How Disruptive Technologies Can Solve the Problems of Tomorrow (ft. Joshue Ott, HUSH)

Technology needs to serve humanity, not the other way around, right? But sometimes - let’s face it - we’ve come across some technologist who is peddling one type of technology or another without thinking about how it can actually serve people and solve a business problem or make the world a better place.

That’s why we wanted to speak to a really sharp technical director, Joshue Ott of HUSH, a technologist tasked with creating dynamic experiences for companies. We talk about whether or not COVID has been “beneficial” for AR & VR, the limitations of these technologies at present time, how tech solutions might impact society’s approach to remote work, and much more.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. 

Transcript

Joshue Ott interview

[00:00:00] Jeremy Goldman: [00:00:00] So, Josh, welcome to future proof. 

Joshue Ott: [00:00:03] Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, 

Jeremy Goldman: [00:00:05] you know, the first thing we'd like to ask people just as we get started, as you know, who are you, how do you see your work? You know, and what do you do on a day to day basis? 

Joshue Ott: [00:00:12] So my name is Joshua arts. I am currently a technical director at hush, which is a, an experiential design agency that, that creates dynamic experiences for really amazing companies. And I'm also an artist and performing artists. I make my own software and perform with it. And I think of myself as a, as a creative technologist. And, I think of myself as a lot of things. This is a difficult question. This is always a difficult question for me to answer like who I am, but because I, I do a lot of things, but on a day to day basis, I think it's the, the most accurate way to describe what I do on a day to day basis is I help solve technical problems. I find ways of solving problems using technology. 

Jeremy Goldman: [00:00:57] I think that that's a good place to be [00:01:00] right now because obviously so much of our work world, and. You know, life as consumers just is in the process of being disrupted left and right.

So yeah, you know, you need people who have, I have skillsets like that. And one thing I was curious about is how quote unquote beneficial. That's an air quotes because obviously nobody wants to think about a pandemic and, you know, positive light, how beneficial has the COVID crisis been for, you know, augmented reality and virtual reality to show their overall usefulness.

Cause I know those are two technologies you study and work with. 

Joshue Ott: [00:01:33] Yeah, I think it's a great question. And I agree. Agree with you. I mean, this is a terrible thing. That's happened to us and I wouldn't want to wish anything like this on the world ever again. I mean, it's absolutely awful. It has been beneficial to these technologies.

It's it's really interesting. It it's beneficial. Not in the ways that you might think. I don't think people are [00:02:00] suddenly, people are not suddenly making these amazing AR and VR experiences and we're all, we're all realizing that it's the solution to all these problems. It's more that it's focusing us as a, as a people on how we can.

How we can meet with each other and how we can have experiences with each other when we can't be in the same physical, there are lots of solutions, you know, we're using a solution for that right now, hush, but the company that I'm working for, right. I now, like we use zoom all the time. We're constantly, constantly have these meetings where we have all these little boxes that everybody's in a box and we're all talking together.

So. It's focused us on this idea of, of how can we use these technologies to, to bring ourselves together? How can we use them to do that? And how can we keep using them once, once this all ends. And I feel like a lot of the AR and VR are in a really interesting space right now, because I think. I [00:03:00] consider them as to be incomplete technologies.

They're kind of not finished. We haven't figured that all out. I think VR is a little bit more mature because it's been kind of adopted in the, in the gaming world and, and there's more, there's a lot more. In some ways it's a little easier because you don't have to mix it with a camera feed and real stuff.

So it's, it's a little bit technical. There are, there are fewer technological hurdles, but what this shows us more than anything else, I think is the importance of networking and communication with these technologies in order to do all these things, we need to have internet connections. We need that. We need to have state stability there.

We need to be able to. Do simple things that haven't been common in meeting technologies, like speak together at the same time. Like if you and I start talking at the same time, some of these meeting technologies are built in order to cut each other off. So that one person is talking at the same time that exists because not everybody uses it headsets and microphones it's because there, there needs to be this [00:04:00] noise cancellation stuff.

So there's, there's all these, there's all these aspects to this. To this issue that are, that are coming up and that we're focusing on that are, that are really positive and really good and wonderful things for us to figure out it is of course, unfortunate that it took this to get us to focus on these things.

But I think these were all things that, that were happening anyway. It's just, there's a, there's a new urgency for it because we want to be able to use it these technologies in order to support ourselves in all these different ways. Hmm. I, and I think that it's funny. Yeah. I, I was making a mental note not to cut you off specifically because of the noise, you know, like, the cancellation and I think you're right.

