamics of this community where maybe people knew each other too well. Maybe, you know, some grievances that were years old were never resolved. And so I don't think it was necessarily a case of size because it was, you know, 40 families, probably about— you know, 100, 120 individuals. And it wasn't, there was no issues with the size. It was more around kind of the evolution of the way that people interact with each other over time. Okay.

And so what gets corrupted?

In terms of the corruption, I think there's the human nature of individuals and What's interesting with human nature is if we are in a hippie community and we are so close and the communication is so intimate, that gets amplified. So corruption in terms of relationships and friction gets amplified, which is why perhaps as we're a global society, we've been pushing back on intimate communication very heavily. And moved to less intimate ways for us to communicate. Things like text messaging, things like email, even video conferencing doesn't give you the same psychological sense of intimacy, connection, trust that a physical interaction gives you. So perhaps if you look at kind of us as a global society, we have step back and hid behind technology for communication.

That's very interesting because you think that intimacy can be a catalyzer of whatever emotion is present there. And in this specific case, it can be negative, but it can also be positive. But we are decided to slowly step back, you think?

So what was interesting for me is, as I said, the intimate way that we communicated on this community was the normal for me. I thought that's just how everyone interacted with each other.

But it's not.

But it's not. So when I left, when I went, I moved back to Switzerland, became a commodities trader, white-collar job, you know, worked with multiple global firms trading physical commodities. Suddenly, you know, from having these intimate connections, there's these very superficial connections using email, using the telephone. Back then, that was what would have been 2008. Video conferencing was even kind of a thing that hardly anyone touched. It was either email, telephone, or maybe we meet at a conference once a year for that bit of face-to-face interaction to shake the hand. But yeah, so I then realized in the real world that we're using a lot of technology for communication over distance that doesn't provide anywhere near that same amount of connection or intimacy.

So, but it's interesting that we can draw almost a history of how communication evolved. And it's funny that you had your micro experience, but we also had a macro experience. If you wanna map, if we wanna map back, map that back out to how communication evolved as a whole, Do we want to go there?

Yeah, sure.

How it used to be.

Okay. I love this topic.

Run us through the evolution.

So basically, like you said, I had this micro experience where the way that we communicated was very low tech. So it was almost like going back to the days before technology provided other alternatives. And so we had that ability to create a normal format for face-to-face communication or communal communication. However, you know, over hundreds and hundreds of years, the world, us as humanity, have become a very globally connected society. You know, maybe in the Stone Age, there wasn't a whole need, like a real need to connect to, you know, tribes in another location. But as kind of empires grew larger, societies grew more complex, the need for us to communicate became a communication over distance challenge. It was no longer possible to get everyone in the same room. And so we forged innovative ways to facilitate communication over distance. This whole evolution of communication over distance is really exciting because we've always tried to figure out the best way to communicate. with the technologies we had at the time. For example, in the Stone Age, there was also this ability to communicate over distance and time, which was things like cave paintings, which gave the next season or the next generation knowledge who aren't there right now of what was hunted, what animals are available in the area, maybe what individuals were important with handprints on the wall. To be able to communicate. And then the first real-time communication after things which were a bit less efficient, like horse riders, marathon runners, carrier pigeons, was Morse code, which was a huge breakthrough. The ability for an empire to communicate almost in real time through relay stations across thousands of miles. Was an incredible invention. But given the low-tech nature, all you had was words on a paper. So there's no intimacy there at all, apart from if it might have been a poem. But that was the best technology we had at the time. And this evolution of communication has always been an evolution of how can we create the next evolution to communication that's more credible, that can provide more information, And information is not just words on a page, otherwise we would have stopped at Morse code. It's also the nuances in speech, identifying who the individual is, and that's why the telephone was invented. The ability for me when I was a child to get to know my grandparents in Switzerland was over the telephone, and I knew them from the sound of their voice, and I could identify them through the sound of their voice and the way that they spoke. And so the telephone was this incredible next-level invention that allowed us to figure out who's on the other side and get some of these small nuances in the most important parts of communication aside from the words being said is how can we transfer that information? One, credibly. Two, efficiently. And three, to build trust. And so there's a lot of psychology behind communication, which makes it one of the most complex things. that we ever do in our life. And the technology, the telephone also wasn't enough for us to communicate efficiently over distance, which is why video conferencing was invented by AT&T in 1968. So video conferencing has been around for that long, basically using a television and a telephone. And what that allowed was for you to start reading the nuances in facial expression and start to get triggers that can build trust in that communication.

So trust here is the keyword, or is it more how real it feels? What, like, what's the bottom line?

So if you break down communication into a very Swiss, this is a very Swiss way, if you break down the communication into efficiency and effectiveness, Um, the aim of communication is for you to transfer information and for that information to be received and received in the way that you want it to be received, um, for an outcome. Uh, whether that's, um, for you to convince someone that you care about them or convince someone of a sale, uh, in business or convince someone, um, that what you're saying is correct. And so breaking down communication to that factor, the most important building blocks of communication is the effective transfer and the effective receipt of that information. And if you then bundle that into a conversation, it's the bidirectional nature of that transfer and receipt of information that is key for communication to happen. If you can't effectively transfer information and it's not effectively received, there's no point in communicating. And so our technology evolution here—

Unless it's art.

Unless it's art. Unless it's art. Yeah.

I would say, I'm not sure, but it feels like art is the only type of communication in which you're okay with being misinterpreted because it's not inherently—

So artistic expression.

Right.

And that, but that would also then breaking it down into me being very technical and Swiss, that would be where the artist would want to leave interpretation open to the communication, the transfer of Right. Because they would do that objectively for the outcome of leaving it vague and open to the interpretation of the receiver. So there's always an outcome, right? And the outcome, if you don't want an outcome to communication, then maybe communication isn't required. And when you look at the technology evolution, we went from video conferencing, which has been around for a long time, but has only just more recently kind of in 2 stages become very effective and interesting. The first stage was the launch of Skype, where communication using video conferencing became mainstream. Mainly on the consumer side of things. So where the intimacy or the outcome of the communication is at its lowest hanging fruit level, and that is a very emotional format for communication around your loved ones and telling people that you care, connecting with relatives overseas. That's a very low hanging emotional fruit for communication is if you can create an emotional response that's a very deep-rooted response in a human being, then that's a great go-to-market for Skype, for example.

