 emerging tech, the framework that we're thinking about these new emerging technologies is potential, pitfalls, and policy. So that's where my questions are going to center today. So I wanted to start by just asking for a show of hands who knows what XR is? Who has tried virtual reality? Who has tried augmented reality? So for those of you that have already done this you understand that XR, some people call it extended reality, is an umbrella term for augmented virtual mixed reality technologies and even immersive tech that is coming to the fore yet to be invented. Britton talked about the marshmallow. That is totally cool. I also tried smelling of roads and also the dirt and the roots that the rose was planted in. So we're starting to see these multi-sensory experiences. The next generation of the internet that is always real-time, mostly 3D, mostly interactive, mostly social, mostly persistent. And I think that's an interesting use of the word mostly and I think what that is telling you is that we're still in the early days here. There are immersive experiences like you just talked about but there are immersive experiences that don't necessarily have to be fully integrated into a social experience. We talked about some of the enterprise applications that you know you were creating digital twins where employees can come and work to perfect the design of an automobile. That is an immersive environment but I think we're on a journey here to this next iteration of the internet and hence the word mostly. So I'm going to do a little advertising here as well because one of the things that really excites me is the potential for workforce development. Using AR, VR, MR to help individuals get trained and upskilled for jobs that are here today and will be there in the future. And the reason I said a little advertising there's actually a piece of legislation that was introduced just about a week ago. It's called immersive technology for the American workforce and it's focused on rural and underserved communities and how to direct grand dollars in that direction. And Lisa Blunt Rochester from Delaware and also Tim Lauber from Minnesota are the co-sponsors of the legislation. So that's it on advertising but I think the potential for this is huge and I was just at a conference the other day where they had a gentleman who has an auto mechanic training school and they're losing young students. They're just not coming in to want to learn this particular trade and he started to use virtual reality as a training module. All of a sudden he had young people coming back wanting to learn because it was kind of cool and it connected them to sort of the digital future that is out there and he actually told a story about a son who was one of those kids who just wasn't that interested in this and now not only is he interested he's helping to train other students to come into this particular trade and skill. But you see it across the trades you see it in healthcare you see it in manufacturing. So I could go on and on and on but I'm going to let my fellow panelists talk about the many many opportunities. It makes a great hat now. What I really love about XR technology is the opportunity that it has for evolving human expression and the way that we communicate with each other especially for neurodiverse populations. You know I joke about wearing it on my head but in reality you know these heads that are getting smaller and you can imagine what it would be like to wear them to an event like this and have additional context about what's happening in the world around me and I think that that's going to be really really powerful in the coming years. It already is but I think there's a lot of potential that we're still seeing. You know the way that we interact with embodied spatial computing allows us to tap into our brains natural understanding of the world differently and one thing that you know I certainly hear a lot about this technology and how it's discussed is an empathy builder and I think that this is a key component of that. And related I see XR as being a really powerful tool for raising awareness about the really large issues that we're facing in the world today. There's especially a large focus right now on how we can raise awareness around climate issues. The United Nations has a metaverse challenge for addressing sustainable development goals and I see people all over the world, teenagers, professionals who are building these virtual experiences in order to raise awareness and connect with others globally who are really passionate and focused on solving these problems. And I think that given the magnitude of what we're facing these technologies have a lot of potential to offer us in how we're connecting with each other to solve those problems. Great. Thank you both so much. Let's go to Lewis. Sure. So I talk a lot about the dangers of XR, especially when combined with AI, but I think it's important for policymakers to appreciate that that immersive media, which is really what XR is all about, is fundamentally a deeply humanizing technology. And that's often lost because you see people wearing headsets and it doesn't necessarily look that human at all. But to be really clear, our brains evolve to explore and understand our worlds spatially. It's how we build understanding by exploring and testing our environment. It's how we build our memories spatially. It's how we build relationships face to face with empathy. It's how we build mental models of our world. And so XR makes computing more natural. That's going to help teaching and learning. It's going to help science and engineering. It's going to help human relationships over the internet. But because it's so powerful, it has to also be safe. And that's one of the really important issues in terms of very specific applications that I'm personally most excited about. Something that I've been involved in really for over 30 years is the use of augmented reality in medicine. It's finally now getting to the point where it's being deployed. And the really exciting thing is that augmented reality headsets basically give doctors X-ray vision. If you