I'm excited to introduce this next session building Future in Emerging Tech for everyone. Games for change has been working with Light Shed and The Who's future team for the past year, as they develop opportunities for underserved communities to learn and create content using emerging technology. LED by Dan Ackerman, Editor in Chief of Micro Center News. Our esteemed panelists, and it's a great panel, will share their experts on how XR and generative AI can be harnessed to build more inclusive online spaces. So please let me welcome Doctor Courtney Cogburn, Gabo Arora, Clayton Banks, and of course, Dan to the stage.
With Matt Riley. So thank you. Go all the way. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You guys go down all the way down. All the way down.
Hi. I almost don't need a microphone. And I'm going to get one quick, cool looking selfie for everybody. Because you know what? It's social media is part of the job description now and has been for years. Well thank you everybody for joining us today. I'm very excited to be here at this great panel. My name is Dan Ackerman.
I'm a longtime tech and games journalist. I was reported CNet for many years. I was the editor in chief of Gizmodo. Now I'm the founding editor of a new tech, a new site called Micro Center News.
And I'm very excited to have all these guys with me today. And we're going to do some quick introduction, but then we're really going to get into the heart of our topic, and we're going to talk about that. But I am joined here and very excited by, Clayton Banks on the very end. And Courtney Cogburn in the middle and Gabo Arora here. And I'm going to ask each of these panelists to just give us a little introduction, what you're about, why you're here, why this topic is so important to us.
Clayton, let's start with you. I'll start with me. let me check ChatGPT first. See? What are you.
Who am I? Oh, we'll be talking about AI on this panel. Okay. I'm Clayton Banks. I'm the CEO of Silicon Harlem. It's great to be here, obviously. And it's great to see all of you here. Silicon Homes does three create, three really important things, in my opinion.
we are very much about access and exposure for technology for everyone. we know how important that is. Number two, we do a lot of research. I I'm on a call right now with the department of Defense on things like, the vulnerability of 5G and things of that nature. And the third thing is we are all obviously, helping so many people, just from an educational perspective. So come by our office, we're in Harlem Silicon Hall, and, you'll have a lot of fun with us, so thank you.
Courtney. Hi, everyone. I'm Courtney Cogburn, and I'm a professor at Columbia. psychologist, social worker, population health scholar. I studied the effects of racism on health, and I came to emerging technologies like virtual reality to think about how to help people more meaningfully engage the realities of racial injustice in society. And that work has led me more deeply into the intersections of emerging tech and, social justice. Happy to be here.
And of course, we have Gaba. Hi, everyone. Great to be back. I love this festival. I'm always glad to be back here every year. I'm the founder and CEO of Light shed.io.
It's a creative technology studio that uses virtual reality and emerging technologies for social impact. I've been working with virtual reality over a decade. I was at the UN where I made Clouds Over Sidra, which was the UN's first foray into using VR for impact and fantasy. So really happy to be there.
I'm also one of the co-founders of Peace future.org that aims to diversify emerging tech creators. and so hopefully we'll get to talk about that a little bit.
Yeah, I'm really fascinated by that. And you actually have a real quick video. We're going to look at just for a second to show a little bit of that. So if we could play that video right now, then we'll come back and talk a little bit more about what we mean by building futures in emerging tech.
So let's play that video. Here we go. This this I like technology because we the community in many different ways that we haven't before. For example, you can be in VR and you can be in a whole different world. And they say you need to learn how games could change and the team lives up to like technology gets shown to these stories.
It can open people's eyes and inspire others to change their likeness. I like that you video games because you know I played them. So it's cool to make it myself to see what goes into making the game.
Like the coding blocks, it would look like different puzzles to me. And I just saw like how technology could be like a puzzle where you could connect some pieces and it can be, all different things which feel like it's a lot more things you could do now. Like, it's so much easier. You know, hopefully being more efficient, like, when it comes to working, for us, contributing back to our environment when we go into the future. I'm excited to learning more about the community because this is a community based project.
