[Music]
[Music]
[Applause]
what’s your vision of the future is it a
sprawling Metaverse a la ready player
one is it an automated world that we all
exist in like we witnessed in wall-e or
is it a mashup of futuristic scenarios
you’ve gleaned and put together over the
years but still somehow resemble a mix
of Back to the Future and Daft Punk
videos whenever we picture stories of
the future we picture the human race
progressing ever further to the out
reaches of space and technology and
further away from our shared human roots
but what if technology could have the
opposite effect
what if technology could lead us closer
to who we already are and give voice to
historical narratives that are
previously unheard seven years ago I
moved to Washington DC on a whim like
any recent college graduate going
through an identity crisis I decided it
was time to leave my small hometown
which is actually Cape May New Jersey
and moved to a larger city while in DC
it was amazing to see people come from
all over the world to one place to share
their diverse backgrounds and interests
with one another at one point for
several years I lived in a shared group
home with seven other twenty-something
year olds and her home was a constant
influx of people from all over despite
my seeming love for where I found myself
I’ll never forget a question that a
friend a DC transplant by way of LA
posed to me he said do you have any
pictures hanging on the walls in your
room I thought that was a really random
question so I paused and thought about
it picturing the walls on my room
overlooking U Street and I said you know
oddly enough I don’t all of the pictures
in my room are currently slanted leaning
against my dresser and desk and he said
you know that means you’re not committed
to where you are right
this was a big learning lesson for me
and I did go out and buy some hanging
nails shortly thereafter that point but
what it brought to my attention is that
although I thought I felt connected to
the place where I lived and worked every
single day perhaps that connection was
less solidified than I had originally
assumed a recent Gallup survey stated
that the United States is one of the
most geographically mobile countries in
the world
one out of four US adults and that’s
twenty four percent usually will move at
least once over five years within the
United States data from the US Census
Bureau shows that the average u.s.
American moves residences more than 11
times within their lifetime another
recent Gallup survey that came out last
year showed that more American workers
are working remotely and for far longer
periods of time last year alone 43% of
employed Americans said they spent at
least part of their time working
remotely and this was out of a study of
15,000 adults only up until the past 200
years we all used to spend the majority
of our lives in the same location most
likely developing a deep connection
there whether one of necessity or of
belonging passed down oral traditions
job skills learn specifically for that
area and music and/or dance that emerge
from the people of a place all
contributed to creating a collective
thread that wove through time and space
remaining unbroken throughout the years
for them they didn’t have to gauge their
level of commitment to a place based
upon how many photos they had hanging on
their walls instead it was in Harran now
we find ourselves in an era where
simultaneous narratives can be happening
at the same time so for example Spotify
playlists based on our individual
preferences pulling in music from all
over the world I can be listening to
Fleetwood Mac while my sister is
listening to Beyonce next to me both of
us are in this
space but were actually simultaneously
experiencing completely different and
unique senses of place this wasn’t
possible before the same thing can occur
in our daily activities I can see an
network of neighborhood streets as the
place where I run every single morning
well you can look at those same streets
and see a place where for generations
that was a parade path that your family
would take at an annual celebration so
these are same locations completely
different meanings imbued into them and
multiply this by thousands of people
within city limits also taken to account
that people are constantly shifting as
residents arrive and depart Marc augé
defined this as a non place and to him
what a non place was was a transparent
transient temporary space where there
was so much activity
you couldn’t even regard to it as a
place Gertrude Stein writer and poet
referred to these place less places as
there is no there there so what do we do
in this sort of digitally nomadic age
how are we able to define senses of
places collectively and build spaces as
well as cultural community centers where
people can actually come together and
feel involved and how do you immersive
technologies namely VR and AR tie into
all of this so to further define what I
keep saying sense of place and what I
mean by that
I like to define by another word and
this word actually was found in the
oxford dictionary 2016 word of the year
short list along with adulting and
chatbots
and this word is Hyuga it’s a Dutch word
and already this year alone more than a
hundred books have been published on the
subject and 2.5 million Instagram photos
have been posted with this word as its
