The Future is Awesome - It’s the 30s. Time Traveler Reporter Explains VR & Digital Twins

When will we stop looking down to interact with our devices instead of looking out into the physical or digital world?

“The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it”.

“Most important, ubiquitous computers will help overcome the problem of information overload. There is more information available at our fingertips during a walk in the woods than in any computer system, yet people find a walk among trees relaxing and computers frustrating.  Machines that fit the human environment, instead of forcing humans to enter theirs, will make using a computer as refreshing as taking a walk in the woods”  Mark Weiser

“information is physical.

Maxwell’s demon makes the link. The demon performs a conversion between information and energy, one particle at a time. Szilárd— who did not yet use the word information— found that” - James Gleick, ‘The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood’

I was talking to a friend who does not yet understand what is the point of VR. I told her to imagine it was the year 1995 when you did not have a cell phone and I told her:

·       There would be a "phone" in her and her children's pocket but not in her house

·       She could use the "phone" to:

o  take pictures or videos and send to family & friends (some people take pictures of themselves where clothing is optional),   

o  buy anything and have it delivered directly to your home, 

o  send text messages instantly to all her friends and family (>90% of her communication with her children with be via this way - even in the same house),

o  play music,

o  watch TV and movies on it or other videos that other people create – 40% of the videos will be about cats,

o  give you directions to a place even though you do not know where you are going (you will trust the phone not to get you lost),

o  know where you are withing 3 feet and know where you have been in the past, maybe even knows if you have been around people who had a virus,

o  talk to it and it responds to you just like another person,

o  keep a daily diary of what you think, where you been, what you ate, people you were with, medical condition – you will share this all your “friends” and even the public and you will be excited when they give you thumbs up that they liked your comments,

o  replace your alarm clock, books, photo copier, calculator, watch, TV, flashlight, lighter at concerts, mail, calendar, personal assistant, radio, game console, computer, typewrite, car keys, newspapers, magazines, pen & paper, ability to spell, …

o  create new words LOL, symbols ??, and new ways to communicate

o  it contains all knowledge of human history but you will use it to get into heated arguments with strangers about religion, politics or what the color a dress is.

·       This phone will look like a small black mirror you put in your pocket. It would not have any buttons and even thought you could make a voice phone call on it, you would not talk on it very much and you would never answer it unless you knows the number because sales people will be calling you trying to sell you a car warranty program.

·       Your children will spend >8 hours a day using this device – they will not know how to communicate and engage with the world without this device.

·       You will have it right next to you when you sleep. It will impact your quality of sleep. Some people will use it communicating with others even when they are in the bathroom.

This is what VR will be like in the 2030s.

Just like the cell phone transformed communication in the 2000s and the smart phone in the 2010s, by the end of the 2020s, the XR devices will transform communications. Side note, I was trying to make this list funny but it turned out to be a little (lot?) scary.

What Year Will XR Device Sales (used > 5H a day - ~smart phone use today) exceeds Smart Phone Sales?

·       ~1.5B per year Smart phones sales 2020

·       ~64M Consumer VR headsets sales 2020

·       5G phones is expected to exceed that of 4G phones over twelve months – device type can change very quickly

·       2022-2023, smart glasses will launch (HTC, Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, others) that separates, vision, hearing (airpods) from the smart phone – smart phone is the central processing and modem to the network – smart glass tethering

·       ~2026, smartglass and other XR devices sales will be >50% of smart phone sales

·       ~2027, smartglass without the need for tethering to a smart phone will be launched – XR devices that people use as much as a cell phone will cost the same as smart phones

·       ~2028 +/- 2 year – XR devices will exceed smart phone sales because the all the functionality (and more) of the smart phone will transition to the XR device and will “weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life” - Mark Weiser

Fun fact - Worldwide, more people now own a cell phone than a toothbrush

See this YouTube channel where a person talks to himself like a digital twin. I thought the skits are funny and could help explain the concept of a digital twin and VR.  Time Traveler Discovers Social Distancing - THE FUTURE IS DUMB

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8LPPIG8k6o&list=PLRE-UFLEgWzD3Ae5DSD1pZ1Su_ZI9rC1q&index=6

I think a variation of the Time Traveler Discovers Social Distancing skit could be: The Future is Awesome - It’s the 30s. Time Traveler Reporter Explains VR & Digital Twins   Note: Screen Rant YouTube Channel has an audience of over 7 million subscribers. 200 million views on "Pitch Meetings" and counting!” It seems people are interested in the concept of people talking to themselves .