You know, you get to like, do something for the community. It's just like, nice to come back. This is, you know, that's it. That really, you know, I think that encapsulates a lot of what we're talking about here today when we talk about, democratizing access to technology. And I know that some of the things we want to talk about are, you know, how do you make technology like what we saw there, accessible to people in different communities? you know, how does virtual reality in the metaverse figure into this, even if it's not the hottest topic in the world like it was a couple of years ago, but still so much happening there and how it ties into, you know, the next big thing like AI and the next big thing after that.
It's all going to be have have a part of metaverse and AI to it. And then, you know, how does technology and education come together? that's something that that's very near and dear to me, and something that really affected my life as a kid. But we'll talk about that a little bit later. But I want to start, actually, since we just saw that video, tell me a little bit more about the who's, future and who's metaverse projects and about what I saw there, which was young people becoming creators rather than consumers of content.
And how do you make that? How do you get them to make that leap? Yeah. you know, about two years ago, you know, we're coming out of the pandemic, and I could really see that, you know, there's just rampant inequality and lack of access and I really thought, you know, what could we do with what I do? What we do, with emerging technologies to diversify people who make these things. And I think a lot of the problems we have with the internet technology is because it's a very homogeneous group of people who have dictated, design and dictated how these technologies are brought to market. And myself, you know, I grew up in New York and I wasn't, you know, I learned I was, you know, maybe ten years ago. I'm in my late 30s, not very technological.
And I basically started learning virtual reality, and I realized that it was the best way to learn about it was through story telling, was to try to tell your lived experience. And I really wanted to do that at the, and also in doing that, it gave me a voice at the table for policy, because it's not only about learning these things for a job, it's about the future of humanity. I think we are in a very, you know, tenuous time. And I think if you have diverse voices who understand this technology as creators, then I think it would be better. And so that's what computers does.
It's a curriculum. It's for after school programs. We have a site in Harlem. We were in North Carolina. We had gotten a fund from the Immersive Learning Fund from meta, and we were also honored by the Wendy's for what we were doing. So it is a is an after school program, but it also is an XR platform.
So the idea also is young people could learn the way they're used to playing. So very much like Fortnite and Roblox, these sort of curriculum is kind of built in a 3D way so that they could kind of learn, you know, a lot of these skills in the same way they're used to kind of playing in digital spaces. I just want to give a quick shout out because Arielle is here, who's in the video, and one of our teachers, so really happy to. Oh, great. Yeah. That's right. It takes you from playing to learning about the tools to using the tools to becoming a creator rather than just a consumer.
I like what you said about using, VR and metaverse, especially for storytelling, because I think that's a lot of what Courtney has been working on, with her big project. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about the Thousand Cup journey and, how storytelling relates to that in a different way than than what Gabo is doing. Yeah. So when we, developed a thousand cart journey where we put you in the shoes of a black male experiencing racism at different points in their lives, we were interested in translating what was evident in the empirical literature around inequities, the effects of structural racism, and trying to move beyond that kind of data or representation of a social problem into something that was more visceral and relied on narrative and storytelling. And as a psychologist, I was interested in whether that actually had an impact on people's beliefs and attitudes and behaviors.
And so we started to study the effects of that kind of experience. And we see evidence of that. Right. We see evidence of before, changes before and after someone goes through the VR experience shifts and things like colorblindness or a willingness to acknowledge the significance of racism in in society, which I think is, is significant.
and I think moving in a direction, connected to this, this notion of who's future, I'm beginning to grapple more with not only representing the ills of society, but also thinking about what do we do about it, what do we put in its place? And that is a question of imagination and future. and I think the kinds of voices that are featured in in whose metaverse or I'm sorry, and whose futures is our critical voices for thinking about where do we go from here, what do we build in its place? I think the people, the young people who've experienced the grievous inequities in society are probably best positioned to imagine what should go in its place. And I think creating spaces and platforms to leverage their imaginations, to have them engage and think about the future is critical. And there's another tie into my work around health, where not only is that critical to us as a society whose voices, whose imaginations are we living in, and who's designing our future. But what I'm interested in now is whether the act of doing that, the act of thinking about yourself in the future, the act of imagining, the act of designing something else that in and of itself might be beneficial to health, that in and of itself might help someone move beyond sort of the ills or chronic threats of the current moment and see themselves in the future.