hashtag and so what the word means is
it’s a quality
of comfort conviviality and coziness
that engender a feeling of well-being
and contentment that’s a very broad
definition and because of that reason
Hyuga has kind of come to define
everything from the warm glow the candle
light to hands holding a mug in the
winter the reason why I think this is
important are not these tiny details
that have been marketed but more so that
there’s a trend towards people seeking
spaces where they can cultivate and
foster authentic senses of human
connection and belonging another way to
understand what sense of place means
comes from geographer Yi Foote WAN who
said that places don’t actually even
come to existence until people define
and give a name to a location thus
separating it from the outward undefined
space in other words spaces senses of
place are culturally and dynamically
defined through time shared stories and
experiences connect people to place and
places from generation to generation and
we don’t really see that on a local
scale anymore we’re seeing it more on a
global scale most people I’m sure most
of you can attest are more tapped into
their news feeds than to the community
bulletin so how can we bring the two
together especially using technology are
we able to stay tapped in and connected
to our local environments while at the
same time taking advantage of all the
expansive information flow we receive
from the amazing tools of globalization
I believe the answer is yes and I think
that we can do so with augmented reality
and virtual reality so going to spend
some time talking about each one so
augmented reality the way that it works
is from the inside out what that means
is I can go into an environment and
choose something like a building I can
extract information from that building
and then overlay it with more digital
information back onto that environment
that I view with a a are capable device
so I’m going to show it an example now
that takes place in an AR app on a
regular mobile phone what you can see
here is he’s using the AR app to
actually geo tag and place a historical
photo of the same building on top of
itself and this will remain in space so
now the next person who comes here with
their AR capable device and stands in
the same location can see the same thing
in this way he’s an individual helping
to build collective history this next
video shows how you can also add text to
do the same thing and these are just
simple place marker tags but picture if
you could put your Yelp reviews or
information you have from the past
location you can also add audio as well
as a test of talking and seeing what
happens when we record audio in space so
another way to think about this is
Wikipedia meets 3d spatialization meets
geocaching because you can pull in the
information from any source now citizens
can become collective historic
contributors so one person could add
photos that they received from their
grandparents one person could put in
local folklore another person could be
adding music they remember hearing in
buildings throughout the years
open-source narratives have existed for
a very long time especially once that
pull in real-time information and that
contained multiple points of view we see
this in our apps we use every day when
we use Yelp that’s multiple people
putting their voice into the same system
tag to a location same holds true for
the navigation ways the app if you ever
used that 90 million drivers are
currently putting in information every
day to constantly update that the
difference and what moves everything
forward with VR and AR is that they work
in the realm of 3d space unlike 2d which
we originally had with our apps and even
traditional film with 3d we now have an
additional dimension of space so we can
actually add more room and bandwidth
which allows for more visualization of
larger amounts of data so the stories
can become more detailed now VR acts
similarly although sort of in the
opposite
while AR comes from the inside out with
VR we come from the outside in so all of
that information is coming into a closed
immersive computer-generated environment
that we can create entirely new spaces
in because you can’t see the outside
world and although everything that you
see and hear and even potentially feel
inside of a VR space is artificial it’s
important to remember that we’re still
building senses of place within these
digital environments and this is because
while we take it for granted every day
when we’re creating memories we’re doing
so in a spatial environment so when
we’re in VR and we’re walking around and
we’re looking and we’re hearing in all
360 directions our mind considers that
to be real because of this it’s
important to remember that digital
representations of space can also become
non places and I think we should
remember as we’re building these to make
sure that that doesn’t happen the
digital is going to increasingly become
more tied to the physical I wanted to
give you some recent examples that just
took place over the past two weeks
Facebook spaces which if you don’t know
what that is it’s Facebook social vr
application just this week they went to
Puerto Rico virtually and there was a
lot of press that came out about this so
I won’t speak to too many details but
basically there was a disconnect between