Jeremy Goldman: [00:04:39] whenever we adopt any new technology, we introduce a lot of things, that then become problems that we have to solve for. COVID, to some extent, , Exists by virtue of the airplane, , so it's a manmade problem, but I mean, what are some of the most interesting if you've seen any, augmented reality implementations or VR implementations [00:05:00] with respect to COBIT?

Joshue Ott: [00:05:01] there was this Japanese study. a couple of months ago where they were using laser light to study microdroplets in the air.

I don't know if you've noticed that one, but , they were having people just talk normally and sneezed normally. And they had, they had lit the room in a way that you could see the microdroplets in the air with, with specialized cameras. And this is the thing that I think of is, is that that would have been, that's a perfect thing to show in AR and VR.

That is a fantastic day, the visualization of something that can help keep us safe and help us understand what's going on with this disease and, and, and based on , real facts and real, real research, they didn't use. VR AR to do this. This was all, you know, laser light and camera techniques to get this research done, but even disseminating that information in, I don't know, like a New York times article or something like that would be.

Insanely [00:06:00] useful for people to understand, because you know, they were comparing  the sneeze distance and how the droplets stay in the air when you sneeze  versus just talking like where the droplets are. And it's a little bit, you know, kind of gross, but it's also critical information for us to understand.

Jeremy Goldman: [00:06:15] Absolutely. I think it's, one of those things we all have to be conscious, but thinking about droplets, you know, going through, the air. And I think that when you think about, you know, this pandemic, I think that there's hopefully going to be coming out of it, you know, specifically for AR. You know, greater integration of AR into future physical experiences, right?

So that's at least a hope that I have for this, you know, and people thinking about it from a more practical, you know, standpoint, but what are some ways that you can imagine AR might be integrated to create like an additive experience rather than just a distraction? 

Joshue Ott: [00:06:51] Yeah. I mean, I think there's huge opportunities here.

Like, I, I was. I've always been for adding, mixing, mixing, physical experience, [00:07:00] design and architecture, and, and these, these types of ideas with virtual elements and really, truly augmenting things, which is it's sort of, it's sort of, what's so fun working with, with hush because they, you know, We have architectural, we have architects on staff that are, that are designing actual spaces and physical objects.

And then, you know, to take those physical objects and have them expand them and drift and foreman space and move and start, right. You know, actually being more dynamic is, is utterly fantastic. I mean, I think that is. That is the future that I want to see and, and work with. One of the really interesting parts of this to me is there is, there is sort of a, a reactionary, element to this, like suddenly, Oh wait, we can't, we can't use touchscreens to take all the touch screens out.

That's that's like a terrible thing. It spreads disease and we can't do what can we do instead of touch screens, AR as an obvious. Solution to [00:08:00] using a touch screen. And suddenly you can, you can actually interact with a thing without actually touching it, using your phone or something like that. It doesn't necessarily need to be AR, but you have so much that you can do with that.

Like, you know, showing one of our installations shows building status of power draws at a building and what, like the amounts of power that, that, that the bills is using it at any given time. And. Having an AR view of that, where you can actually see through the building and see where all these things are, rather than just, you know, meters and status things.

It's, it's like, it's huge. It's amazing. The interesting part of this to me is what happens , after this pandemic is actually contained and, what does that change? How does that, how are we. Designing our future to deal with things like remote work. I mean, re remote work is a huge, is a huge one.

There are companies that are talking about eliminating office spaces and just having their [00:09:00] to be mobile. And I think that's an interesting idea, but then there are the people that, that still need to work locally and still need to be in the same room together. And then there are the people that do both that have part of their staff is remote.

And part of their staff is, is local. And how are they, you know, that's the, that's the interesting part to me is, is how are we, how are we creating these hybrid solutions? Where all these things are, are actually allowed and okay. And work together. And you're not  discriminating against the people that are remote because they either have to be for health reasons , or it's more convenient or, or it's more cost effective to have them be remote.

how are you not discriminating against them from a. Communication and human interaction perspective so that they can be effective. 

Jeremy Goldman: [00:09:44] Yeah. So, so, I was just thinking about how you could discriminate up until this point in time, based off of where people lived. if somebody, if you had a company headquartered in New York and, somebody lives in rural Oklahoma, then.

It's perfectly fine to [00:10:00] discriminate against them because they couldn't actually be part of your work experience. And I think the shutdown has almost forced us to rethink well. Is, is that possible? Like, is it possible for somebody to be fully indoctrinated into your culture and is the technology getting there so that you don't have so much loss of culture when you've got a lot of people working remotely?