Yeah. I mean, it feels like with Skype, it was sort of the first step in which you include such an important sense, which is sight, right? It didn't really have that. I mean, live sight.

Exactly.

And so that's a big emotional jump.

Yeah, an absolutely incredible go-to-market by Skype and the way that the technology went to market and just absolutely exploded. It was incredible.

They were leveraging emotion as their go-to-market.

Yeah, absolutely. The human connection. And that was 18 and a half years ago. But in the business context, video conferencing has only really become super mainstream in the past 3 years. Where we had a catalyst, and this is that second big leap where communication in person was not possible. And so instead of trying to find a better communications tool than the telephone, it was the reverse solution. It was, we want the human connection in person, but we can't have it. So video conferencing is the next best thing. And that was that kind of catalyst for Now it's incredible. Everyone can video conference to their heart's desire, which is a great evolution for us because we're able to transfer more intimacy, more trust, and more credibility through technology, which is a fantastic evolution for us.

I mean, it feels like we really cracked the emotional connection that you can create with communication. At scale because we were able to call, but then we bumped it up with the emotional connection. It's very interesting what you said previously also, that is, I never thought about it, but communication, you propose it like a consequence of 2 things as a self-standing wave, but also as a consequence of the expansion of society. So society itself enlarges and then communication needs to catch up because we are requiring those intimate relationships. I always thought the opposite, that usually is like communication reaches a new level and then we can expand as a society, but it probably can happen both ways. What do you say? Is it mutually exclusive or?

I think it depends on the tech, but in terms of communication, I think it's definitely the need was there. The need was pushing innovation to happen. And we can dive down the rabbit hole in the metaverse later. to figure out if there's a need for the metaverse to happen. But yeah, I think with the evolution of what we've done with communication over distance is a case of communication over distance is a big problem. Miscommunication over distance is a massive problem for us as a society. We don't understand each other well enough as a global society to really effectively be able to coexist and live together without misunderstandings and miscommunication.

Right.

And so the challenge of cracking the code to creating the perfect communication solution that provides all the same triggers as a physical meeting, but using technology over distance is something that is incredibly powerful and incredibly important to us, which is why You know, we've always evolved our way to communicate. And looking at Skype, although, you know, we've had this explosion of video conferencing solutions, you know, Zoom did extremely well in the pandemic. And, you know, there's 5 or 6 other video conferencing tools that are incredibly successful. They still don't provide the same psychological triggers or subconscious triggers. that we get in a physical face-to-face.

Right.

It's the reason why you and I are sitting in the same room right now.

Precise.

It's the reason why people still meet physically. It's the reason why large corporates are asking employees to come back to office. That even though video conferencing was an incredible tool to fill a need during the pandemic and will remain a very relevant solution because it's better than a phone call. I don't know too many people that just connect on a phone call these days, especially in business, but it's not sufficient. There is still a need for us to continue to innovate.

There is some little holes or big holes that we still need to really—

Exactly.

Before we get there. Okay, so what do you think we are doing really well so far and what What are the missing steps that we're gonna need to get to the full presence of communication?

So breaking down communication from saying it's the transfer of information, the reception of information, it's the effectiveness of that, the trust factor, the credibility factor, the intimacy is a psychological problem rather than a technical problem. And this is where I think sometimes in the tech world, we often omit the psychological aspects of what we're doing and the way that we receive these technologies. And we focus more on, you know, how do we crack the code using technology, using software, hardware, systems. And so when you look at communication, it's a very psychologically intensive thing. The way that we as a human being react to another human being or interact with another human being is different from how we interact with anything else on this planet, from any object, from any animal, from anything else that we see. The subconscious and psychological triggers happening between 2 humans is the most complex thing that happens. There's obviously different scales to that when you get to like intimacy with, you know, someone that you're in love with to business conversations. There's a huge broad spectrum of that. But fundamentally, it's a psychological challenge to overcome.

Interesting. And considering it's the most complex thing that we know of, how do we solve it if we don't really understand it?

So we do understand quite a bit. We understand that our subconscious has a number of triggers and a number of things that need to be satisfied for effective communication and interaction. Things like voice nuances in speech, facial expressions that we can read. And these all come about as a way for us to solve On a very primal level, the fight or flight mechanism initially between 2 humans. A long, long time ago, another human being in our vicinity was the most dangerous thing in our vicinity. So like another human being in the forest was the most dangerous predator, so to speak. And we have these This primal instinct to other human beings. It's the same reason why when we walk down the streets and someone walks towards us and comes within our comfort zone, our subconscious forces our eyes to scan that human being. Firstly, look into their eyes and scan that human being to determine if that human being is safe to be in our space. And we often don't even realize it's happening until we both do it at the same time. And it's awkward. We lock eyes and we're like, oh shit, I didn't realize I was checking you out.

No, but also like most times you do lock eyes independently.

Yeah.

Because it's, you do want to see the eyes specifically as well.

That can happen also, specifically around when you're looking for that validation. Yeah. And in communication, we're looking for that same credibility, trust, safety on a much more deeper level because there's a credible, tangible exchange of information. with an outcome that we want from that other individual.

So sort of double opt-in that is like, yeah, we're both safe, we're both okay.

Exactly. Okay. Which is why, you know, over thousands and thousands of years of communication, we as human beings have optimized ourselves for physical, in-person, face-to-face interactions, and that satisfies our subconscious.

Had we had the tech, would probably have been different if we had Zoom 2,000 years ago.