the hosts and the virtual space that
they found themselves in reason being
because they weren’t paying enough
attention to the intimate information
details throughout this space they were
treating it as if it was a background to
d-flat video instead of an actual space
so they lost all of these layers of
meaning that could have really created a
collective sense of space
after such a tragedy an opposite use
case just occurred two weeks ago and it
actually featured fellow TEDx speaker
that I hope you guys witnessed this
morning Wyclef Jean when Slate Magazine
interviewed him within Facebook spaces
to talk about his new album within there
the context was completely different
they virtually traveled to Haiti where
Wyclif was born and raised and so over
and over he kept adding additional
layers of context to the 3d environment
talking about his personal narratives or
historical knowledge that he had accrued
through the years so something that
could have been perceived as just a
digital space that we can stand on and
talk about normally as if we’re hosts of
a show now was an actual space that
others could add meaning to as well when
my friend told me that I was treating
the place where I lived and worked
everyday as a non place I made it a
point to see for myself what actually
ties me to this location for me I found
the collective thread in the DC local
music scene where musicians would play
shows in local venues and their intimate
homes and the musicians there cultivated
spaces where they could speak to not
only their everyday local DC experiences
but also build upon the legacy of DC
newzik history that had come before and
because I had started working in VR and
air at the time I wondered is it
possible to capture an entire collective
shared sense of space and play it back
for others can we record slight fleeting
moments of Hyuga and then show others so
that they can understand personally and
collectively how we view locations
I found the need for this tool more than
ever when I watched the DC city
commissioners try to understand if they
should begin developing public spaces
particularly these music spaces I spoke
about and I witnessed as artists and
developers came head to head trying to
communicate their opposite points of
view for this location they each felt a
different sense of space for the same
place with VR and AR
we’re able to take opposite points of
view even if they’re radically different
and geotag them to the same location so
they can now exist in the same
coordinates as other emerging
technologies begin to take us to the
ever burgeoning limits of outer space
it’s important that we don’t forget
about the spaces that already exist in
this way we can begin reclaiming and
redefining our public spaces and
together committed ly hanging our
pictures and visions for the future on
the walls that are digital of the world
thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Music]
[Applause]
what’s your vision of the future is it a
sprawling Metaverse a la ready player
one is it an automated world that we all
exist in like we witnessed in wall-e or
is it a mashup of futuristic scenarios
you’ve gleaned and put together over the
years but still somehow resemble a mix
of Back to the Future and Daft Punk
videos whenever we picture stories of
the future we picture the human race
progressing ever further to the out
reaches of space and technology and
further away from our shared human roots
but what if technology could have the
opposite effect
what if technology could lead us closer
to who we already are and give voice to
historical narratives that are
previously unheard seven years ago I
moved to Washington DC on a whim like
any recent college graduate going
through an identity crisis I decided it
was time to leave my small hometown
which is actually Cape May New Jersey
and moved to a larger city while in DC
it was amazing to see people come from
all over the world to one place to share
their diverse backgrounds and interests
with one another at one point for
several years I lived in a shared group
home with seven other twenty-something
year olds and her home was a constant
influx of people from all over despite
my seeming love for where I found myself
I’ll never forget a question that a
friend a DC transplant by way of LA
posed to me he said do you have any
pictures hanging on the walls in your
room I thought that was a really random
question so I paused and thought about
it picturing the walls on my room
overlooking U Street and I said you know
oddly enough I don’t all of the pictures
in my room are currently slanted leaning
against my dresser and desk and he said
you know that means you’re not committed
to where you are right
this was a big learning lesson for me
and I did go out and buy some hanging
nails shortly thereafter that point but
what it brought to my attention is that
although I thought I felt connected to
the place where I lived and worked every
single day perhaps that connection was
less solidified than I had originally
assumed a recent Gallup survey stated
that the United States is one of the
most geographically mobile countries in
the world
one out of four US adults and that’s
twenty four percent usually will move at
least once over five years within the
United States data from the US Census
Bureau shows that the average u.s.