can take a 3D MRI or a 3D CAT scan and spatially register it to your patient standing before you, you can literally look into their body and see the disease or see the injury exactly where it exists. And that's an example of how it makes computing so much more natural. Because the traditional way for doctors to do this is to look at a flat screen, look back at the patient, look at a flat screen, look back at the patient and try to do the mental gymnastics to understand what's happening. XR removes that gymnastics and allows people to see things where they're supposed to be. So it is fundamentally a humanizing technology. That's so cool. Thank you. Britain. I think for me, the ability to incorporate more of our sensory perception into computing environments. At the Stanford lab, we've had a demo of smell-o-vision for quite a while. And I kind of laugh when I talk about that. There's been some recent press about this going commercial, but you're standing in front of a campfire and you can hear the campfire crackle and you can see the colors of the fire. But there's something different when you start to be able to smell charcoal and to smell a sweet roasting marshmallow. And it's kind of magic. I'm excited because this is the closest thing to magic that I've ever encountered. I'm related to that. I'm really excited about new opportunities for co-presence. The field of codeic avatars will allow you to really feel you're interacting with another person in intangible 3D ways, even if it's a projection on a screen. And to me, that's the real future of computing. To take our desires and our needs to communicate with other people and turn it into magic. My main concern is the combination of targeted advertising with the inferred information that you can get about a person from their bodily measurements. The reason for this is that you need bodily measurements to calibrate your headset. You need it to get the device to work. And there's a lot you can tell about a person from inferences that you can make from that data. It's not, I don't think that's well understood by legislators yet. Because previously this type of information was accessible only in a lab setting, really. And if you combined the temptation to try to take old social media monetization models and apply them to new forms of social networking and computing, you can see the companies happening and they wanted to make commitment to saying we are not going to try to monetize personal data that comes from eye tracking or pupil dilation or how long you look at something. Or the way you indicate that you like something or you're paying attention to something or that something is your preference without actually saying. To me this opens up new avenues for looking at freedom of expression and human rights and basically the right to mental privacy is something that needs to be involved in conjunction with spatial computing. So that's what keeps me up at night. Yeah I'm happy to build on that because I agree with all those points. To me the thing that policymakers need to understand about virtual and augmented world really is that when you when user puts on eyewear and enters a platform they're immersing themselves in a computing environment where a third party can track everything they do and I mean everything and can modify the world around them at their discretion. That high level principle should sound really dangerous or at least right for abuse and misuse and again these platforms can track everything. They can track where you go, what you do, who you're with, what you look at, how long your gaze lingers, track your pupil dilation like Britain said and it's not just going to be in a fully virtual world but also an augmented world. Walking down the street with augmented reality eyewear platforms could know what where you slow down, what store windows you look at, how long you look at different things. They can basically know everything and if their business model is selling influence like social media platforms they will inject targeted content into your world. It's not going to be the flat advertisements on social media these will be immersive experiences, these will be virtual product placements that are put into virtual worlds or augmented worlds. You could be walking down the street and pass a parked car in the metaverse and you might not realize no that that you might look like any other any other thing in the environment you might not realize no that was placed there for you and only for you. Other people might see something different it's a targeted advertisement, the car, the model, the color everything about it is chosen for you. In addition advertising is not just going to be virtual product placements but virtual spokespeople basically virtual avatars put into this world that will engage you in conversation and with the power of generative AI and large language models this can now be done at scale in highly customized ways where advertisements will be conversational avatars that walk up to you and draw you into friendly conversation and gradually introduce promotional content and unless there's regulation I as a consumer might not even have the right to know the difference between an authentic parked car in a virtual or augmented world or a product placement that was put there for me without regulation and I might not have the right to know that an avatar that walks up to me is really a generative AI that's engaging me in a promotional conversation or maybe I do know that I'm engaging a promotional lab or engaging an avatar because in the in the metaverse businesses will have virtual spokespeople virtual representatives and I might go and ask questions about some product or service and I might just expect an informational answer and I might not realize that these avatars are then going to gradually persuade me into into upselling me or or introducing information that that I'm not necessarily I don't necessarily realize is promotional so the metaverse creates a whole new realm where the boundaries between what's authentic and what's promotional could be blurred unless there's regulations to protect to protect