Yeah, there may have been a completely different evolution to the way that we To the way that we interacted. And absolutely, and talking about, this is a long segue to answer your question, the things that we can do to improve communication over distance from more than something like Zoom is to psychologically bridge that gap in credibility and intimacy. that is lacking in video conferencing, but that we have with a physical in-person meeting. And there's still a gap. It's evident for anyone. The educational system is struggling from what they call Zoom fatigue, but really it's a fatigue of having a gap in the intimacy and the transfer of information.

You think so?

Zoom fatigue is— It's not just the screen fatigue because individuals can come with screens I mean, if you look at your iPhone screen tracker and see how long you've been looking at an iPhone for, it's probably the same as a workday for most people. It's the intimacy gap and the gap in the communication that we don't have using technology that we used to have physically.

So some of those Lego bricks that make up the effective deep communication are missing, and we really feel it after a few hours of communicating that way.

Absolutely. And some of those bricks that are missing are those exact triggers that the subconscious isn't receiving that it's used to receiving in an in-person meeting.

And why do we get fatigued, do you think? Like, what does that cause tiredness? Because we're trying to read so much into it? Why is that?

It could be that. I'm not 100% sure of the nuances in Why it would cause us to become tired, but the the deficit in in the communication is something that is is is definitely a a thing that we as human beings can solve if we would just do one of two things: go back to in-person communication, which isn't feasible given we're so globally dispersed, and even from the last two years we've become. more isolated physically. Of course.

Or solve it.

Yeah, just a touch. And then on the other side, what we could do is we could improve technology to satisfy those things that are missing for our subconscious, which is basically what I've been building for the past 5 years.

Right. So tell us, I think this is good for us to go into augmented reality and Beam. Specifically, how— let's talk about augmented reality. So what is the broad category of augmented reality? What's the definition for it? And why do you think that it can fill those missing gaps?

So specifically on communication, I think augmented reality is a tool that enables our subconscious to receive similar triggers. And I'll Love to dive deep into that. But first and foremost, augmented reality, along with things like virtual reality, mixed reality, extended reality, all these buzzwords, the metaverse, all these buzzwords that people are trying to make popular around different technologies, maybe some as a vanity metric for their interpretation, but the entire ecosystem is essentially the ability for us to compute, i.e., to consume experiences and data with technology in a completely new way. And this new way for it to work needs to be an evolution that is a better experience than the previous. The previous experience is basically the one that we have now, smartphone screens, which is the product of kind of a long evolution of our technological capabilities and then user experience design. But what augmented reality can do for the world, which is why I'm so excited about it, is it can create a new way for us to experience data and other experiences more intuitively. And by intuitively, you know, the standard definition that someone would say for augmented reality is to be able to see technology, i.e., data and experiences overlaid over the world around you. And that's super important because it's not just a fun tool or like a, wow, it's so cool that I can see a cartoon character jumping on my table. It's a more intuitive way for us to experience things because we've been experiencing things like that for thousands of years. That's another kind of psychological premise that I think is driving a huge change in the way that we design things technologically. is for us to become more intuitive with the way that we interact with not just the real world, but interact with technology. And so for example, a great example of this for augmented reality is something that Google Maps and Apple Maps have done recently is instead of viewing a map on your phone screen and having to decipher that code, it's a key. It's not the real world you're seeing on your phone. It's a graphic. And then figure out how that graphic relates to the world around you, which has been kind of the current user experience for everything for us. What Google Maps have done with augmented reality is they overlay the directional markers over the street in front of you in real time. And that's much more intuitive because So much easier. Because before tech, we used to have signs everywhere. We would read markers, wayfinders. And before that, we had someone say, you know, go down the street there, take a left, walk down there, you'll see a big red sign. That's your destination. You know, that's the grocery store. And so we're so used to using the world around us for visual cues. And then, you know, along comes computing. We decided that given the technological constraints of computers in the early days and even up until recently, that we would reinvent the way that we interacted with things, i.e., we put everything on screens, everything in text, which is very unintuitive for us psychologically. You know, we'd have to read information instead of it being said to us. And looking at augmented reality, augmented reality isn't just this new creative tool. It is the ability for us to overlay experiences and data into the world in the same way that we've been consuming experiences and data for thousands of years.

That's very interesting. I'm specifically I am specifically intrigued by the sign example because I'm thinking, oh wow, we can slowly take into the augmented reality all of the layers that we right now need to infer something and we can then leave the real world to the creative aspects, to the, you know, what does a beautiful room look like without having to worry about the functional aspects because we can abstract them. And so that can have a really big impact also in how the world around us looks like, right?

Oh, absolutely. And there's this convergence of the real world and technology is a very scary thing for a lot of people.

Scary. I mean, for—

It's terrifying.

Yeah, for sure. Do you think they should be scared?

I don't know.

Oh.

And I will say that in the same way that someone who was talking about the internet 25 years ago, if they were asked, should you be terrified of the internet, wouldn't know enough back then to say yes or no. I think there's definitely been a lot of scary things with the internet, but it's brought us so much good and so much progress.

So what's the downside here that you're thinking about? So potential negative scenarios for specifically augmented reality?

Every time we have a new computing paradigm, every time there's a new shift in the way that we can use and deploy technology and experiences, there's always the ability for us to go too far. But we as society, again, looking at the psychology of a community, you know, going back to my roots, if you have a community together, there's always ways to solve problems communally. If someone in the community goes too far, the rest of the community can bring them back. We saw this with social media. For example, social media was viewed as this amazing way to connect people, this incredibly new technology that everyone could get on and be able to share experiences online. And then, you know, the past few years, I'd say the past 5 years, you started to get this pushback from society saying we've gone too far with social media. It's causing issues within our society. We need to figure out how to resolve that and focus on bringing— reining in the way that social media is being used for it to become something good for society. There's still challenges now.

Of course. But here in augmented reality specifically, what would you say are the scenarios in which you'd be like, yeah, that would probably be pushing it too far?

So there is a chance with augmented reality The biggest fear with augmented reality is that we will be pasted with all of this, all of these experiences that we don't want in our real world, i.e., our visuals every day will look like Piccadilly Circus or Times Square.

