Sci-Fi Meets Reality Dune and The Metaverse

Ryan Purvis 0:00
Hello, and welcome to the digital workspace works podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host supported by producer Heather Bicknell. In this series you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in the field story from the frontlines, the problems they face and how they solve them. The years they're focused on from technology people and processes to the approaches they took they will help you to get to grips with the digital workspace inner workings

Heather Bicknell 0:32
Hello Hey Ryan, how are you? Yeah finally new Okay, do

you know what today is?

Ryan Purvis 0:41
No it was today

Heather Bicknell 0:43
it's student release day today at least in the US yeah

Ryan Purvis 0:51
you know I'm so far removed from from TV from movies and TV as you know, I didn't realize that the new the new daily one that came out last week yeah, so you lined up to go and watch

Heather Bicknell 1:06
and while they're streaming on HBO max at 6pm so starting at 6pm you can start watching it so I'm just gonna watch it from home although I'm sure on the break screen you know, this sandworms that everything would be very cool but yeah the convenience

Ryan Purvis 1:29
when you have young kids are going to movies is more like an you know a real adventure because the kids are going to be looked after and all that kind of stuff at least till they're both old enough to listen to loud volume sounds and the more some of this stuff so for us is at home on the TV so in the end you're consuming in one way or another

Heather Bicknell 1:54
yes I'm pretty excited about that finally after more than a year

Unknown Speaker 2:01
yeah well you know

Ryan Purvis 2:02
there's so many movies that have been delayed your juniors one I think James Bond was the lady I think he was delayed I don't know when that's coming out so yeah, it's gonna be interesting to see how streaming takes over from from cinema I think Black Widow was was also only was only released on Disney it wasn't actually released on

Heather Bicknell 2:41
its I know there's concern with doing that you know if that doesn't get the you know if it doesn't get the numbers because people are watching it from home although they said they're going to count the streams towards the you know that that contributes to how they're judging the performance of the film but we'll see people are afraid they're not going to have a sequel if it doesn't do well but apparently it's already booked for a dune too. So

Ryan Purvis 3:25
you know, I think I think this is the Netflix effect there are so many things that probably don't deserve a sequel but they get them anyway because the subscription pay for it. You only really need a few you don't need everyone to like using a certain a certain amount I mean there's so many series if you think back back many years ago that canceled because the ratings on the networks were high enough but they were actually huge followings like Stargate for example Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG one and he wanted 10 seasons I think that was enough. But Atlantis was cut short in five and that could have gone on for another five easily and the universe was only two and that could also go on for another 820 because that was like the ultimate one but because then get the ratings they were killed. They are thinking about the Mystery Science Theater 3000 which if you've ever watched it's a guy who he must be great horror movies. But that was that was brought back because it was funded by a Kickstarter campaign and that's now being picked up by netflix and I think that's what happens was element that was watching that I really liked. It was picked up by netflix where Amazon expense expense was going to be cancelled listings by Amazon I think and that's that's a really good science fiction series. You know, so I think what's gonna happen all these sequels I think they're training them out because there's a million consumer This one

Heather Bicknell 5:02
we will see I think, obviously it was a star studded cast for Dune. So hopefully. Hopefully it's a good one I just watched I'm gonna butcher his name Jeff bland skis Dune, the documentary on the dune that was never made. Okay. Yeah, so I know if you so you've seen the David Lynch adaptation, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. It's like I really liked David Lynch's the director. But that movie is not it. I mean, he didn't even want to put his name on it. He put a student about, at least done some of them. But so so yeah, so there was a director who had tried to adapt dude, first. And he was a surrealist, like very eccentric director who put out these kind of avant garde films prior to that. And then he got the opportunity to do new project teams like I wanted to do and even though he hadn't even read the book, at that point. So they green lighted him to do that. And he assembled his team and a star studded cast of Salvador Dali as the Emperor. And oh, who else did he have? I don't recall at this point, it's too early in the morning. But anyway, he soaked all of this effort and these like insanely creative people into into this project. And they came out with this kind of art book that's like, a tome of like a flipbook almost of what the movie would be. And then he took it to the Hollywood studios, and they were like, it was the 70s it was before Star Wars. And they were like, Yeah, I don't think so basically, that they didn't, you know, he was kind of this edgy, you know, art director, and they were like, we're not going to greenlight this, which was heartbreaking for him. But it's a really interesting documentary, I do recommend, you know, watching it and there's a lot of cool art they came up with and everything and they explain how even though the movies ever made it, the influences bled into a lot of the other sci fi fantasy stuff that has come out since so. But yeah, that happened and then later because, you know, because of that, the David Lynch film got made.