consumers and I think even if it is labeled it could still be very persuasive in this immersive environment that's really interesting absolutely and especially that's powered by by AI where you know these generative AI technologies can now engage us in natural flowing conversations they're not sentient that they don't have a will of their own but a third party with a will of their own can give it promotional objectives and can and it can convey very skillfully weaving you into weaving you into a conversation that's that's highly persuasive and and this will be how advertising is done in the metaverse every salesperson knows the best way to influence someone is not to hand them a brochure which is what social media does social media hands you a brochure in the metaverse the way to the way to influence someone is to is to engage them in conversation listen to listen to their objections and resistance and then modify your pitch to overcome those objectives and that will be done at scale using generative AI potentially in highly manipulative ways let's go to live next yeah I certainly share the concerns around advertising and the use of personal information that's already been mentioned I'll add kind of two separate concerns that I have around XR technology today kind of where it's headed the first is related to what we've been hearing about advertising which is the right that someone has to the way that their identity is used in these spaces I have a personal story that I've had is I had an avatar in a virtual world platform that was actually a 3d scan of my body in my face and I used it and somebody I had no idea who this person was found a way to download the model of that and start walking around in the space as me and that was a very strange experience I've never had that experience in real life I'm not a twin but imagine a twin might be more familiar with this type of experience but it opens up a question about what is the right that one has to their identity in these systems and how we balance verifying one's identity with keeping our identity private and safe on these platforms so I think that's one one concern that I certainly have from that experience and kind of understanding what this might look like at scale and the second unrelated to that directly is this technology is not cheap it's hard to access it's not it's not easy to be investing in developing the skills to work with this technology unless you have access to capital or access to hardware to be able to build with these headsets and so there's a question of access to who's able to build for the technology right now and there's also a question of how people are able to access this technology and the benefits that it can provide if they aren't already able to go out and purchase a headset which could be hundreds to thousands of dollars so I think that's another concern that I have as well about the technology and who is able to actually be utilizing it right now. Well okay well there's a lot there and I think at the heart of it what we're talking about is trust and trying to figure out what is industry and consumer groups and academics and government need to do to help establish trust in this technological platform that we're building and I think a lot about the things that that Britain and and Lewis talked about when it comes to data I think about some of the the one hand and other hand so I think about for example the fact that eye tracking can help for for individuals with disabilities and how they can navigate around immersive worlds or elsewhere because of assistive technology so I think of that and I think of all of the very real and significant issues that Britain and Lewis raised and how do we start to think about where we need to regulate and where industry needs to think about empowering the user in real ways not just sort of a big huge long list of terms and conditions but tools that can actually be used by the consumer to understand what different pieces of data are being used when and what they can do about it but there's also conversations about data minimization about privacy by design all of these conversations are underway and they're very important they need to be multi stakeholder that's something that our organization has tried to do but there are numerous groups and organizations out there that are sitting at the table today when it comes to the affordability issue I absolutely agree and that's why as we go through this number one you were talking about sort of commoditization of of hardware and that takes time I mean I remember one of flat screen television was certainly out of my price range and now you can get a 70 inch for what 600 bucks or something like that it's going to take time how do we create guardrails and opportunities for people to learn about this technology not just learn about it but engage with it the things that I think about the most are protecting behavioral privacy protecting emotional privacy and guaranteeing what I'm called experiential authenticity and in each of those you know behavioral privacy as as we mentioned in the last question these systems by their very nature can track far more information about users than you know where you click online they can track out you know exactly where you are exactly what you're looking at exactly what you're doing and they need that information to create a virtual world around you what they don't need is to store that information over time and because when you can store that information over time it's not just what you're doing it starts to create a profile of your behaviors through your whole life if these are augmented reality glasses and you're wearing them throughout your daily life if you can store that behavioral information you can create a behavioral model and know exactly what somebody does and actually use AI to predict what they're going to do next and that's that's really dangerous and it gets even more dangerous with the emotional data that's collected a lot of these headsets have have cameras that look back at your face to detect your emotions in real time to detect your eye motions in real time there's good