And it sounds like obviously I think AR and VR. When they get to the point can help bridge that gap so that we don't lose nearly as much when people can be in front of one another. 

Joshue Ott: [00:10:32] Yeah, exactly. I think, I think AR and VR, , this is where these technologies have a chance to actually do something about that discrimination about that piece, where, where the nod and the wink and the, and the subtle gestures are lost in the remote worker and, or, or even.

 the meeting ends and, and someone Snickers at somebody, something the remote workers and you know, or, or, you know, that sort of thing. There are [00:11:00] a lot of, we have a long way of. To go. I think there's a lot of things that need to be figured out from a technological perspective before we get to the point where those things are stable.

One of them is, is obviously like, you know, we're network connections and that sort of thing. Like we've already dropped off once because either you are, I think it was me had to had a network issue and, and, you know, we lost the connection for a second. That kind of thing is. That's not something that happens when you're standing next, next to somebody, when you're talking to them face to face, there are a whole host of things like that that are coming up.

What's what's unprecedented, I think is that we're all in this situation. We're all isolated right now. It's another, what kind of positive is we're forced to actually know. It's the things that we kind of brushed past before, like the, you know, the kid that walks into the room and interrupts and, and you know, I'm a parent.

I have two children. I. I've I've got to deal with that. I have to deal with that sort of, or sometimes I do. And sometimes they don't, but the chances of me having to turn around and say something to a [00:12:00] child in the background to kind of continue our are relatively high at any given moment, especially when they're all remote learning and, and forced into that, into that situation as well.

I definitely think AR and VR can help, but. Part of it is also us as humans recognizing these things, and there's a whole bunch of them too.  there's the kid's issue. There's the, there's the internet connection issue. even the background's issue like your, your background is very clean right now.

Mine is incredibly messy. I've got it. I've got stuff everywhere. What does that say about me? What information is that giving you about my. And am I okay with that? Do, does that make me feel like I'm giving you too much information? Am I, am I less wealthy? And that makes me feel bad and add a loss or is this a virtual background that I've put up to kind of have another form of expression?

and that actually, by the way, the virtual background is one very interesting aspect of this sort of visual culture. That is a glimpse of what, how this can be good for us because [00:13:00] suddenly I have an extra way of expressing myself. I have, I have a, I have a way of, of sending message or, or being subtle.

In a way that is different or better, or further than that, what we have when we're just talking face to face. And that's, that's exciting to me, that's, that's a, that's a, that's a little piece of technology. He actually giving out something that we didn't have before, and it's kind of a glimpse into maybe the future of, of what we can be as, as humans.

The thing that I, always like to say is the technology in general technology should make us more human. And I, I think that that is, that is a way in which it can, I always searched for those, those moments in which we're using our technology to make ourselves more of ourselves rather than, you know, against that.

Jeremy Goldman: [00:13:49] what's interesting , when you talk about virtual backgrounds and all these different things, like I always think that there are these unintended consequences. So for instance, virtual backgrounds can be great and that they. Level the [00:14:00] playing field and somebody, you know, who is from a more affluent family versus, you know, the poor kid, they can have a zoom call and they feel like on the side, same level, but at the same time, what if somebody doesn't have the right technology in order to have the, the leading, you know, virtual background or the leading AR or VR, or even the technological capability is cause I've found that there's a tech skills gap, even in terms of how to best implement these technologies and imagine. If that gap gets even bigger, you know, a few years down the line. 

Joshue Ott: [00:14:31] Yeah, absolutely. It's a, it's a great point. The people that have, that have figured out the virtual backgrounds first, you know, we're the, where the nerds, where the tech savvy ones, 

Jeremy Goldman: [00:14:42] it was like, it was basically you and me.

Joshue Ott: [00:14:48] It wasn't me. And my company was actually someone else which, which I was like, Oh, it goes further. Those of us that have figured out how to actually. Create a virtual camera and spoof the [00:15:00] operating system into thinking that virtual camera is the actual camera and then putting up our own graphics or even augmenting our own.

Like, I built a pipeline for myself where I can turn on shaders and make, make all kinds of crazy effects happen, which I'm, I'm still super excited about developing more when I have a little bit of time, but you're right there. There's a, there's a gap. There's always a gap, right? There's always that gap of the people that are, that are savvy enough.

