Today's computers are so amazing that we fail to notice how terrible they really are. I'd like to talk to you today about this problem, and how we can fix it with neuroscience.
0:27
First, I'd like to take you back to a frosty night in Harlem in 2011 that had a profound impact on me. I was sitting in a dive bar outside of Columbia University, where I studied computer science and neuroscience, and I was having this great conversation with a fellow student about the power of holograms to one day replace computers. And just as we were getting to the best part of the conversation, of course, his phone lights up. And he pulls it towards himself, and he looks down and he starts typing. And then he forces his eyeballs back up to mine and he goes, "Keep going. I'm with you." But of course his eyes were glazed over, and the moment was dead.
1:05
Meanwhile across the bar, I noticed another student holding his phone, this time towards a group. He was swiping through pictures on Instagram, and these kids were laughing hysterically. And that dichotomy between how crappy I was feeling and how happy they were feeling about the same technology, really got me thinking. And the more I thought of it, the more I realized it was clearly not the digital information that was the bad guy here, it was simply the display position that was separating me from my friend and that was binding those kids together.
1:36
See, they were connected around something, just like our ancestors who evolved their social cognitions telling stories around the campfire. And that's exactly what tools should do, I think. They should extend our bodies. And I think computers today are doing quite the opposite. Whether you're sending an email to your wife or you're composing a symphony or just consoling a friend, you're doing it in pretty much the same way. You're hunched over these rectangles, fumbling with buttons and menus and more rectangles. And I think this is the wrong way, I think we can start using a much more natural machine. We should use machines that bring our work back into the world. We should use machines that use the principles of neuroscience to extend our senses versus going against them.
2:22
Now it just so happens that I have such a machine here. It's called the Meta 2. Let's try it out. Now in front of me right now, I can see the audience, and I can see my very hands. And in three, two, one, we're going to see an immersive hologram appear, a very realistic hologram appear in front of me, of our very glasses I'm wearing on my head right now. And of course this could be anything that we're shopping for or learning from, and I can use my hands to very nicely kind of move it around with fine control. And I think Iron Man would be proud. We're going to come back to this in just a bit.
3:08
(Applause)
3:10
Now if you're anything like me, your mind is already reeling with the possibilities of what we can do with this kind of technology, so let's look at a few.
3:18
My mom is an architect, so naturally the first thing I imagined was laying out a building in 3D space instead of having to use these 2D floor plans. She's actually touching graphics right now and selecting an interior decor. This was all shot through a GoPro through our very glasses.
3:34
And this next use case is very personal to me, it's Professor Adam Gazzaley's glass brain project, courtesy of UCSF. As a neuroscience student, I would always fantasize about the ability to learn and memorize these complex brain structures with an actual machine, where I could touch and play with the various brain structures.
3:55
Now what you're seeing is called augmented reality, but to me, it's part of a much more important story -- a story of how we can begin to extend our bodies with digital devices, instead of the other way around.
4:12
Now ... in the next few years, humanity's going to go through a shift, I think. We're going to start putting an entire layer of digital information on the real world. Just imagine for a moment what this could mean for storytellers, for painters, for brain surgeons, for interior decorators and maybe for all of us here today. And what I think we need to do as a community, is really try and make an effort to imagine how we can create this new reality in a way that extends the human experience, instead of gamifying our reality or cluttering it with digital information. And that's what I'm very passionate about.
4:51
Now, I want to tell you a little secret. In about five years -- this is not the smallest device -- in about five years, these are all going to look like strips of glass on our eyes that project holograms. And just like we don't care so much about which phone we buy in terms of the hardware -- we buy it for the operating system -- as a neuroscientist, I always dreamt of building the iOS of the mind, if you will. And it's very, very important that we get this right, because we might be living inside of these things for at least as long as we'