Also, see this video that explains in a funny way how he does this:

"Pitch Meetings" Pitch Meeting (100th Episode Bonus) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEaSnmf1JwY

See the video: Ready Player One Pitch Meeting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-Brx048gQ

For the skit series, one person is in 2021 and the time traveler goes to the 2030s finding out that the future is Awesome and Funny. Given the challenges of 2020, I think this idea could show a funny, awesome future. Will it be difficult to create this technology by 2030?  No, it will be “super easy, barely an inconvenience.”  I think the future will be tight. (see the "Pitch Meetings" video to get these jokes)

Definitions:

P-You / P-friends: Physical You / Physical Friends in the physical world – the world before 1960.

V-You: Virtual You – your virtual physical presence is in the digital space (email, text, zoom, VR). It is the P-You doing the typing, texting, talking and thinking

V-Friend: Virtual Friend – your friend’s virtual physical presence is in the digital space (email, text, zoom, VR). It is the P-Friend doing the typing, texting, talking and thinking

“A digital twin [AI] is a [AI] digital replica of a living or non-living physical entity. Digital twin refers to a digital replica of potential and actual physical assets, processes, people, places, systems and devices that can be used for various purposes.” – Google 

Note, this blog is focused on people digital twins – D-Twins

D-You: an AI copy of You (digital twin) that can match your response >99% of the time, in the digital space for now but with robotics can be in the physical space in the future.

D-Friend: an AI copy of your Friend (digital twin) that can match your friend’s response >99% of the time

Digital Twin Rating (SSA - Sensibleness and Specificity Average) – How Human is D-You in a Conversation? – How Human are P-You in a Conversation?

Conversation Scoring – After you had your conversation or engagement with another person (physical or digital) how would you rate the overall conversation? What does it mean if a conversation with a D-person is higher rated than a P-person?

Human Evaluation Metric: Sensibleness and Specificity Average (SSA) – “Existing human evaluation metrics for chatbot quality tend to be complex and do not yield consistent agreement between reviewers. This motivated us to design a new human evaluation metric, the Sensibleness and Specificity Average (SSA), which captures basic, but important attributes for natural conversations.”

Google AI engineers created Meena chatbot capable to consider a given conversational context and chat on any topic. It has 2,6 billion parameter, was educated on a colossal dataset — 341 GB of public domain social media chats. It’s 8.5x more data than was used to train previously known GPT-2 generative model by OpenAI Elon Musk’s company. Eventually, after countless tests, Meena turned out to be 79% more human-like. For comparison, the Mitsuko chatbot scored only 56%, although it overcame the Turing test five times. It is worth noting that the average person during the chatbot SSA tests gained 86%.”

Towards a Conversational Agent that Can Chat About…Anything

https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/01/towards-conversational-agent-that-can.html

https://volta.one/en/blog/news/the-human-like-chatbot-meena-by-google.html

Ideas for the Future of XR Skit

?              V-You engaging with v-friends in various virtual locations. As the mood of the conversation changes, your v-location & environment changes. If you are having a happy conversation, you could be out in nature surrounded with puppies, if more intense, surrounded by tigers eating people. Different music and help with adjusting the mood.

?                Show how you and your friends can move from the physical world (p-you/p-friends) to the digital world (v-you, v-friends) seamlessly – maybe your v-friends will show up at times you do not want them to show up because you do not have your digital privacy setting set right in your virtual space. Always be careful what you do in the virtual world.

?                You could have your favorite v-entertainer/d-entertainer or a v-friend who does not speak your language talk to you in your language.

?                You can have a monolog/dialog monitor that tracks how much time you or your friends (P or V) are talking during the conversation. If someone is talking too much, it gives a monolog waring.  If you have repeated the story to the friend, it gives a repeat warning. Also if you are boring people and you do not realize it, you can have a boring warning. See below on how Affectiva AI reads emotional states – maybe better than some people. 