But you can always remove your glasses if they're—

Exactly. You can always remove your glasses. And you wouldn't expect society to enable that because it wouldn't be something that would progress us as humankind. So there's always the possibility for you to then define your augmented reality. What tools are important to you and what aren't? In the same way that, you know, which apps do you want on your phone and which ones do you not want on your phone?

Yes, but then if you live in a precarious environment financially, for instance, What do you want on your augmented reality? Well, maybe I don't want to have ads, but I do want the financial rewards of ads. So yes, leaving the choice open is good, but at the same time, leaving the choice open to people that have no choice is as good as not doing so, right?

Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good point.

So I don't know if we should have strapped this choice in the first place and it should be just kind of, yeah, no ads then directly. But then at the same time, that hinders innovation because then you need to find other business models.

Which is where the rise of Web3 as part of the whole metaverse and future computing discussion is a really interesting and timely concurrent innovation.

So what's your, we've talked about the history and we're talking about right now. So the augmentation of today, metaverse is the next step. I think, do you agree? What do you envision it like?

Well, I think the metaverse is a piece of shit, honestly. If I'm allowed to say that, I really think it's a piece of shit. And I've been very vocal about that. And it's not necessarily me taking a swipe at the innovators. It's the perception that has been built around what the metaverse truly is. I think is actually detrimental to where we as society will land with these technologies. I think the metaverse that has been communicated to the general public has been, I hate to use that word, augmented, or it has been influenced by a need for fast innovation and fast monetization. to prove out concepts, which is why the metaverse per se is understood by most people as being these virtual reality worlds, these games that you can buy things and sell things and wear digital clothing and meet up. And I think that's been overall detrimental to the evolution and the perception of what great technologies are being created right now.

Why did we end up there? Like what happened?

There's a quick segue to monetization of the metaverse through virtual reality and animated games, mainly because the lowest hanging fruit for metaverse companies are gamers and their ability to easily adopt similar user experiences as kind of the foundational users of these ecosystems. But what we've seen is that even gamers have been pushing back massively on metaverse ecosystems. You look at the user numbers for metaverses like Decentraland and The Sandbox, I think the figures came out recently that some of these platforms had less than 100 users a day and they've got a $2.4 billion valuation and they've been pumping huge amounts of cash into forcing these platforms to continue to work. Look at the declining user numbers on Facebook's Horizon platform. And so there has been this big pushback, I think, because the general public hasn't understood What incredible utility the metaverse ecosystem, which includes virtual reality, AR, includes Web3 components, blockchain, crypto.

So the pushback has arrived because you think that the big corporations thought that metaverse was going to be an— I mean, they attacked the low-hanging fruit, which was gaming.

Easy segue.

Easy segue. And they did that poorly.

I think so, yeah.

Okay, poorly in what regards? I mean, I assume each one of them did a different mistake or did they all fall in the same trap?

I think the general consensus, and this is where we talked about, you know, why communication has evolved, is because there's been a genuine need for an evolution in the way that we interact. With the metaverse, looking at it again, I think one of the biggest pushbacks from the public, especially what I hear, is it sounds cool, but why do I need it? I don't need it.

Right. There is so many problems.

There's no utility for it. And that's a massive beast to try and slay is you're trying to build something that people don't think they need. And that's where, you know, potentially the gaming segue has worked in some areas and I'm not discounting, there's a lot of games out there, like Roblox is doing incredibly and a bunch of other gaming type metaverse platforms. But when you try and create a platform that has very poor utility, then you potentially miss the mark.

Interesting. And so you think that the experiences that are built on top, like especially entertainment experiences, so mostly gaming, are not what people are going to buy into when it comes to metaverse. And so what do you think is going to be the first actual thing that people do buy into when it comes to metaverse?

So there's this concept of that a new industry needs a killer app. If you have a killer app for an industry, it breaks it open. People thought Pokémon Go was the killer app for AR. But really the utility of Pokémon Go was not the AR function.

It was the entertainment.

It was the entertainment and the mapping and the ability to roam around your real world, but not see the Pokémon in your real world because most people switched off the AR feature. And so it wasn't really the killer app.

So it wasn't— I mean, it was AR, but it wasn't in the sense that—

That wasn't why it was so successful.

Interesting.

That was a great marketing tactic and a great wow factor. But it wasn't the thing that kept it successful. And if you look at the way people use Pokémon GO these days, which is still doing great, it's not the AR features that are driving Pokémon GO. Aha.

That's interesting. It's very— I had previous guests on the podcast and it was like, oh, that was the killer app. And now we're saying, no, that was not the killer app.

It was absolutely not.

And what was the killer app?

There definitely hasn't been a killer app yet. And before the killer app, you need something And a good friend of mine talks about this very heavily. You need an enabling application, something that's not the mass adoption necessarily, but something that makes sense to the right people, something that really makes sense as a utility for people to understand this is why there is a need for the future of computing. This is why there is a need for us to move from this, which is perfectly Great for a lot of people. You can put your information in your pocket, carry it around everywhere, consume a lot of things, but you really need to find those enabling use cases. And unfortunately, I don't think many, if any, of the metaverse applications that have come out, I at least haven't seen anything big enough to warrant an enabling application where people start to understand why they should use this new technology. And I think it's coming very soon. There's been a lot of enabling applications in VR. So for example, yeah, there have been some games that have been killer apps in VR gaming. If you look at Beat Saber, that was a killer app for VR.

So we already had the enabling app in VR.

We have to an extent that VR has become extremely credible for things like education, training, psychological, how do you call it, psychological treatment. So for example, there's a couple of cool companies in London that work with the NHS that use VR to bring anxiety down in people like ambulance drivers after they've had trauma. And so VR has extreme utility there and is pushing very heavily into that side of things. But augmented reality and the metaverse as a whole ecosystem hasn't had that enabling application. So I think to kind of cut this like massive rabbit hole a little bit short is that the metaverse is such a huge thing. It's such a huge beast is that You need the enabling and the killer applications in VR first, and then you need the enabling applications and killer applications in AR. And then you need the mass adoption of things like Web3 and blockchain communities and crypto communities to all kind of merge together into creating the new way that we interact with technology.