It's not just savvy enough though. There's an economic gap. There's a, there's a knowledge gap. There's a, there's a hardware gap. Like even right now. I mean, it's interesting when this first happened, I don't actually currently own a modern VR headset. I have like a really old. I have an Oculus DK one. No, I think I have a deeply too now, like really, really old stuff when it was first being kind of developed totally unfinished imperfect devices at that point, but you can still do a lot with them and you can still understand their importance and how awesome this technology is and what it's going to become.

But the reason I bring it up is when this [00:16:00] happened, I was like, Oh, wow. I need to get a headset. I need to actually invest in a modern headset and I can't get one. I can't get one at list price right now because they're sold out everywhere. And the second they come into stock, like if you wanted to buy an Oculus quest right now, the second they become in stock.

They're purchased in bulk by what I think is happening is that they're purchased in bulk by people that sell them at rates that are higher than, than the list price. And so if you want to buy something, that's at the ms. The good old MSRP. You really can't right now because there's this, there's this. And a lot of people, I think a lot of people want to invest in this, in these technologies and cans.

So there's like a, that's like a, that's like a hardware gap. What I think is going to happen to us. What I hope is going to happen is, and I will say I'll sort of interrupt myself and say this, like the reason. I've always kind of been more attracted to developing an AR versus VR. Is it VR always required these big headsets and equipment.

And [00:17:00] until recently required a fast computer with a graphics card. now they're doing, you know, inside out tracking and more standalone units that are, that are like the Oculus quest that allow you to not need a computer at all. And it's kind of a standalone thing. The reason that I was always attracted to AR is that it.

Didn't require that it used something that most people already have, which is a smartphone. And if you look at it, this sort of Dawn of the smartphone, how relatively right recently, that was, and how in the beginning, that was a technology gap. And most people didn't have it. And now you can almost bank on the fact that most people.

I don't know if most people do, but a lot, a lot them a lot more. And I think that what you're saying is true is just the barriers to adoption. they have to come down for all these technologies and naturally there's a lot less friction. there's a much less significant barrier to adoption for AR versus VR.

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I was going, that [00:18:00] the mass market, the fact that I can build an app that lets me draw a three dimensional forms in space. And know that immediately, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people will be able to run that app and play with it is, is hugely appealing to me as a, as a creator.

And as an artist, I see that kind of trend and that kind of model happening across VR. And, but AR again, because I think that what we're missing with AR is, is not having to hold this magic window, phone up all the time. What we need is we need the glasses, we need the thing that's just on our eyes. And it sounds a little maybe dystopian, but I think.

When we get to the point where we're, we're actually doing this with glasses, and that becomes sort of normalized that everybody has. I think we start seeing the true potential of what AR can give us as, as humans in terms of [00:19:00] augmenting. And, and I think I always, I always think that that AR gives us this new way of interacting with our own technologies.

That that is, is invaluable. And there's so many things we can do with it, but there's still all these, all these techniques, logical pieces, even in software that are still being developed are still sort of not quite perfected yet. So we have a ways to go, but like, you know, the good news is, is the both frustrating thing and exciting thing is that a whole bunch of different companies are racing to get these things built and to get us trying them out.

And the reason it's good and bad is it's, it's bad because it creates this divide, you know? Oh, I have the Apple thing. Oh, you have the Google thing. Well, you can't run this thing that I made for the Apple, you know? And so we as developers and as creators are forced to. Either go with a lowest common denominator where, you know, I can't use the latest features because they're available on only this platform or only that platform, or try to adopt, [00:20:00] you know, it's, it's a difficult situation and standards do come through with us.

It's like, I think you see this in general, you know, for any type of technology adoption curve, which is one platform, you know, Sure one company tries to win. The other company tries to win and push us back. It creates essentially exclusive features that, you know, you can only get them through that particular platform.

And then eventually people kind of kind of coalesce and they either one just totally gets knocked out of the ballpark. And you only have one real player or standards start to develop because it's mutually assured destruction at some point. You know, if you don't more or less like a read to those as, you know, the few leaders come together and then develop that.

So it's very interest. Another thing I want to shift over two, just for a few, his ideas. I read this learning and skills at work 2020 report. And that indicated that nearly 80% of employers have taken up learning technologies, and leaders are showing signs of growth in digital learning. [00:21:00] But, you know, I was thinking about, you know, like the adoption yeah.

Of AR and VR, just like we're talking about, those are only used for learning in the minority of organizations right now. And to me, I naturally think about consumer marketing, consumer experiences. But then I started thinking, well, are there opportunities for us to use AR and VR, you know, with digital learning within the organizations even, and you know, we're wondering if you, you know, your thoughts on that.