So I'm curious in that space, as well, it's really interesting to me how that project in particular, and I think you said something similar is about, changing attitudes and changing receptions. have you noticed that how can you explain the difference between that being able to perform that task versus handing someone, you know, a scholarly article or some data or something that's a little more, impersonal? Yeah, that gets tricky to measure methodologically is sort of comparing how someone might be respond to save a research article versus virtual reality. But anecdotally, what we're observing is and I should say that in our VR experience, we deliberately target a white liberal audience.
So I was really interested in how that group would interact with this kind of, content. and what we've heard them say is that they sort of remove the they're moving from someone observing or intellectualizing a phenomenon in society to realizing they have a relationship to it. They are in it. They are not separate from it. And I think virtual reality allowed us to, through immersion. Right.
Put people in the experience and move them closer to it. And one of the things that that came out of the experience, were people saying their whiteness was more salient after coming out of this experience. The contrast of lived experience was so clear to them. but that which I thought was quite powerful. So it's not a news point to be considered and debated. It's, the air we are all breathing.
And I think virtual reality helped to bridge that a bit more. And I think VR and metaverse does have that all encompassing immersion that can affect you differently than, you know, a film, even a very well made one documentary television show. I think it's I think it's really interesting. But all of these projects, involve making sure that people have access to VR hardware and headsets and computers on which to create, applications and create, games for VR platforms and getting comfortable with that by getting people that access.
I think it's very hard. And I think that's something that Clayton has, has worked on, through Silicon Harlem and, and other projects, basically getting kids access to technology. And I would love for you to tell us just a little bit about, what that journey is like. what kind of technology is most important to get in front of people? And how do you actually go about doing that? Well, thank you.
it's very difficult to speak after her. Right? She's got a PhD. She's a doctor, I don't know.
Oh, that's why I saved her last night. Whatever. But she's she's great. And we've known each other for some time, so I don't say that. Gobbo and I have been working together as well. you're new Dan. But anyway, we still like, But it's something very close to me to what you're talking about.
I'd love to just check this audience out. Did you do you you put your hand up if you know the percentage of people that don't have internet in upper Manhattan like Harlem, does anybody know that percent you believe like it could be zero? You know that's not true. It's 35%. 35% in the community do not have internet every day.
And if you go to East Harlem, it's 40%, 40, 45%. That was ten years ago. And it's still the same now. And when you look at that, those like maybe somebody who is going to high school or junior high school do not have a computer, why would you have a computer if you don't have the internet? So they have to use their phone to get things done? It's impossible.
So they end up on the street. And I think that is something that we all should feel something about. That. And I've been working very close to the mayor and everybody else, multiple mayors, to figure out how can we make sure every single home has internet? Because once you just give them the access, and I'm glad you use that particular name, Dan, is that if you can just give the access, because I hear too many people that will say, well, they don't. They need the education.
Clayton on, on to get internet. And how many of you had to go to like, school to learn the internet? I mean, really, if you get the access, you'll figure it out. And so what I've done is particularly when Covid came around, it became a disaster.
That's when this that's when the mayors and everybody started listening to me because I was talking about this way before, as so when the Covid hit and we saw kids running all over the place because they had no school going on, they didn't have any infrastructure to even get into schools. And so I went ham on this, and I went all over these very, very rich people, big, big companies, and was able to get thousands of computers and get it out to as many homes as I possibly could. And even the mayor ultimately decided we should do that too. But there are some homes that have more than one kid, so. And then you also need multiple kids in order to get their work done.