Ryan Purvis 7:49
Which I mean, Dune is one of those, those epic fantasy space offers, I guess that you can see it in lots of lots of other things. You know, Jupiter Ascending was a very good movie with a spice wasn't wasn't spice it was humans. But it was sort of, you know, it's the same sort of thing, you know, family versus family or, you know, the inner workings and, and, you know, someone to try and to do without reading the book, I think would never do justice, because work is so complicated, in a good way. You know, did build the form, we require that, that sort of knowledge.

Heather Bicknell 8:29
He did read it, but it's not, not when he had just when he decided that he's going to make the book in your film, he had not read it.

Ryan Purvis 8:38
Because it's the seven or eight books I think. I haven't read I already made one I'll be honest, I found it very difficult to read. I found that he found the English very difficult to sort of follow when you have time to read, you want to read books that are easy to read. Keep you enthralled. I was hoping that maybe maybe the movies a better interpretation.

Heather Bicknell 9:05
Yeah, we'll see. I started doing Messiah, which is the second one. That way I know the series kind of gets weird as it goes on. But I thought, you know, apart from me being super excited about finally getting to watch Dune and having that to look forward to tonight. There's a lot of talk that's been going on about the metaverse, and I thought, you know, we could essentially of a sci fi episode. So you know, dude in the metaverse don't necessarily Connect, right? Because students kind of post technology Well, you know, computers are humans at that point. they've evolved like past that, I suppose. But yeah, you know, with Facebook. Well, everything that's been happening at Facebook, but then they're, you know, the rumors are I don't know if they've officially announced anything yet, but kind of changing the name of their company to parent company name like Google has with alphabet and then putting a lot more focus on the idea of the metaverse. So what's your impression of all of that?

Ryan Purvis 10:20
So the first thing is I probably say that Facebook is changing the parent company, though because of necessity, not required, not because of a luxury. But I think I mean, it has been a few sort of mentioned in the press the last couple of weeks, maybe even months as being one of them. So maybe some minor standings of animals maybe to start with that. This is a progression from what we currently have in is called a sport currently have web web 2.0, baby 2.5, which is, you know, the ability to communicate via various apps like WhatsApp, or telegram, signal, etc, etc. And do they do that communication not only as text, but as voice or video as well. Now, the next step up from me on that, which is what I think they're trying to get to the metaverse is that you're now going to be able to virtually interact in a shared space. And if you remember we talked about the future work book called shift I think it is where you wake up in the morning and you're still in your pajamas and you haven't brushed your teeth but you put on your headset and you join the meeting and your business suit and you talk to your colleagues for seven a meeting. It's that kind of thing where you could in theory live a whole separate life in a different universe hence the better the worse. And you know, I was listening to something today about it funny enough and they were saying things like imagine if you could live this you know you have when you join a gym, your members you got a different apartment where you were it's set up a certain way but that's because you you're really unconstrained to how you want it to be and your constraints will be probably you know been Facebook will probably be paying for something either with your information or some sort of advertising so you would have a snake fridge and a snake a coffee machine and you know all that kind of stuff. But I think it's an inevitable step for us because we all will be used to being at home and not traveling to places unnecessarily and there will be a need to do some sort of face to face at least to see body language, all that kind of stuff. Versus really cool and I probably see in the long term as wearing suits that pick up body movements and having sensors and all that kind of stuff. There's a lot of application in that if you think about how your body temperature changes how you how you react to things and how that stuff can be picked up in negotiation that would be quite interesting. The other thing that I was trying to get to in a colossal trip to Florida this this connection into a universe I don't think should be our mining company. I think that shouldn't be and this will be the key with the government's or maybe we need World Government golf but you know, if you are logged into Facebook, because you're going into this worse you're going to disconnected from the real world there's going to have to be anchors to keep you back in real world and also break down in case you're spending too much time in and if you think some of the science fiction movies where you know people have been stuck in the in for their life because it's better than their current life and and then becoming fat slobs, and I'm thinking about a movie while he was living on the space stations and that a walk anymore because they just join into the metaverse or whatever they call it there. So I think it's gonna be it's an interesting step. You know, this could be decades away from being real.

Heather Bicknell 14:29
Yeah, I was reading up a little bit on it last night, and it seemed like 10 to 20 years away from fully realizing the tech and they were comparing sort of what we have now in the AR VR space to the like chunky cell phones of the 90s. And that, you know, that's the kind of difference what we should expect to progress through the next decade.