The good thing about a digital twin is that you can have your boring p-friend or p-family member talk to your d-you instead of p-you on the phone or video. The digital twin could just summarize the long rambling conversation to just the key points – cliff notes of the conversation. (You can also have a rambling warning indicator for a conversation if you are this person) This could get interesting when both parties in the conversation are the digital twins.  Will a both party digital twin conversations be more interesting the physical people conversation? Maybe have an interesting conversation scoring after each conversation. Likely to have fewer p-friends if you start doing this.

?                You can show how you have complete knowledge about your p-friends or the p-people you are having a conversation with (with smart glasses doing a search on the internet about the person you are talking to) but will this feel like they are talking to a stalker? Need a creepiness warning alarm as well if you are making statements that are too personal for a conversation. 

Author’s note, I was judging a Kansas University Science competition and one student had a social media warning monitor app I thought was great. If you were about to post something that would ruin your reputation, a relationship or your life, it would give a warning and ask if you really wanted to post the message. I thought it was a great idea. Should be a mandatory option in every social media app. General rule, do not post anything you would be ashamed your teacher, college admissions board, boss, pastor or Mother would see or would be in the newspaper.

?                Show how p-you and your d-you can be more productive by working together to get things done. If a task is hard and boring, send your d-you off to do the job in the digital space and come back quickly to solve the problem. Will your d-you complain that de (pronoun for my digital twin) has to do all the work. The p-you can just be on a beach in Hawaii or anywhere ese you want to be (P or V).  If a job is dirty, dangerous or dull give it to your digital twin.

?                Have your XR device warn you if you are going to have an accident. If you can predict the future by 1 minute or even 15 seconds, would you ever have an accident? This is what AV technology is working on.  Of course, if the XR just keeps telling you to be careful all the time (like your parents), you may turn it off.

?                What will a future of TelePresence and Virtual Presence look like in 2030? Telemedicine, distance learning, work from home, VR travel will transform how we learn, work, travel for fun and engage with our doctors and other people in our life. Remember, always check the privacy settings especial when going to the V-doctors office. Do not want this live streamed.

In this blog: From Zoomers (Gen-Z) to Voomers (Gen-V) – From the “Digital Native” Generation to the “Virtual Native” Generation

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/from-zoomers-gen-z-voomers-gen-v-digital-native-virtual-doug-hohulin/

The younger generation – (millennials & zoomers) are “digital natives” and can navigate & interact digitally very different than the older generations.

In the next 5-7 years with enhanced XR / smart glasses technology, will the next generation lead the way to “virtual native” and can navigate the world remotely as easily as in person. List of “Virtual Native” Generation characteristics.

• Can learn virtually (digital world) as easily as in person (physical world) (with the right education / communication / VR technology)
• Can interact socially virtually with others as easy as in person or via the phone, text or PC video
• Can navigate the different video platforms, XR devices and XR platforms easily
• They are hyper local and hyper global – they meet and interact with people around the world
• Create new ways to connect to others virtually – think from phone to text or from email to social medial
• Can teach others how to be a virtual natives

Anyone born between 1981 and 1996 is considered a Millennial, and anyone born from 1997 onward is part of a new generation (Gen Z or Zoomers) – Maybe children born in 2020 or later will be Gen-Vs: Gen-Virtual (not Gen-Virus)

Ideas for the Telepresence - Digital Twin Skit

?                Conversation with your digital twin of 2030 and explains what the year 2030 is like with XR and interacting with your digital twin.

?                Have your digital twin go on virtual dates with other digital twins first to see if you are compatible. If the date goes well, then have a double date with the d-couple and the p-couple. Each of the d-yous can help the p-yous get to know each other better quickly. Your digital twins could have a d-family and d-children with d-pets. If at first you do not succeed, do not try sky diving, surgery, getting married or raising children. Do it digitally first. Go into the digital multiverse to simulate your life. What path is the most optimized for you? Then pick that physical path for your life.