And so we worked really hard to make sure that we get that access to them. Once they have it, they get going is not a it's not all help me. How do I do this? No, they get it right off the bat. That's what most of them can run me around and most around with a phone, for example, so they can do all that stuff. And the same thing what we did was, is we also created opportunities for them to go ahead and move forward, right? Not only with typical educational things in school, but you could come to our facility and learn about even more additional things that would put them in a not only for a process to go on to a college, but also even for jobs.
And I think that's something we all got to get around some of that because here's the here's the thing. If we don't do that, you're going to see more crime. It's going to hit you at some point.
So it's all of us. We can't just think, oh, don't worry about these people now. It's going to impact all of us. That's really clear in my mind how that can happen. And I've been in places all over the world, and I've been in places where everyone has the internet. Oh, we're the greatest city in the world.
I'm I'm a New Yorker, I love it, but if we want to really be the greatest in the world, everyone's got to have that access and experience it. So I really like what you said about you don't need to also make sure you have training for kids to learn, to get online, to use the internet. It's almost instinctive. It reminds me of how we were talking a little bit about how a certain generation of kids became digital natives, and then after that, the next generation came VR natives. Now they're going to be AI natives in a way that we, you know, are not going to understand, but it's going to feel very natural for them. And this is a I mean, as a also as a native New Yorker, this has affected me personally.
I think I told you this story. I grew up in a part of the Bronx called Co-op City, and they're in my local public school grade, you know, five, six, seven, eight. They happen to have a little room of like, Apple to see computers, not to date myself, but the fact that they turned all these kids loose on these, we learned how to do some basic programing. I made our own games, you know, not just for schoolwork. They just said, go up there in your lunch. Just go nuts.
And that's why I'm a technology reporter, you know, all these years later, and because I had that early access that was provided to a public school, which schools were at least starting to do a decent job of during Covid, making sure every kid had a device at least. Or what did you think about that? Did you did you feel that the city did a good job of making sure every kid had a device? Because I know that at least an attempt was made during Covid. Well, at least in upper Manhattan, where I do a lot of work, something was really bizarre. The teachers didn't know how to use the internet. That's true. They didn't know they didn't have computers.
It wasn't a lot happening of that in upper Manhattan. So there was a whole nother level of me and my team has to work with the teachers so that they could actually work with the students. I mean, it really became a whole new, educational system, if you will. So where you grew up and where I grew up, where it wasn't as digital as it is now.
what we what we had access to was a little bit more easy. But now when you got to buy a computer and you've got to pay a monthly thing for an internet provider, it's tough. And what we try to do our best now, and I think the library you do a lot more is, is get people access to it. Right. When you look at the libraries system, the the problem is now it's starting to have lines of people trying to get to a computer. So there's something wrong here.
We got to do more, we got to do more better. And I think, you know, look at all of these. Great. I always say to people, you know what, I'm a tech guy. For a long time I've built a lot of stuff.
I was just telling them, I'm right now on a call right now with the Department of Defense to deal with 5G vulnerabilities, right now, I'm into this stuff in a deep level, but I realized something very clear to me you don't fall in love with technology. You got to fall in love with people. And when you learn how to fall in love with people, everyone can win.
Because I can. In top of my mind, I won't show them all but ten things I can tell from technology that we all went crazy for and is gone by. How many remember something called Blu ray? What happened? You know. So there's a lot I can like nail a bunch of these things.
We got to love people and help each other. And I think that's really sort of our next level when we come to looking at humanity. Well it's a tricky one. One technology that did have a giant burning hot moment in the sun was the metaverse. So much so that that Facebook renamed itself meta and some of that fire's cooled off, but it's still underlying so much of the interesting work that's going on right now, especially in games. you tell me a little bit about the continued life and afterlife of the metaverse, especially in an area that has been so dominated by, you know, Facebook's meta and now Apple and these other big guys.
what does the metaverse mean for you now? How does it relate to mixed reality and virtual reality? how do you keep it relevant when when it's quickly becoming something that is, in most people's minds, identified with like a $3,000 Apple headset that's just, you know, an unachievable. Yeah. Well, I mean, hype cycles come and go. but what doesn't change is a little bit what Courtney was saying was whether it's for, you know, education, simulations, health care, entertainment, there's just if you design it right and you get it right, and there's a lot of research, you just have a deeper connection to the material.