Ryan Purvis 14:58
Yeah, I would always say this is one of those areas where you don't want to be the first mover or you don't have to keep going. So you're the first mover so I find this strategy quite strange to to go and put it out there that we're doing this metaverse stuff. I can't see the reason to to be vocal about it yet. I brought that you know, they've had, they've had Oculus, and they've had the other one for ages. And those games are in illyria our games are getting better and better, but they're similar at a price point then you me would just go and buy one tomorrow. Like you just go buy food tomorrow if you had to buy a headset just because you feel like and I'm interested to see where I was like as a stepping stone before that, then it's just see what Apple comes out with the license. Think you're gonna be about $300 or $400 which is not a lot of money if you're already spending 1000 bucks on the phone, and Fiona bucks in the headphones and all the rest of it goes to the glasses. And that's AR VR. VR AR and

Heather Bicknell 16:10
Mr. Mr.

Ryan Purvis 16:13
would be would be used and I don't see how that goes first before even talking about the metaverse would be nice is you know we're doing this meeting we're doing this meeting obviously on video and now actually I think I mentioned this book to you it's the the bobby verse and this is where the consciousness gets a guy dies in his consciousness gets put into a probe and he has to go out and basically save the human race by finding and you have a planet and and he self replicates symbols mobile apps my answer comes to Bobby with us each week Bob does stay sane as they built themselves a virtual world and inside the virtual world each one has their own sort of preferences because as they create more instances of themselves is a bit of drift away from the original bottle and you know that they meet up in the virtual worlds in order to talk to each other interact. And over time one or two other people switch when they die they also pass into the virtual and they become immortal because they allow you there as long as your backup if you die if it will be for a spaceship is blown up you can come you know you got a backup you can be restored into another cradle or another specialty The reason why I bring that up is because it would be nice you know you know you know 20,000 kilometers away from each other is just to know that we're going to be meeting too soon your generosity Vijay now we sit across from each other physically you know virtually physical which doesn't make any sense. But you can at least interact more like you're sitting talking to each other obviously you can't drink coffee and eat food like you would a normal meal but at least you feel like you're interacting and I would like to see that happen before we get into a small before and about getting you know how many many Facebook people as 2 billion onto onto metaverse.

Heather Bicknell 18:14
Yeah, I mean two thoughts there. So I know that the virtual meeting tag with like HoloLens that, that some of that exists today obviously it's not very widespread, but that kind of the I think what's being worked on there now is the kind of quality of the hologram to get rid of some of that uncanny valley are obviously you know, if we had the ability to do it now, but we were very, like the avatars were extremely cartoonish and almost like really bad video game design or, you know, not not very realistic. It's, you know, it doesn't feel quite right and then my other thought with the Where else could the metaverse go is just um, you know, it all comes back to a lot of sci fi which were these ideas have been explored a lot, but just thinking about like avatar, and even when that movie came out, and I don't know really how I remember there being news about this, but I don't know how big this really was. But people who were basically depressed that they couldn't live in the avatar planet and that, you know, the experience that James Cameron created people were wanted that kind of like yeah, ability to live in it like you. That's like you could potentially in a metaverse

Ryan Purvis 19:49
yeah so now remember what I want to say to you sir. So there's a physicist and I never remember his name is well known. Researching find his own I don't want to bastardize it but you know his his theory on if we ever want to travel to other planets is you know we don't need to send our biological cells we're gonna send our consciousness through laser transmission or something like that so you would you would send yourself from from Earth to Mars for example as a transmission you'd arrive there you'd go into a physical being and let's say for argument's sake as an Android as you could walk in experienced immersion you know maybe that is the way that we actually really do populate the cosmos as opposed to trying to engineer all these other problems that we have to deal with which are you know, radiation and the other thing which these guys do this morning was saying maybe this ties in to to the depression thing for he's experiencing two different ways is imagine that two people and you both might help them now what do you pretend to be female? What do you pretend to be male and you actually learn as different entities and you do all the things you know, but you actually to outside you different to what you're inside and maybe that's you know, you're transgender and that sort of stuff maybe there are people that could try it out being you know, males or female if he was female, they can try it out in his visual world, see how they feel about it, because then you are going to be exposed to other real people before you actually go through you know, multiple operations and gene therapy and lots of stuff to to change your core building blocks. Mitch is in New York to the system sort of by mentor Finder.

Heather Bicknell 21:48
Yeah, yeah, that is interesting, the idea of it as kind of a safer place or a place where Yeah, you could explore things that you wouldn't in the real world.