reason for that because if I can detect your emotions and I'm an eye motions in real time I can create an avatar that looks very human and conveys empathy and that's great but they don't need to store that information over time because if they can store that emotional data over time now they can create this record this profile of exactly how you react how you feel during thousands of interactions during the day and then they can build a uh emotional models that can predict how you will react in response to various stimuli and that's that's really dangerous and finally in terms of uh experiential authenticity advertising will exist in in the metaverse uh and it potentially will exist as product placements as in virtual uh spokespeople but they should look different they should look different sound different so that if I see something that's promotional I know that it's promotional and I can at least bring healthy skepticism um and uh and we need policy to to guarantee that further um you know storing the data is one thing but I think also just having the data and using it in that moment could be very powerful we may need limitations on that as well absolutely um let's go to Brandon my um my concerns dovetail very well with um with Dr. Rosenberg's work I I'm very interested in how pre-existing regulations are going to apply to spatial computing related properties um there's not a there's not a clean transfer over for example if you look at um at the AI Act it already says that you have to identify by when a user is interacting with artificial intelligence I have not seen one XR related company that has figured out how to actually do that in a product facing way and it doesn't mean it's not out there but it's something I'm working for to be and how how we're going to have indicators of authenticity and how we're going to import pre-existing law to regulate these new spaces there's still I'm a I'm a former prosecutor so I think about how I would um how I would prove jurisdiction or how I would determine jurisdiction or I would look at venue how I would determine if somebody um if somebody's harm in the metaverse actually transferred on to the statutes which normally requires physical contact for harassment and other things like that I think as we are shifting computing paradigms we also need to push legislators to understand that the laws need to evolve as well there were two laws that came um two proposals that came out in the last two weeks centered around the protection of children and when I read them one arguably would apply to um to the metaverse but it's it's jurisdiction was so broad it was anything that connects the internet so as as inform someone who's a former law enforcement person I'm like well that's going to be struck down for over breath and then the other one um the way that it was worded I didn't think it actually would apply to social XR platforms because some of it said you needed to it had jurisdiction over places where you needed to create an account and if you look at uh meta's horizon worlds you don't create an account they went back and forth so many times that you created username and as a lawyer I would argue that that is different based on the information that you you give away and the consent that you give to the platform so people think that you're doing things that are that are going to help but I'm not sure the application is a hundred percent there those details really matter um so folks might need to reach out to Britain to to make sure that we're getting the details right because we're doing this work thank you um so let's go to live and then Liz um the same question about policies yeah you know I think we've heard the need for strong consumer protection policies with how people are going to be engaging with advertisements I think there's also um a question here about what the policies will be like in terms of like platform owners liability for user generated content because sometimes you might be um on a platform where you're actually interacting with something that the platform creator didn't build but that somebody else did or somebody may choose to create a branded t-shirt on their avatar and they're a real person but their user generated content is essentially an advertisement in and of itself so there's questions too about liability and the capabilities that platform holders will be kind of passing along to other users of their systems I think that there's some um interesting areas to explore there um I think as well this this question about what someone has the rights to in terms of what's um being expressed about their digital identity and what's going to protect them there are laws about libel and if somebody makes up um information about you and use that to harm you um what does that look like when it's your you know like very unique body movement pattern or your voice but it looks totally different from you or it's being used to power a robot or something like that does that count as your likeness is that like you enough um and I think that there's some interesting policy that can um be implemented around that based on what we've seen with uh celebrities or you know photography is another really interesting parallel here in terms of places where we can draw from existing knowledge like is it the photographers uh photo do they have the right to how you're represented or do you have the right to how you're represented that's still not a very clear question so I think that there's some interesting uh policy to be had there as well um so I I think I want to build off of what Britain talked a little bit about I mean in general I think everybody that I work with is in favor of for example a federal approach to data privacy I'm sure everybody in this room we probably raised our hand um we also know we have GDPR and we have DSA and we have DMA we have a lot of laws that are out there in international jurisdictions and I think we're trying to sort through how do these apply to the state of the technology that we have now and into the future and we want to make sure that we fully understand that and that we educate lawmakers about where we