?                Interaction with your digital pet: dog or cat or tiger – less dangerous and messy than a physical dog, cat or tiger. Create your own pet species like the Dogctopus (1/2 Dog ? Octopus) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNrKa-xSp_E

?                Ability to modify/tune the personality (tweak their personality/ emotional – think an equalizer board for emotions) of the digital character human or pet. Do you want a playful dog, happy dog, sleepy dog, snugly dog, attentive dog, barky dog, quiet dog? You can tune (write, tweak, control?) the emotion you want your digital character to have at the time. Could use this for your digital children or digital significant other? See below on how Affectiva AI reads emotional states. Technology could be leverage to write the different emotional state to your digital people or pets in your life. This technology could then be applied to the physical world – shock collar have been used on dogs for this purpose - time out or prescription drugs for children.

AFFECTIVA HUMAN PERCEPTION AI ANALYZES COMPLEX HUMAN STATES 10,260,339 FACES ANALYZED

https://blog.affectiva.com/emotion-ai-101-all-about-emotion-detection-and-affectivas-emotion-metrics

When you use the Affectiva SDK in your applications, you will receive facial expression output in the form of seven emotion metrics, 20 facial expression metrics, 13 emojis, and four appearance metrics.

See the Social VR 2021 UN Climate Change Conference COP26. The key question is will the virtual experience be as good as the physical experience? Will the virtual platform and devices and user readiness be ready to match physical experience in Nov 2021? My thinking is that COP28 time frame (2023) is when the V-experience will equal the P-experience but COP30 (2025) is when the V-experience will surpass the P-experience.

Social VR 2021 UN Climate Change Conference COP26 - meet atop a snowy mountain island off Antarctica

Join us in social VR during the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26. Physically it is scheduled to be held in Glasgow, Scotland from 1 to 12 November 2021 under the presidency of the UK Government, with assistance from the Scottish Government. But, via the magic of online social VR, we will meet atop a snowy mountain island off Antarctica! In 2019 we had a successful and stimulating online meeting during COP25, floating above Santiago, Chile, within view of the snow Andes. This conference is to be the first "global stocktake" outlined in the Paris Agreement. What has been our collective progress over the past five years to reduce emissions, build resilience to climate change, and align financial support for climate action? https://www.ukcop26.org 

The world economy is ~$80 Trillion. When will the Digital Economy exceed the Physical Economy?

See The Human Factor, The Research The birth of the Digital Self - Leslie Shannon https://www.futurithmic.com/2020/12/23/the-birth-of-the-digital-self/

• In October 2020, the market capitalization of Zoom Video Communications reached $151 billion – equaling the combined market capitalization of the top 15 airlines in the world, as ranked by the number of passengers carried in 2019. 
• Back in January, Tesla took the crown of "Most Valuable American Automaker" with a market cap of $86.1 billion. Today, it's grown to more than seven times that and is now worth more than all U.S.-headquartered automakers put together.

The Nokia 6G paper and the Presentation by Marcus Weldon (The future of human existence: Proximity, productivity and the pursuit of happiness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXgY467UGR8) highlights some of these concepts. 

Nokia White Paper Communications in the 6G Era - 6G Physical-Digital-Biological World https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9040431

In 2028, I plan to give a co-presentation on 7G with D-Doug. It will be interesting to see if people think D-Doug is the better presenter than P-Doug - Will there be biological technology (BMI) so D-Doug & P-Doug can merge – probably not until the 2040s with 9G. ?? 

Author’s note, I am writing this more in humor than in what I believe. As a technologist who has launched may projects, I know how hard it is to make something work and what can go wrong. I am more in agreement with Kevin Kelly than Ray Kurzweil on this topic but we shall see. Ray has surprised me in the past.

Disclaimer: “Views expressed are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of employers, associates and partners. Any information herein is not advice and should not be treated as such.

EXTERNAL LINKS: Links to source articles and other miscellaneous materials are outlined in the document. Third party links posted on this blog are provided to credit content sources as well as a convenience to you. Please note that this does not constitute an endorsement of any information, products or services contained therein. Additionally, specific rights as well as terms and conditions might apply to those materials. Please check terms of use with their respective authors and/or owners.”

Modified from this blog https://innovarista.org/disclaimer/