Ryan Purvis 22:04
The guy's name is Michio Kaku. Okay,

Heather Bicknell 22:07
this Well, I've also been reading about how this all intersects with NF T's which is kind of interesting. So yeah, with um, you know, things being digital, it's like, how do you? Where is the How do you kind of have rights to things or assign value within a virtual world and that's where NF T's are sort of coming in, which is interesting. If you if you want to go as sci fi as thinking about like your own consciousness, or like ability to live on? And who would who could potentially own that.

Ryan Purvis 22:48
But yeah, I mean, this this is referring to this book again, the reverse actually covers a lot of the stuff so when this guy dies, he's putting to an end the rules are on being put into this virtual world is you have to die. You can't desert is the process of getting your consciousness out, the body would kill you anyway. And when he wakes up, he he belongs to a faction and, and he basically plays the game until he's free, which is what he does, you know, hurtling through space. And once he's out, he figures out through being basically laid back around his technology that he's got, there's a couple baby traps in the system, that he doesn't comply, he'll be erased and he goes and disables all these things. And the guy that helps him when he initially wakes up, has told him about all these things so that's how you figure that out once he is really booby traps that allows him to become free and he basically becomes more human than he was when he was human. And that's and that's avoiding that that ownership problem because you know, I think that will be one of the you know, it'd be a resources on what to own and control

Unknown Speaker 24:03
yeah

Heather Bicknell 24:11
yeah, I don't know what else there is to say yet Coronavirus. I feel like you know and it's kind of it's interesting some of these ideas in terms of having an avatar living a different life you know, there's games like I think it's called Second Life Yeah. You know, kind of less immersive experiences but ways that people have been exploring avatars for a long time or you know, it seems like AR and VR Mr. kind of pop up in the public consciousness every once in a while and kind of fade away again. So what I'm most interested to see is if you know technologies like 5g, if as other you know as the infrastructure is kind of there to really popularize these things kind of how how far it goes

Ryan Purvis 25:13
i think i mean the 5g and even the lower low low Earth orbit Satellite Internet that Musk is pushing out starting I think it's called I think the use cases that are probably more interesting than the metaverse which is obviously their social stuff is if you think about and this comes back to Halo to an extent you know a guy on a vessel trying to repair an engine and he needs his subject matter expert help and you know, the old way would have been the same pictures and email and all that before there would just be an email or or you know, some sort of radio conversation. But now if you've got let's say Apple glass just for for an example, using 5g, you can have someone sitting in an engineer sitting back port connected up with the same headset is looking at what that engineer on board is looking at and they can troubleshoot the issue together because it can activities there. And also because of the machine learning that could be put on the edge there could be pattern recognition there and I'm thinking about some safety examples like I was watching a thing on Netflix called Bad sport and the guy was was transporting weed in the boat in the ballast tanks of container vessels and what happened is there was a leak and the we started decomposing Academy thing Yes. And what happened is the two welders it was going down to open up the ballast tanks to have a look we're using welders it basically let's say it was an explosion killed Now if you've got the device that hourglass it also has got some sort of sensors on it for the for the safety stuff there, which is on the edge, your needs device could also be fed back to Central so now you can say things like when you're walking down the hall and this happened like this fixation and explosions and fires that if you're taking your stuff with sensors, your approach to your safety approach is very different. Or you approach that situation is very different than you just go walk down here with it with a flashlight, and then you're taking taking the risk. So I think AR and VR headsets will be more interesting, because your VR version of that is you know, take someone that's that's never been on a vessel that said in training, and you put them in that situation in VR. And I mean some of the if we will have good the game's graphics are nowadays you know, it's not like the old blocky sort of, you know, you know, this is virtual, you can actually really be immersed in it and I think that's fine we just and I'm hoping to see more of that stuff coming to life and I've seen some pretty good ones but there's still a little bit too you know, 1980s 1990s graphics and even more 2020 graphics

Heather Bicknell 28:07
Yeah, I know those those training use cases for like dangerous jobs is one of the use cases that I feel like it's really then you know, you've kind of hit on that the two main kind of frontline work use cases which are the ability to augment what like that mixed reality of assessing situation repairing something and then the the virtual ability to pray and learn a new skill, you know, learn how to fight a fire or defuse a bomb or something without any of the rest but being able to live that situation more in a more realistic way that he would maybe through other training simulations, but the the idea of the environmental sensors and the safety there is interesting, and would be cool if the iterations or something, you know, like Apple glasses, or whatever device comes out for that would include that as a use case because I think, you know, what come the idea of like walking around and essentially being advertised to on my glasses. Like that doesn't appeal to me. You know, basically having like Yelp in my glasses, I don't care for that. Having a, you know, the ability for it to sense air quality or something like that would be would be pretty interesting.