see some of these gaps arising um and that entails educating them about how the technology works the different use cases which will trigger different laws and regulations I think of HIPAA for example for healthcare applications will be different from you know GDPR for example um so I think we have a lot of work to do to sort of spade through how the current different legal regimes apply how we start to get some consistency but by the same token it's incumbent upon industry to do the right thing to start building in you know privacy by design by bringing tools to consumers so that they have better understanding and choice um you know thinking about uh the different opportunities for web 3 and distributed opportunities for competition all of those things are being discussed in various fora I was really interested to see the G7 communique had a paragraph on immersive technology and it said we want to work with OECD well OECD right now is trying to update its privacy framework and it's bringing together industry and civil society and others to do exactly what I just talked about what's the current state of play where are some of the gaps where do we think the technology is going to what's that terrible expression escape to where the puck is going um there's a lot of work and conversation underway that takes everybody all of us you know sitting down and talking about the different use cases the pros the cons and how we kind of move the conversation forward I mentioned this with one of the challenges related to access to the technology I think creating systems that can invest in open source technologies that are moving maybe slower than what a company might be able to do if it's just focused on its own product and getting that out the door and getting that to customers um I think can go a long way in helping create alternate models to product development I think that that can be really beneficial for helping promote competitive behaviors I think we also already have a framework from you know the existing internet that we have in terms of how browsers operate and which pieces of batters standardized it's complicated with spatial computing devices because different devices will have different capabilities we're still question we're asking similar questions to what we've had with browsers there's a really great example of how challenging it would be and what goes into simulating just rolling like a pair of diet that I think is really key to illustrating the challenges and part of what needs to happen is there needs to be incentives for people to maybe slow down and work together broadly across the ecosystem across the industry that's very challenging to counter when you think about how projects are currently being funded and how being first to market and always pushing forward on the technology is more commonly the route people go and building platforms I just want to highlight that point about the browsers and the open web and I'm thinking about um in Corey's speech he was talking about you know it feels like there are really just five websites and it does feel that way but actually the open web is there and that's incredibly valuable and we should not take that for granted because we might not end up with a similar situation in VR go ahead please yeah well I think the hope is that we will in other words that there will be many different immersive spaces that you can come to try on experiment with um all of those good things um I do want to point out that the question of interoperability I I almost don't like using the word because when you talk to people they don't know what interoperability means what they care about is uh somebody who was it earlier was that you want to take your sword from this game and you want to transport it over to the other game right um you want to have your digital assets and be able to take them where you want to go um and then as a developer as a creator I want to get paid for what I do and there will be different models different approaches to making these aspects of of interoperability work for all of us um right now there is something called the metaverse standards forum it was started by a group called the chronos group and open xr and they're working with all the different technical standards development organizations sdo's to try to organize the conversations around where these different technical specs need to go it's pretty complicated it's you think it's easy to take the sword and put it over here but it's actually quite a difficult feat there are minds that are a lot smarter than I am that are working on these types of exercises um the IEEE is working on this wc3 is working on this so there's there's many different standards development organizations that are trying to make this interoperability conversation a reality and then how do we then layer on the conversation around policy um and I think you know one we have to sort of see where the technical piece takes us but we also need to keep our eye on what we're just trying to accomplish which is taking your digital assets where you want to go um having your digital identity uh be seamless uh but that can create a lot of opportunities and challenges as well I think about people who want to try on a new identity uh so that lgbtq community somebody may want to try on an identity that they don't feel safe about in the real world um that requires a level of anonymity how does that work when we're talking about interoperability so I'm raising all of these things as almost like an issue spot and these are the conversations that are taking place uh across many different forums uh world economic forum also has one uh we watch something called the future of xR advisory council to have these conversations I know ITIF others are trying to bring together all these different minds to see what we can do right um let's go to britain online thank you I I'm gonna go off of what Liz just said um the the challenge that I see is that interoperability I think you talk to legal and policy people and you talk about interoperability they don't think about it as an engineering problem they don't think about it like