So I think that very truth will always make people, you know, continue to invest in it. Because I do think when it works, right, you just have an impact that you wouldn't otherwise. I think, you know, I'm seeing a lot of uptick in, in trainings and education, you know, especially with, you know, there's an app on quest called Prisons that tries to teach algebra and math using VR. That's showing a lot of success. I'm doing a lot of things with medical and nursing students to do simulation shows that are very hard, because you need an expert that comes in and teaches to once a semester.
But if we capture them in volumetric capture, if we use elements of AI where you can interact with them when they're not there, there's a lot there. I think I need to kind of talk about the next type thing. you know, in some ways, the metaverse and VR has always been emerged with AI because it's very expensive to build virtual worlds. And when you can do that using generative AI, which you can do in a simplistic way to build worlds and games and other things, that's only going to kind of lower the barrier for people to create these worlds. and I think, you know, there's a lot right now with avatars and using them as virtual tutors in those spaces, where people can not only engage with material in a spatial way to understand it, but they can connect with someone who can kind of give them that one on one support, which studies show that it really is that one on one support that leads to more retention for a lot of people. So that's why there's a big race for an AI tutor.
And his goodness, it can be so that all in the metaverse combined with it is going to make it come eventually. I don't know when, but it's not going to die. Now, that's really interesting because I like what you said about connecting with AI tutors and having that sort of almost 1 to 1 connection. What I liked about the Thousand Journey, Courtney, is that it is a kind of single.
You're in the you're in the body and experience of a single kind of narrator within the experience. how do you do you see a way that I can help with that, can expand, that can move it into different directions versus being a kind of one time, you know, kind of a, almost a ride that you go through. Yeah. I mean, to the way I answer that is coming back to this, this question about imagination, which I think we we, we are living in a failure of imagination in so many ways because we're we have such a limited scope of choices dictating where we go. so it's one thing, right, for me to have an opinion about VR or the metaverse or I, I think we're always going to fall short of possibility if we don't diversify, whose voices are actually being centered in doing this, this work. Right? Yeah.
I could pontificate about, you know, AI and how it might influence, VR, but I think the way I'll shift the focus is, we have to expand, not only access and building infrastructure and access to hardware skills, building, etc. we have to sort of really leverage as many voices as possible. I think we haven't. I don't think VR or the metaverse will be successful at all if we don't expand, who's voices.
We're just going to replicate sort of the same old things we're doing right now, in society. And, and along with that, the same inequities that we currently have, if we don't increase, increase or change the voices, we're centering in this, in this work. So how do we then get five more, ten more, 20 more projects like that made from that, group of voices that is not represented in 99.9% of of metaverse content. I mean, I think it's a shift in mindset, right? We have to shift the mindset to say that, one, do we value perspectives that are different than our own? And again, I think you made a point earlier, which I completely agree. There's a difference between treating young black kids and Harlem as consumers, as opposed to saying no, they are critical designers of the future.
And that shift in orientation becomes really important. and I think from there, then you get investment, then you build, you invest in things like those futures, right, to help expand that kind of access to Silicon Harlem. But that shift in mindset is really critical. They're not just game players. They are creators.
and they're not just creators. They are critical creators because of how they understand the nature of marginalization and injustice in society. If equity, positive social impact right is the goal and some of the most popular game platforms, they're really more platforms than games with.
It's Roblox or Minecraft encouraged game making to such a huge degree, and the barrier to entry is not zero, but it's low. I think that's really interesting. what I've seen is as the parent of a of a preteen, is that is that so many kids are interested in being creators, and some of them are interested in being game creators, but a lot more than just in being video creators, whether that's on YouTube or TikTok, which is a perfectly valid form of expression. but I think there's a lot more to be gained about pushing them into being interactive creators.