American moves residences more than 11
times within their lifetime another
recent Gallup survey that came out last
year showed that more American workers
are working remotely and for far longer
periods of time last year alone 43% of
employed Americans said they spent at
least part of their time working
remotely and this was out of a study of
15,000 adults only up until the past 200
years we all used to spend the majority
of our lives in the same location most
likely developing a deep connection
there whether one of necessity or of
belonging passed down oral traditions
job skills learn specifically for that
area and music and/or dance that emerge
from the people of a place all
contributed to creating a collective
thread that wove through time and space
remaining unbroken throughout the years
for them they didn’t have to gauge their
level of commitment to a place based
upon how many photos they had hanging on
their walls instead it was in Harran now
we find ourselves in an era where
simultaneous narratives can be happening
at the same time so for example Spotify
playlists based on our individual
preferences pulling in music from all
over the world I can be listening to
Fleetwood Mac while my sister is
listening to Beyonce next to me both of
us are in this
space but were actually simultaneously
experiencing completely different and
unique senses of place this wasn’t
possible before the same thing can occur
in our daily activities I can see an
network of neighborhood streets as the
place where I run every single morning
well you can look at those same streets
and see a place where for generations
that was a parade path that your family
would take at an annual celebration so
these are same locations completely
different meanings imbued into them and
multiply this by thousands of people
within city limits also taken to account
that people are constantly shifting as
residents arrive and depart Marc augé
defined this as a non place and to him
what a non place was was a transparent
transient temporary space where there
was so much activity
you couldn’t even regard to it as a
place Gertrude Stein writer and poet
referred to these place less places as
there is no there there so what do we do
in this sort of digitally nomadic age
how are we able to define senses of
places collectively and build spaces as
well as cultural community centers where
people can actually come together and
feel involved and how do you immersive
technologies namely VR and AR tie into
all of this so to further define what I
keep saying sense of place and what I
mean by that
I like to define by another word and
this word actually was found in the
oxford dictionary 2016 word of the year
short list along with adulting and
chatbots
and this word is Hyuga it’s a Dutch word
and already this year alone more than a
hundred books have been published on the
subject and 2.5 million Instagram photos
have been posted with this word as its
hashtag and so what the word means is
it’s a quality
of comfort conviviality and coziness
that engender a feeling of well-being
and contentment that’s a very broad
definition and because of that reason
Hyuga has kind of come to define
everything from the warm glow the candle
light to hands holding a mug in the
winter the reason why I think this is
important are not these tiny details
that have been marketed but more so that
there’s a trend towards people seeking
spaces where they can cultivate and
foster authentic senses of human
connection and belonging another way to
understand what sense of place means
comes from geographer Yi Foote WAN who
said that places don’t actually even
come to existence until people define
and give a name to a location thus
separating it from the outward undefined
space in other words spaces senses of
place are culturally and dynamically
defined through time shared stories and
experiences connect people to place and
places from generation to generation and
we don’t really see that on a local
scale anymore we’re seeing it more on a
global scale most people I’m sure most
of you can attest are more tapped into
their news feeds than to the community
bulletin so how can we bring the two
together especially using technology are
we able to stay tapped in and connected
to our local environments while at the
same time taking advantage of all the
expansive information flow we receive
from the amazing tools of globalization
I believe the answer is yes and I think
that we can do so with augmented reality
and virtual reality so going to spend
some time talking about each one so
augmented reality the way that it works
is from the inside out what that means
is I can go into an environment and
choose something like a building I can
extract information from that building
and then overlay it with more digital
information back onto that environment
that I view with a a are capable device
so I’m going to show it an example now
that takes place in an AR app on a
regular mobile phone what you can see
here is he’s using the AR app to
actually geo tag and place a historical
photo of the same building on top of
itself and this will remain in space so
now the next person who comes here with
their AR capable device and stands in
the same location can see the same thing
in this way he’s an individual helping
to build collective history this next
video shows how you can also add text to
do the same thing and these are just
simple place marker tags but picture if
you could put your Yelp reviews or
information you have from the past
location you can also add audio as well
as a test of talking and seeing what
happens when we record audio in space so