Okay, so you see a future in which VR and AR both have a space?

Oh, absolutely.

Okay.

Explain to me.

So AR is going to be focused, from what I understand, from what you said, more on the functional overlay, whilst VR is more experiential. Is that so?

Oh, absolutely. That's perfect. And which is why I think AR will be so much bigger.

AR?

AR.

Because you think experience is less valuable than function?

It's for that statement for me to hold true. You look at the way that we've interacted historically as well. It's VR is you disappearing into a different environment. For example, like what we used to do with a television, which we now do on our phones and laptops and where else. It's experiential. It's a way for us to To duck away from reality. In the gaming side, it's a way for us to be entertained, ducking away from reality. And gamers have done amazing things for mental health. A lot of people find solace in games. But then also looking at the medical side of things, it's a way to duck away from trauma. It's a way to duck away from reality to process something. Whereas augmented reality is much more utility-based. It's how do we consume the information and experience that we need to function as human beings in the real world in the same way that all of our utility apps on our phones enable us to consume data for our real-world interactions. You know, have music on in the background in our real world, have Google Maps for navigation, book a car, communicate with someone.

Right. But at the same time, as we get better also on the VR side, I think it could go into some of the real world things that we do in real world right now into virtual reality. So I don't know how much of the real world will stay like this. For instance, you know, you don't really need to go to work that much anymore. There's remote working and so on. And so is it possible that the overlay on top of real world that augmented reality ads could be less than the new application that eats completely on this side that is virtual reality.

That's where it becomes super exciting.

What do you mean?

That's where you get to that merge point of how much is virtual and how much is real and how much do I need real or how much do I want real and how much do I need and want virtually? Because you can kind of go so far as to say, That you could, like, is augmented reality still augmented reality if everything is virtual apart from the chair I'm sitting on and I can see my physical chair? And that's where we as humanity will need to figure out where we land and where we're comfortable with. And I don't know, in the same way that people were terrified of the internet or email even, they're terrified of email. I don't want—

They were. Yeah.

There's incredibly obviously dated TV interviews from the '90s of TV presenters discussing that they definitely don't want their communication to be sitting inside a computer because it's terrified and anyone can send an email to my inbox and I have no control over who can message me. And, you know—

It's funny, I get some of them listening to that. Yeah, it's hilarious. But at the same time, I see it today because when I bring up wallet-to-wallet messaging, people are Like, so anybody, all the brands are gonna eat you alive. And then he's like, ah, maybe. But so everybody has email access as well. Now that I think about it. Yeah, it's very true. I didn't know about how shocking email was.

And so the question is like, for us as humanity, how far are we comfortable to go? And I don't think anyone knows the answer to that right now.

What's your guess?

I think we'll go too far and then we'll come back to, come back to some state of equilibrium like we do in a lot of different spaces.

Do you think there will be a societal norm or do you think we'll have splittage? So will there be, I ask you specifically because of course you grew up in the hippie environment, which means that it's an abstraction, right? And so do you think there will be communities more and more that choose that direction or are we converging?

I think there's huge gentrification of the way that we use technology. And we don't even realize it now as a first world society. We don't realize now how many people still don't have access to the internet. We don't realize now how many people have never touched a smartphone in their life. There's a huge percentage of the world that has been left behind. And that's only accelerating because our innovation and our tech progress in the world is accelerating faster than it ever has to the point where, you know, if you're in the AR industry and you see what's being created already, most of the world doesn't even know it exists. And it's mainly because perhaps there is a need for consumer or societal education before this technology gets dropped onto people's laps. Technology is almost faster than the rate at which we as humans can become comfortable with the evolution. You know, a lot of people, when I tell them I'm in the AR space, they'll say, haha, Google Glass was a complete failure. AR is a joke.

It's dead.

Yeah. But I'm like, well, okay, it was an incredible piece of tech. It was just very misunderstood and it wasn't ready. The world wasn't ready for Google Glass at the time. Google Glass actually is being used to a huge extent in the industrial space right now, which people don't realize. It found its niche in the industrial space as a hands-free device.

When you say to a huge extent, can you give us an idea? Because I've heard that it's like repurposed.

I don't have the unit figures, but it's being used very effectively. Google's still selling a lot of units. Just say hands-free. Hands-free technology interaction, which, for example, if you're an abattoir worker processing meat, you can still get your data without having to touch anything. And that's another interesting evolution to AR, which will become important for us as AR becomes good enough with technology. All of our interaction with technology is hands-free as well. And so that's where you go into this reason to why would someone want to use this new paradigm of computing, which is AR, is one of the smaller factors is that you no longer have to, one, look down at the phone and two, use your fingers as your access to communication because it's a very inefficient thing. We get information by by tapping on a screen and that's super inefficient.

Right. There is a, there is a, it's a, it's an interface which we, if we can abstract is probably better, right? I mean, there is some material rust in the way as I tap on the screen.

Yeah.

I lose because, I mean, it becomes almost automatic, right? It's not like we have to look for the letter and everything. So it's almost embedded right now, but I do think there is still a little bit that we can abstract and make better for sure.

It is completely, but when you look at it on a very fundamental level, for us to be able to connect with data and experiences by using our fingers to tap on a screen is a very inefficient thing to do.

And so hands-free, does it mean voice control or does it mean eyes control? Like what does it actually look like?

Also, also the... The big factor as to why I think AR is going to win in terms of a new computing platform that supersedes the smartphone and why I think that this technology is inevitable and it's not dead, it's not going anywhere, it's only steamrolling forward at the speed at which one, we can innovate on and two, the world and consumers are ready for it.

Mm-hmm.

Is because it's not a technological problem that's being solved. It's a psychological problem that's being solved. And this is the same reason why I founded Beam, is it's an evolution in the way that we can interact with technology from a human-centered design process. If you look at, and you mentioned voice, and this is why I, it this was triggered is voice is incredible because it mimics the way that we've received data for thousands of years. Before technology, I would have asked you, what's the weather like tomorrow? And you would have said it's sunny and 12 degrees. And that's how I would receive my information. And my subconscious and my psychological needs are met in that aspect because we've been doing this for thousands of years. Along comes tech over the last 70 years, and has completely rewritten the book or completely changed the way that we interact with interesting data.