the sword moving from one world to another a lot of people seem to be a little bit upset about the lack of governance standards that go across the metaverse and that's different than interoperability but we use I think we have some slippage of terms because a lot you know a lot of legal and policy people when you talk about being able to move from one world to another the question that comes to mind is who makes the rules how are the rules enforced and are the rules going is there going to be any standardization of rules pilla brosdale who uh who's one of the creators of second life said something at a conference on xR that I put on at stevenford and I thought was really really incisive and he said that until we work out some of these policy related issues around identity and authenticity and interoperability and things like that people won't feel comfortable spending money and I think that's just a basic truth so if we want properties in the metaverse to be more competitive we we need to stop thinking about governance as an afterthought because it's not just about people's physical safety it's not just about their privacy it's about people feeling comfortable enough to conduct commerce like they would on the on the worldwide web yeah I'm great to build on that point because I also believe that companies are going to compete they're going to compete to make money because that's that's how they survive and I actually think that policy is the most important thing to to enable healthy competition uh where where they compete to create the greatest experiences possible in these immersive worlds uh because without without policy their business models are very likely going to be selling influence and and without restrictions they the competition will be to see who can create the most effective tools for influencing consumers and again the capabilities that they will have accessible to them are far greater than the capabilities that are accessible in in social media which is also a competition to see who can make the most persuasive content and the most persuasive targeting mechanisms and I often think about when it's a word of healthy competition I often think about social media because it wasn't regulated targeted advertising wasn't regulated in a timely fashion and so these companies became very successful in an arms race to see who can be most successful at targeting but they've also created this impression among the public that it's really very negative the majority of the public thinks that social media companies are damaging society and I don't think that anyone starts a company with that goal and I think that had policy been put in place in social media earlier these companies would have competed in a different way their business models would have evolved in a different way and they wouldn't have become the most successful machines possible for targeting people and selling influence and that same that same competition dynamic is going to exist in the metaverse but the tools are more dangerous and even if companies know that it doesn't feel right to use somebody's pupil dilation or their blood pressure to to adjust advertisements in real time or you're talking to a conversational AI and that conversational AI is can actually read your emotions because it has access to your pupil dilation it's adjusting its tactics to optimize influence even if those companies don't want to do that as soon as their competitor does they're going to be forced to follow suit because their business model will be selling persuasion but policy can change the arms race from things that are potentially damaging to things that are really positive and I think that I actually think that the XR industry would appreciate if the arms race was who can create the most magical experiences that captivate users and not who can create the most use these very personal pieces of data to to create the most influential pieces of content that they can sell to to third parties it's interesting I haven't really kind of come across that conversation of redundancies of systems right it was what you're getting at to a certain extent obviously consumer product safety is very important you know making sure that we don't that there aren't you know FTC violations in terms of you know advertising for a product that doesn't stand up to what it promises to be so I guess my short answer is I think that the you know various consumer protection and industry rules that are out there apply just as equally to these immersive experiences as they would to any other digital experience try there we go great I think I think that's a wonderful question because again it goes back to kind of the magic of it all I know we talk a lot about policy holds and the potential user harms but man is it fun and I think that's why I keep coming back to that because it's it's just it's just magic the way that I find out about new developments and programs and opportunities when I go to conferences so there's the augmented world expo that will be happening next week and that's kind of where everybody in immersive tech comes to the forest I look at the new technological innovations coming out of the consumer electronics show which is normally January in Las Vegas and I also I follow a lot of people on social media who who talk about art and other diverse aspects of this I think if I had an interest in real estate I would be very interested in some of the the programming I don't like Liz talked about where you can actually tour a virtual space or see what a space looks like almost like a virtual tour of a home there are our new applications that I saw coming out last week where people were taking the equivalent of world tiles and putting it together and allowing you to make that into a an immersive experience so in in short that's kind of I guess policy development tech development and scuttle button on Twitter I was just going to add to that I'm totally with Britain on this I get really like I love this thing I worked out this morning in virtual reality so Chris does this because I sometimes end up looking like a mess but that's the thing there's like all