And then also if you've seen any interesting examples out there. Yeah. I mean, I think it's exactly what I was saying before. We're in the situation where we have all these great ideas and. I think the reason that adoption is not, not happening, is there, there there's not much to adopt, like we have all these, these issues, the software isn't quite there yet, or it's really specialized or there's, there's only a couple of companies making it.

I mean, I don't know what, what level of, of awareness you are in all these spaces, but. It's very difficult to motion, [00:22:00] capture a human in three dimensions. Right now it takes a, a giant studio with a raise of cameras and lots of money to capture a moving image of a human, like doing things. And there's a whole bunch of like everything else.

There's a whole bunch of different solutions in there. There's a lot of really brilliant work being done, trying to solve this problem. But it's an example of in order to represent humans walking around in three dimensional space. Like recordings of them. I need this technology. I need to be able to do that.

And there's all these things limitations on that technology right now, because it's expensive because it's, it's, it's complicated because it. It has technological limit limitations because of its complication. Like the, the last time I checked the most of these systems, you have to basically stand in the same position or in the same, you know, four foot radius.

You can't really walk. So it immediately knocks out all these, all these potential use cases of how we can record that. So I bring that up in. In terms of [00:23:00] learning where rather than, than fiddle with all these. And I know I'm like speaking against my own love here, but rather than fiddling with all these AR and VR gadgets and technologies and things, I can just, I can load the YouTube video and look at all these like more, more common, more well established ways of presenting this information.

I think what what's that argument that it's like porn and video games drive the. That's the thing and gaming gaming right now has kind of driven that VR market gaming and VR is huge. There's a lot of really interesting things happening there and, and being explored there, going to have to have a whole entire episode, people are gonna listen to this and be like, okay, what's the future of pornography?

Well, it's, it's fair question. But that's another episode. Yeah. I mean, hopefully there's a lot of, a lot of reform in that industry. That can happen, but [00:24:00] yeah.

There isn't a killer application for this, for, for AR yet the interesting things that I'm seeing are all about communication. They're all about how people are communicating online. Like the thing that we use at hush, one of the, the tools that we use at hush is called Miro. And it's a, it's like an online multi-user charting graphing.

It's actually quite, it does quite a, quite a few things, but the. The first thing you notice when you go into it with a couple of other people, is that you can suddenly see all of their mouse cursors moving around on the screen at the same time live. And there is kind of this like weird, simple joy of that and a surprising amount of communication that happens just from watching this little cursor move up and down and left and right.

And, and in circles and, Oh, it waved at me. It did something funny or seeing 20 people's cursors, all kind of. [00:25:00] Move in this weird Flocky way to a, to a new subject that we're all kind of collaborating on. It's really, really a kind of fascinating thing that I think is a again, I mentioned this tool because it's the precursor to what we could have with, with AR and VR.

Given those networking technologies applied in that space. And I think I keep bringing the other reason I keep bringing it up is it's one piece of that puzzle and it's a major piece that's missing right now from those technologies is one researcher called this the AR cloud. Basically the internet of the spatial internet, right.

Where I can, I can place a virtual object, you know, in front of me, in my office and have it stay there and, and be there for you to, to drive by and see that in this building virtually there's a, there's an object there, you know, and there's all kinds of. Privacy data issues. And there's all kinds of stuff like that that needs to be figured out, but it is a major piece of this [00:26:00] puzzle that needs to fall into place in order for companies to find this useful as a, as a learning tool, along with many, many, many other things.

Well, and I think that, that, yeah, like there are so many different aspects of this to go into. I think that one of the things that you touched upon earlier, which I think is really important obviously, is like, who's going to invent this future. Who's going to create this. Who's going to set the standards I was reading up.

But you know, over the last few weeks that the head of it AR and VR, Andrew Boswell, Facebook was talking about the future of work and how a mixed reality is going to. You know, fuel into that. I mean, it is Facebook, you know, going to be ultimately the one setting the standards. and do you have, have you seen kind of like their vision of, what mixed reality it looks like in the future or what other players are really going to be dominating the space and creating kind of like the competitive landscape for mixed [00:27:00] reality over the next few years?

I think Facebook definitely is a, is a player I've seen those videos there. They're pretty compelling they offer. I mean, I think they literally say that that is on a prototype headset. So it, what it tells you is that Facebook is working on glasses. We know Apple is working on glasses, or we know through patents and rumors and that sort of thing, that, that Apple is also working on glasses.