So it gives us a chance to go back to what we—

Now we're going back full circle. So voice is incredible and voice is not going anywhere either because psychologically it's very effective for us. It's the height of human-centered design for us to interact with with a source of information. Previously, before technology, it was other human beings. Now it's Siri or Alexa or the internet translating itself into something we're psychologically familiar with.

The question would be, is there some cases in which we don't want to go full circle and go back to what feels intuitive and where we're okay with, oh, it's not as intuitive, but it's much more effective? Is there some instances in which that's possible? I'm thinking Neuralink, right? If you can communicate directly, you wouldn't need voice.

Well, that's a superhuman aspect because we've never been able to, at least I haven't been able to be telepathic. So that's where you go even further, which is where Neuralink goes completely, completely like into a completely different realm because it makes us superhuman.

Is that super reality?

Well, if we coin the term now, well, we claim it. Super reality on this podcast is the term we have for superhuman AR and technology interface interaction.

I'm sure someone has tried to claim something similar, but if nobody has, then we do.

We've got it.

So it's interesting. So anything that doesn't go back in full circle falls under that definition.

It could, or it could be if it's less effective for us. So, you know, for example, we don't want to go back to horse riding because, you know, driving a car or flying a plane is faster. But if you look at the designs that we've done in the computing and the smartphone side of things from a human experience perspective, like I said, with typing, using our fingers to input information is extremely—

That's because structured information was what was needed from the computer, of course.

It's extremely inefficient. And so, you know, I think a lot of us would love to just be able to like talk in our room and the computer understands exactly what we're trying to get it to do. Like, for example, you know, with AI these days, if you type in, you know, I want an olive tree in a Monet painting with McDonald's in the background, AI can generate that for us. We want that same kind of seamlessness with the way that we interact with technology. And that's why going back to that, I could bet everything on that AR is not going anywhere. It's inevitable because it is a way for us to interact with technology in a much more seamless way than what we have now.

Especially with the addition of AI that you've just added as well, because you can interpret language, we can interpret eye signal or whatever we need. So we can infer real life with smart language that adds on top of it. Okay, so if we try to get practical, we have mentioned the Google Maps example. We have mentioned the workers using the Apple Glass— sorry, the—

Google Glass.

Right, Google Glasses. What other strong niche applications do you think we have?

So when it comes to creating something that's useful, something of utility, you need to create tools that we use on a daily basis that can become more efficient, more effective, or more intuitive.

Right.

Within this new paradigm for people to want to use augmented reality. And naively, me as a founder, 5 years ago, I chose the most complex challenge to solve, which was how do you create or recreate the same psychological and subconscious triggers in distance communication that a physical meeting has using augmented reality? If I would go back, I would create a delivery, a food delivery app or something else. But yeah, so for me, that was this this incredible epiphany that one, you know, my career in commodities at the time was not aligned to who I wanted to become as an individual and who, how I was raised. And there was a huge deficit in my career choice. And I wanted to figure out a way to align what I was doing career-wise with who I wanted to become as a human being. And like I said, naively, I thought, This challenge is big enough for me as an individual to take on and to create something that the world has never seen before. And so from a utility perspective, Beam basically enables any human being to stream themselves in real time. So it's the real human being livestreamed into its digital self. in someone else's space. So it's replicating the same psychological and subconscious triggers that a physical meeting has. And it gives you things like high-definition, full-body, real human virtually present in someone's space. And that present is important because we haven't had that in its— in its most efficient form in distance communication yet.

When you mean presence, you mean full body picture?

So it's not just full body picture because that's the visual input. Presence is a psychological subconscious thing that's required.

So presence is the output?

Presence is the output. It's, it's, it's the ability for your subconscious to build trust, build credibility in the same way that you were physically there.

Right.

And so that sense of presence is, I would say, the missing piece to distance communication that we haven't had yet in our evolution for our subconscious to be able to get, you know, full trust, full credibility, intimacy, emotion, and have that not only transferred but received in the same way that we do in a physical face-to-face interaction.

Right.

I believe our tech can be an enabling application for augmented reality, or at least one of them. But it needs for augmented reality to become useful, we need enough of these utility applications for people to be like, oh, I get it.

On specific niches.

And again, some people would say, you know, why do I need to be full body present in someone else's space? One, you know, the short answer to that is, you know, why do you need to meet someone physically ever? You need that emotion. You need that most effective way to communicate. But 2, there's also some circumstances where it's impossible to be physically present. We had that during the pandemic. So we went to the next best thing at the time that was Zoom video. But for example, we're doing a university study. I can't say who it is. It's a prominent American university where we're using our technology to beam family members of children in the children's hospital who have gone through cancer treatment, where the family members are not able to be physically present, sometimes for months. And having the individual in this aspect, the child, have that same feeling of presence from their family, having them in their space digitally is one of these places where you look at a technology evolution like being like what we're doing and you think, okay, that makes sense.

And of course, I mean, that's literal proof of if you can get and capture the reactions of how people feel, that is proof that there is an additional layer that you're unlocking with augmented reality besides Zoom, if you get that different reaction in how people feel. Have you gotten that yet?

Absolutely. Yeah. So our deployments, the most effective deployments of our tech, we've taken a page out of Skype's book, which is the lowest hanging fruit for an evolution in communication is really pushing on that intimacy, those connections that are super important to us as human beings.

Of course.

Are the most effective. And that's where, you know, going to market with those pieces of communication, we have a lot of partnerships in the educational space as well. We're talking about Zoom fatigue, actually having connection with students and teachers or between students and teachers using a medium where there is presence are those places where we can prove out our technology. And where people will see what's done there and say, okay, this makes sense. You'll always have people who will push back and say, well, why do I need this new technology? The old technology is perfectly good.