these wonderful opportunities for artists to render these amazing worlds their opportunities for musicians to get the spatial audio that is different from what we typically are accustomed to for you know people that are in various career tracks whether it's real estate or the auto mechanic that I talked about they're going to go work with a design house to figure out what makes sense for teaching a class the one thing that I love is and I was talking about this earlier with somebody the the knowledge capture aspect of this so say I'm I was giving an example say I'm a plumber and I'm getting older and it's really hard for me to get down on the floor to sweat the pipe and do whatever needs to be done and there are a lot of young people that can make a really great living in this but they just need some help and now because of augmented reality this pass through I can be there to help that young apprentice actually work the job and not be physically present with them but emotionally tied to them in terms of what that experience looks like so I just wanted to sort of reiterate there there's many many opportunities in immersive technology that are bringing together all these different skill sets in a way that I I I would imagine have existed for a long time but it's like the alchemy right it gets kind of exciting and I would add I think Britain's absolutely right in terms of the conferences that are out there I would imagine discord probably has some interesting you know lines of conversation around immersive technology and opportunities and then you know if you care too we do a newsletter and you can sign up for it and it's usually a pretty good summary of a lot of different developments that are taking place both on the policy side but on the business side as well and just trying to find those kind of aggregated opportunities to hear about what's happened other things that I really love about working in this space is that it affords a lot of opportunities to develop multidisciplinary skills so it's not necessarily just engineering or just art but it starts to bring together components of computer science and components of artificial intelligence as a subset of that but also 3d art and design and storytelling and being able to imagine these worlds and these experiences and the psychology of how users interact with space around them and communication and how people might interact with each other or different pieces of the system and so when I think about what I'm seeing in kind of younger education there's some really great companies kai xr is one of them that's educating students like end to end on getting familiar with these 3d technologies and what does it look like to go beyond just experiencing them and like maybe playing games to actually becoming world builders very early on and understanding how they're developing relationships in that and how they're communicating and the impact of that so when I think about workforce development from that perspective it's helping people become very comfortable taking a very holistic approach to the fact that we're multi-dimensional people we're multi-dimensional beings and we're getting these new technologies that allow us to be more productive and learn quickly and understand and experience so many different things that people can have access to so much more information and different types of experiences to develop a really robust skill set I see a lot of like the rise of the generalist coming up now in the context of these technologies and being able to kind of move across how you build it to how people experience it and what the impact that that has on them and I think that that's going to be really powerful for thinking about this across the whole human experience so they think like does anyone want to add to that? Sure I always love to add to that conversation so you know a few things come to mind one is there are really innovative companies out there I think of tailspin and they've created these modules that you can tailor your training in this instance for human resources you don't have to be a coder in order to create something that is modular but but applicable to the workforce that you want to use it for and I think that we're going to see a lot more of that where it's it's not coding based it's sort of experience based but to your question about you know how are we preparing young people I think it's really important to state right now that you know the hardware manufacturers all say that that headsets shouldn't be used by kids who are under 12 13 the reason for that is that physically they're kind of heavy and bulky and we also you know need to to make that form factor a little bit better frankly for young people now the reality is I suspect a lot of parents say hey kids this is really cool you should try it out and I think we have to do a lot of work to understand what the impact of the technology is on kids but in the meantime again we need to think of this as a continuum and we do have tablets kids are using AR experiences to try to become more of a digital native in sort of these immersive or augmented experiences and we need to be looking at what that is how it's working how we do that responsibly so that we're creating great educational content using teachers to you know really put into any type of app that we're using for educational purposes that it has to be based in good I'm forgetting the great word that comes up and I'm having a senior moment but the teachers are really contributing to what this content looks like but the upside is that when you get into that virtual experience I was at South by Southwest and I think it's Time Magazine has done a virtual experience with Martin Luther King and if I had been you know in seventh grade and I had an opportunity to go hang out with Martin Luther King in a virtual world that would be mind-blowing and and and so impactful and I think that gets back to some of the things that Lewis and Brent were talking about the the magic of this is that it is just you know you can be immersed in a historical experiences and it will mean something to you it won't just be a textbook