And. I don't know if I've seen actual rumors for this, but I'd be willing to bet that Google is also working on, on some sort of hardware or tech in that field. So I think those three are Google, Apple. Facebook are the, are the usual suspects for big tech for, for innovating with these technologies. And I think we've kind of seen that with the way that Google and Apple in particular are in this weird tic talk.

Race with their AR features like last summer, Apple debuted person segmentation. They added persons segmented [00:28:00] to their, to their, our framework, which person segmentation means that you're taking a camera feed and you're marking in that camera feed. What is, what is a person and what is not a person?

And what that lets you do from a, from a functional standpoint is it lets you actually place virtual objects behind a person which. Sounds like the dumbest thing and like, well, duh, of course we want to place first, you know, but that, wasn't something that was really possible before that it wasn't possible easily before that.

So instead of just doing it mean the exact same thing, Google, I think six months later debuted a technology that basically gave a. A virtual depth buffer. And what you can do with a virtual depth buffer is you can put objects behind you and objects behind other desks behind, behind the architecture. It gives the AR feed of virtual awareness of the space around it, but it can't do that with people yet.

So it's this interesting, like weird, it's an example of this [00:29:00] tic talk that's happening between these companies. Facebook definitely has the, the things that I. I mean, if you haven't noticed that, one of the things I keep talking about is, is networking is having these, having these things communicate with each other, having people be able to communicate with each other using these technologies and all three of these companies have an advantage there.

Facebook has a huge advantage because they have their they're a social media company. They have all these properties that are built around aspects of, of human communication. So they have the technical infrastructure. In place, the size of their business means that they have research teams, that the companies that they've, that they've purchased and acquired, they have, you know, Oculus is Facebook.

They have like all these, they have all the pieces of the puzzle. I think it's a matter of getting those pieces, all working together, getting these teams functioning in cross-functional ways so that, you know, the, the Facebook, the team can talk to [00:30:00] the, to the Oculus team and can talk to the Instagram team and they can, they can all, you know, so they have a huge advantage there.

And. Those videos were, were showing virtual displays on, on a headset, which is an incredible idea. It's not a new idea. Like we've seen several kind of implementations of this or, or visualizations of this idea over the years, but if ready for prime time now, like that to me is the key thing. So much of it is market timing.

Yeah. I don't think it's ready for prime time now. I don't. I think all of these technologies are like, at least. Well, I don't know. I can't tell you how no. I mean, I personally agree, but they're getting closer at the very least. And I think it's one of those things where with the, with the bigger companies that, you know, you pointed out, one thing that all of these companies have in common is that it's worth it enough for them to figure it out.

And it's okay for them to be wrong on the market timing for a few years, as long as they're [00:31:00] around in 2023, when it is the right time. So I think that. That, that is really one of those things. As you can get that exact window, everybody has a high degree of certainty that these things are going to be so incredibly embedded into our daily lives, but they don't know exactly like that moment that it's going to happen, but it's a few billion dollars, you know, or more, you know, to get it right.

Versus to get it wrong. Right. Yup. Yeah, exactly. And it goes back to that, that other idea of. These companies competing with each other and creating these things is creating a gap. It's going to create this. Well, my Facebook headset shows this virtual display in, in super high res and, and, but, Oh, my Apple thing shows, you know, my, my daughter can walk in front of it and, and do this and play this game that I can't get on.

What I hope as a sort of technophile is that we can get through that and get to the, get to the point where we're actually doing standards so that these technologies can be, can be really taken advantage of, you know, by everybody [00:32:00] in an equitable way. and I, it's a real problem. I think, you know, equality and diversity in technology is, is an acknowledged issue that we all need to do work on.

And I think it's useful to consider that as we, as we move forward with these technologies, How can we address that as we, as we're coming up with these new things? And it's it's I don't have, I don't have good answers. It's, it's something that, you know, and we all have to think about 

Jeremy Goldman: [00:32:24] well, and I think, and you know, I know we have to let you go, but I think that that's the hallmark of the good futurist, more or less out, there are the ones who can acknowledge that they don't have all of the answers because then they go seek them out as opposed to having a very dogmatic view of what's to come over the next few years.

So I appreciate the honesty there. I kind of feel the same way and yeah, this is. It's been great. I think that this is going to be really helpful to a lot of people. So Josh, thanks so much for making the time Jeremy. It was great meeting you and thanks for having me. This was super fun to blather on endlessly blathering on and on [00:33:00] about important topics.

So well done.