Of course.

You know, ask that to people who push back on Skype and video conferencing. Ask that to people who push back on the telephone. There was definitely bad press for the telephone in the early days. Is it gonna steal my soul? Because my voice and my personality is being now transported across this digital wire and I don't know where it's going.

That's funny.

And it's going to ruin relationships and connections because people won't need to meet each other anymore when the telephone was invented.

Interesting. And I love it. The applications make a lot of sense. If I go on the tech side, I do see still some things that are like, I wish, like I'm curious to hear your thoughts whether we still have some barriers to unlock before we can actually have those applications successfully. Because if I see someone wearing AR glasses, I do see how that can change emotionally and make it feel much, much a deeper connection. However, if I point somewhere with a smartphone, I don't know if that If that emotional experience happens. So what can we do today with— I know you're platform agnostic, right?

Yeah.

What can we do today that already does work on the smartphone and what are the sort of next steps? And do you think that this shift towards transparent glasses as well, that so you can see the eyes, for instance, needs to happen? Sort of where are we heading and what are the bottlenecks?

Yeah. So the 2 bottlenecks like 2 sides of the same coin. The first one is, what are the capabilities of the technology that we have today? And the second one is, we as a society, how are we going to react or accept that technology as it comes to market? We've had technological bottlenecks for many years. Historically, augmented reality especially on the hardware side, has been heavily overpromised and underdelivered, which has caused a lot of friction to the second part of that coin, which is consumers willing to adopt the technology if they've been promised this perfect, amazing technology and has always been lackluster or disappointing.

Of course.

And so that first bottleneck is if we're looking at Yeah, we've seen a lot of stop and starts with AR in terms of its curve of adoption and the innovation side of things. But right now, there's an announcement a couple of weeks ago with a company that I absolutely love and full disclosure that we're working with. Qualcomm has finally brought a new microprocessor to the market. Which enables augmented reality glasses to look like a set of prescription glasses. The processors are small enough that you can inject them into a set of Ray-Bans. And that's one of the big, again, the two sides of the coin is one, is the tech in a position to firstly provide the experience that is good enough for a consumer to want to use this new computing platform. But on the other side, is the consumer willing to adopt that piece of technology? And so Platform just released their AR2 processor and announced their partnerships with about 16 different companies like LG, Niantic, obviously the next segue for the Pokémon Go company to go fully in on augmented reality as a platform, Oppo, Xiaomi, and a bunch of other companies. are all using Qualcomm's new technology to create Ray-Ban-style form factor for AR glasses. And so—

Have you tried one yet?

I haven't tried that one, although Qualcomm announced it about 2 weeks ago. I will let you know when I have. It will be soon. I'm sure of it. Nice. If you look at the barriers for adoption, it's 2 sides of that same coin is the technology, is it ready for the market? Is the market ready for the technology? And we haven't got there yet with AR. We've seen a couple of companies kind of trailblaze and try and break the market open themselves and failed. You know, Google with Google Glass and then companies like Magic Leap put a lot of money into a headset that was ultimately not adopted well by consumers. And what that's done is it's caused a lot of hesitancy with consumers. It's caused hesitancy with investors and kind of put a sour taste in the mouth of a lot of people for AR.

Of course.

But what is happening in the background with, you know, the biggest AR companies are the ones that Most people don't even know are into AR. Qualcomm is one of the companies that could win the AR space on the operating system side and also on the hardware side. But most of the general public don't know Qualcomm and don't know what Qualcomm does. Apple has been very tight-lipped about their AR plans, apart from continuously saying that AR is one of the most important technologies to the future of Apple. And there is a likelihood of a big announcement within Apple early next year on the AR side.

Early next year?

Early next year.

Why do you think early next year?

My bet is Q1.

Q1 next year, big announcement?

Q1, yeah.

What makes you think so?

One, the maturity of the industry. There's a lot of companies announcing technologies that would rival Apple's tech coming to market. And 2, their acquisitions of late. have been very strategic in terms of showcasing that they're very far down the line in their maturity of one, their hardware product, also their software. And 3, over the past 6 months, their hiring has been extremely interesting. Hiring a lot of content creators for the AR space.

They're going up.

Apple TV, but make it AR. Apple Fitness, but make it AR.

But you would guess if they are hiring now for 6 months, it's not like you can build a lot. It makes, it's a trigger for me. It's a good alarm if it's content creators, because that can be maybe a little bit more than 6 months. It depends what kind of creations, but a lot of hiring right now for Q1, maybe it seems also how much can you actually build in 6 months?

So there's a fundamental step that Apple hasn't done yet. Which assists in the success of a new technology. And that is opening up the development of solutions, firstly to their existing partners, i.e., the existing companies that are leveraging Apple's ecosystem, companies like Spotify, Netflix, you know, those types of companies. And secondly, the core developer ecosystem. And that step hasn't been done just yet. So betting on an announcement from Apple early next year would be a bet that Apple would stake their claim on the industry, announce that a headset is visually there, and that developers will receive them very quickly, very soon.

Gotcha.

Rumors are that Apple has put in orders for 1.5 million devices. with production either already underway or fired into gear in Q1.

1.5 million. Can you help me?

Which doesn't sound like a lot.

Yeah.

For Apple, it doesn't sound like a lot until you remember that the first iPhone that launched with Apple had less than a million units sold in its first year. There's always a segue into a new experience that's not 0 to 100. Apple won't replace the smartphone, the iPhone, with AR glasses next year. The adoption rate will be a trickle because we haven't received— we haven't achieved the point of utility with AR just yet. Until AR glasses, i.e., a set of Ray-Bans sitting on your face that can replicate everything this device can do, you won't have AR glasses supersede the smartphone.

Well, but you think that this microprocessor and this reduction and how visually appealing it is could be that The processor is as good as a MacBook.

And so you can create high-definition experiences. In the case of our company, you can create 8K visuals of a life-size human being in your space, i.e., the human being looks so good that you can see the stubble on someone's face or the weave in someone's shirt.