another way to think about this is
Wikipedia meets 3d spatialization meets
geocaching because you can pull in the
information from any source now citizens
can become collective historic
contributors so one person could add
photos that they received from their
grandparents one person could put in
local folklore another person could be
adding music they remember hearing in
buildings throughout the years
open-source narratives have existed for
a very long time especially once that
pull in real-time information and that
contained multiple points of view we see
this in our apps we use every day when
we use Yelp that’s multiple people
putting their voice into the same system
tag to a location same holds true for
the navigation ways the app if you ever
used that 90 million drivers are
currently putting in information every
day to constantly update that the
difference and what moves everything
forward with VR and AR is that they work
in the realm of 3d space unlike 2d which
we originally had with our apps and even
traditional film with 3d we now have an
additional dimension of space so we can
actually add more room and bandwidth
which allows for more visualization of
larger amounts of data so the stories
can become more detailed now VR acts
similarly although sort of in the
opposite
while AR comes from the inside out with
VR we come from the outside in so all of
that information is coming into a closed
immersive computer-generated environment
that we can create entirely new spaces
in because you can’t see the outside
world and although everything that you
see and hear and even potentially feel
inside of a VR space is artificial it’s
important to remember that we’re still
building senses of place within these
digital environments and this is because
while we take it for granted every day
when we’re creating memories we’re doing
so in a spatial environment so when
we’re in VR and we’re walking around and
we’re looking and we’re hearing in all
360 directions our mind considers that
to be real because of this it’s
important to remember that digital
representations of space can also become
non places and I think we should
remember as we’re building these to make
sure that that doesn’t happen the
digital is going to increasingly become
more tied to the physical I wanted to
give you some recent examples that just
took place over the past two weeks
Facebook spaces which if you don’t know
what that is it’s Facebook social vr
application just this week they went to
Puerto Rico virtually and there was a
lot of press that came out about this so
I won’t speak to too many details but
basically there was a disconnect between
the hosts and the virtual space that
they found themselves in reason being
because they weren’t paying enough
attention to the intimate information
details throughout this space they were
treating it as if it was a background to
d-flat video instead of an actual space
so they lost all of these layers of
meaning that could have really created a
collective sense of space
after such a tragedy an opposite use
case just occurred two weeks ago and it
actually featured fellow TEDx speaker
that I hope you guys witnessed this
morning Wyclef Jean when Slate Magazine
interviewed him within Facebook spaces
to talk about his new album within there
the context was completely different
they virtually traveled to Haiti where
Wyclif was born and raised and so over
and over he kept adding additional
layers of context to the 3d environment
talking about his personal narratives or
historical knowledge that he had accrued
through the years so something that
could have been perceived as just a
digital space that we can stand on and
talk about normally as if we’re hosts of
a show now was an actual space that
others could add meaning to as well when
my friend told me that I was treating
the place where I lived and worked
everyday as a non place I made it a
point to see for myself what actually
ties me to this location for me I found
the collective thread in the DC local
music scene where musicians would play
shows in local venues and their intimate
homes and the musicians there cultivated
spaces where they could speak to not
only their everyday local DC experiences
but also build upon the legacy of DC
newzik history that had come before and
because I had started working in VR and
air at the time I wondered is it
possible to capture an entire collective
shared sense of space and play it back
for others can we record slight fleeting
moments of Hyuga and then show others so
that they can understand personally and
collectively how we view locations
I found the need for this tool more than
ever when I watched the DC city
commissioners try to understand if they
should begin developing public spaces
particularly these music spaces I spoke
about and I witnessed as artists and
developers came head to head trying to
communicate their opposite points of
view for this location they each felt a
different sense of space for the same
place with VR and AR
we’re able to take opposite points of
view even if they’re radically different
and geotag them to the same location so
they can now exist in the same
coordinates as other emerging
technologies begin to take us to the
ever burgeoning limits of outer space
it’s important that we don’t forget
about the spaces that already exist in
this way we can begin reclaiming and
redefining our public spaces and
together committed ly hanging our
pictures and visions for the future on
the walls that are digital of the world
thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
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