Ryan Purvis 29:52
Yeah, so the

thing is, I'm used to that, so And then this is this is where all these tools either either survive or fail and it's all about context. So I'll give you an example and when I give this example I want you to bear in mind there's a book by Kevin Kelly called the ISO 15 eventuality to somehow find the book but one of those things is you're going to give away some that you all didn't give away your data it's about how much do you want to give away and for what reasons and these are thinking of which which is tied to having the glasses so you're driving in your car you're running out of gas you need to fill it up now it's Africa You know, we've got a loyalty systems you know for everything I mean it's we've been doing it for for a long long time I think we probably better than most countries but if you if you have to put in fuel you want to know where the best value for money is going to be for your fuel. Now the analogy the pay pretty much the same price wherever you go, but from a loyalty point of view, you want to know where the best bang for buck is so for example we went with this example exploding on Tuesday night event took the kids out to get asked you to look at the local petrol sock and it would fuel the car and my loyalty card for the pharmacy brand that's tied into the fuel revenue to that petrol station to begin to get the points now when we got there as it said oh we should come tomorrow because tomorrow's double points day now that data is freely available you know in the sense of the petrol station the relationships and pharmacy the card redundant points the day that we all have free will was freely available as I remember and what if what the status of our fuel tankers and what I'd love to have happen in the sort of sense of the glass is that when we when we're driving off towards some sort of intelligence is working out that we're going there or do you get it looks at and says you've got enough fuel to come back tomorrow come back tomorrow for another point and that should flash on my thing because that's not advertising that is pragmatic intelligence that I'd be happy with. But the nonsense that apart from winning losses and I walk past the shop and the shop says oh, we have a two for one deal on chips I don't care like that's not useful to me that's just broadcasting and I don't want that our you know, you've got all my data happy to give it to you Apple for an example give me useful stuff back and I'm not sure how that would work come back to it but but that would be cool.

Heather Bicknell 32:40
Maybe there'll be a mode you can switch on to say okay, I want to know more information about this business or you know the context some context about the business

Ryan Purvis 32:51
well you could say I need to fulfill them and because the call would be smart as well they would say oh well you've got enough fuel for 55 kilometers or whatever that is models that say study models based on you know, what does that serve as your protocol I recommend you go tomorrow morning at seven o'clock your calendars free and clear with double clicks which is the values which is the brand and you'll pay X amount per leader and this is now currently the cheapest price for 95 unleaded gas

Heather Bicknell 33:25
now, now it will be cool, I know Tesla's do have the a lot of the I think Tesla's on the other electric cars do help you kind of find charging stations so that I guess this kind of a one version of that in the wild already that they can show whether you know how far the way the station is, do you have the charge to get you there and then which ones are active or if there are any out of repair but but yeah, I mean this is all very interesting, interesting stuff very futuristic doing the kind of technology that is fun to talk about because it still has a lot of you know, the potential for a big change and I'm not shocked that a company like Facebook would want to be the one to try and own that I just hope they don't 60

Ryan Purvis 34:34
Yeah, it's a funny one because I you know, I really did debate deleting my facebook account or anything keeps me in there is I do find some uses for it now. I don't spend a lot of time where I think that's just a self management thing. But I what I am doing is wave. I've used Facebook to log into navigation, I'm removing that and I'm replacing that with a different one. Working with them. And it was very common. And I think that's what's coming up more and more in the press is that there's a lot of ethical issues there. And also, if you don't have a profile, someone else will have it for you. And that's why the concern is, you know, fake profiles that people pretend to be me Not that I'm that popular or famous or anything like that. But there are a lot of people that will think twice about me pop me awesome to be friends. various reasons that I use it often on these platforms where someone, Facebook will say, to all messages for me, I've been hacked. And that's why we're a controller. But I agree with them to control too much. I think they need to be a little more heavily

Heather Bicknell 35:57
related. Yeah. Definitely. Cool. We'll leave it there.

Ryan Purvis 36:08
Thank you for listening today's episode of The Big Nose our producer, editor. Thank you, Heather. for your hard work for this episode. Please subscribe to the series and rate us on iTunes or the Google Play Store. Follow us on Twitter at the DW w podcast. The show notes and transcripts will be available on the website WWW dot digital workspace that works. Please also visit our website www dot digital workspace works and subscribe to our newsletter. And lastly, if you found this episode useful, please share with your friends or colleagues.

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