You just need as good of cameras.

Exactly. So right now we have 4K cameras in phones. And 8K is available in some phones already as well.

That's interesting. How will cameras look like considering— okay, think Beam, right? And take, I want to see you and have a normal interaction. I want your full body picture and I want to talk to you from very up close. Where are these cameras going to be placed and how are they going to look like?

So most AR glasses that are coming to market, Apple is an unknown so far, but for example, Qualcomm's processors, work wirelessly in combination with a smartphone.

Right. So you think smartphone here, glasses.

So smartphone becomes a capture device and powers part of the experience and glasses become the viewing device for everything which is on your phone.

Right. You cannot have everything on the glasses because the other person is moving. Like, oh, I cannot film myself. That's as simple as that.

Exactly. So I need a second point of structure. And so for the next 4+ years, the smartphone will still be the dominant piece of technology that we as consumers carry around in our pockets. And the Apple Watch, sorry, the Apple, I just beat myself to the punch. The Apple Glass or any smart glasses that are AR glasses will be viewed as an accessory for a better experience. In the same way the Apple Watch became an accessory for a better experience to become hands-free or to use your device in a way that doesn't impede your hands or if you're jogging or fitness or anything like that.

When do you think we'll give up phones?

I would say it's at least 4 years away.

Phone, to give up phones?

Yeah.

4?

I would say it's at least 4 years.

Only 4?

It could be only, just given the evolution in the hardware, in the AR space that I've seen in the past 2 years. That would be insane. But then again, if you look at the adoption rate in the world, if we're saying we, it's firstly the prosumers and then it's people that can afford the highest technology out there because we still have people without internet connections.

But I'm also thinking, you know, there is some things that are right now on phone that you cannot really I don't see ourselves, for instance, scrolling. Do I? Like, do you think we'll be scrolling through the AR glasses much rather instead of being on your phone?

It could well be. That's another— But they're not blackout, right? They're not blackout, no. But like, for example, with Apple, the rumor is that they are both, they're blackout virtual reality glasses and also augmented reality glasses.

But well, but that would be a whole headset.

It could be, or it could be something as small as—

But isn't that, Completely. Because the reason I got excited about the transparent glasses that look normal is because people wear glasses all the time and it doesn't hinder how we interact. If I have a big headset, I kind of get scared that we do not—

That's a segue. That's definitely a segue, the big headset. And that's partly due to the form factor constraints around the size of the batteries and microchips, partly which Qualcomm has solved now. But if you're looking at kind of fundamentally, again, it boils down to one, is the technology able to create experiences that we want to use? And 2, are we ready for it? And when you look at scrolling, again, scrolling your phone, that's a very, again, a very like old design factor that's adapted to the technology as opposed to the way that we would interact in the real world with other real-world objects and people. So you could assume that maybe it won't be like, do we want to port scrolling into AR? It'll be, what is the more intuitive way for us to consume social media data, for example, or fast information, form factor information in a real-world environment.

It could be blinking.

It could be blinking. Or it could be even more nuanced to like that the algorithms on social become so good that we don't need to scroll fast anymore, that we receive less information, but it's more tailored. Because right now when we scroll, a lot of the times we're scrolling past stuff we don't want to see. Because even though, for example, TikTok's algorithm is one of the best social media algorithms out there, We're still scrolling past stuff.

But that's also because we have a difference. Not only do you want to be fed something, but you also have moods every day, right? And so I've noticed that on Instagram, Instagram is particularly receptive how I felt. Yeah, it's not for everybody, but I felt Instagram is particularly reflective of how you feel that day. So you look at a dog and then all your For You page is just dogs, while TikTok is a little bit more elaborate, I think. And over time it maybe because I use one more than the other, but I do think that there should still be some standard deviation in which someone consuming content wants to be fed something that goes beyond and that you don't know whether you're gonna like or not, but that should be part of the experience. Otherwise there is no exploration of content.

Yeah, that's something that we as humanity will have to figure out.

Right, do we want to offer that?

How to decide. And, but I think what's super exciting is that what we know is that anyone's prediction of what is going to happen over the next, you know, 3, 4, 5, 10 years is probably false because there's so much innovation happening right now. And there's so many changes in the way that we use technology. That the way that we consume technology, consume data experiences is going to be so fundamentally different to the way that we do today that it's almost impossible to predict. In the same way that if someone had have told me, I don't know, 10 years ago, what was 10 years? 10 years was like the iPhone 3 or 4 maybe. that our phones would be capable of doing what they are now, back then I would have said, that's crazy. Like, that's insane. Or when I was in high school, I got a phone very late in my high school. You know, the biggest game on my phone was Snake 2.

Right.

Which is, you know, if someone had told me then, you know, the world was super excited about Snake 2. Someone had told me then that like, hey, Jan, in 15 years, you're going to be able to teleport high-definition humans and beam them into people's space for communication. I would have said, that's crazy. I still have to pay 5 cents a text message and I have 160-character limit. Otherwise I get charged double. Like, I can't imagine that we can livestream You know, we could livestream, you know, Justin Bieber into 10 million people's rooms for a concert. And it looks like Justin Bieber is on their living room carpet performing to them intimately. Like we had no idea. And I think, you know, given that the acceleration of our innovation as humanity, what's going to be in 10 years is going to blow our minds, absolutely blow our minds.

I do completely agree with that. And I will say, I agree that it's like, it's almost, it's completely impossible to get it right in the details. It's good to have a thesis and it's good to think how roughly it could solve out. And you've given it to us today, I think, unless you have more to infer and add to the thesis of how it's going to look like.

I think it's very simple. Like any technology which becomes more intuitive for us human beings and goes back to The way that we and our minds specifically process things will inevitably happen with technology, voice, AR, and any other technology which enables us almost to go full circle with the way that we interact with things. Interesting.

The full circle thesis.

That's it.

Interesting. Awesome. Good. Thank you so much for participating. It was phenomenal.

I really appreciate it. And thanks a lot for having me on.

Oh, for sure. Thank you.