How do we how do we do that, and make that more appealing than, you know, making TikToks? I think that's what's most interesting about the metaverse for me, is not whether it actually exists or or if it will exist, but for me, it represents a symbolic opportunity as sort of a digital tabula rasa. Right, a blank slate. If we are going to reimagine society or community or what schools look like, our work, or what neighborhoods and cities look like, it becomes a space for us to start to do that.
And again, whose voices are we privileging to create that kind of space? So letting them create with an existing platform and low barriers to access, I think is wonderful. But I also think the symbolic, it doesn't even exist yet type of imagination and encouraging that among young people, young, marginalized youth in particular, I think is really, really important. Yeah. I'd like to make, you know, and similarly, the sooner you learn whether it's the metaverse or these emerging technologies or AI, the reason we focus on, like cutting edge tech is that the sooner you learn it, the closer you can take advantage of the opportunities. You know? And I think, you know, people look at hype cycles and everything, but there are these are the jobs of the future.
And I think for a lot of our students, we are portfolio based. You know, everyone comes out of it with portfolios of what they build. And we find that they can already integrate. Cuny has a gaming pathways, concentration that I'd like to shout out that most people don't know about, but we're becoming a feeder eventually to a lot of those things. Young people, when they realize that this could be a career and then it becomes very exciting.
So I think that's why we start young and we start with emerging tech, because then they're going to be the first person to have more of an advantage than any other population. And I think that's very important that we're not just doing this retroactively and playing catch up. We're giving the best to those who need it the most. First thing that please, let me just ask it, when you talk to kids, young people in your community, what are they asking for access to? Are they asking for access to VR gear, high end computers? I do you get a lot of questions about how do I access these I things I've heard about or how do I access a quest three or, you know, the tools I need to make this stuff.
What is the question here? You're invited to come to my office. I would love you to come. I think we're one of the unique places in upper Manhattan. We have all types of cool technology. We've got tables that are collaborative.
You've you've got all these screens, you got VR all over the place. We got PS5 and whoever. The gaming people know what I'm talking about, we got it all. So here's what happens. We'll take on multiple kids and we know you've got a question to ask.
We can't wait to get to it. But when we have the kids come into the into the office, I always tell my team, you know, sort of help them understand what each piece is. And one of the I was like, what are we doing to open the door? Let's see what happens.
Those kids go all over the place and they start using stuff. And I'm like, wow, because we got robots. We got all types of stuff. And it turns out that people, you know, when they've never had it before in their lives, they go to it and then they'll go to something else and then but back to where they love. And actually we have a lot of things that they can use their hands, build a plane, build up a drone, all these type of things done in our space. So I have come.
The real reality is if you if it's there, somebody will figure out how to work with it. I think the issue that we don't talk enough of, and I'll finish up with this, is if you have grown up in a way that if you if it's if you're in a, let's say there's just no money in the house, right. You're in for situation maybe public housing in some case you don't eat right.
So you're eating crappy crappy food. the schools that you have to go to are not as, as much as it would be at a more better school. and so there's fundamental things that we got to think about our neighbors, we got to, like, really help that basic platform and internet is one of those pieces of the platform in order for people to be able to walk into my place and do that in the very end. Matter of fact, when I started in 2014 with Silicon Harlem, there's basically no technology happening in Harlem at all. I was in meet ups all the time down here.
This is where I did all the meetups, were always down here. I love doing it, and I said to myself, what do we did? A meetup in Harlem. This is 2014. I said, oh, what am I did a meetup in Harlem. And you know, anyway, if you probably have been a meetup, you know, you happy about 15, 20 people talking about, oh, crap, whatever you're working on. So I brought up the Harlem and I said, man, if I can get 15, 20 people to come.
And when I put it out there, 500 people came. So some of this is just like, give people a shot, you know what I mean? And we've been doing that ever, every few months for the last ten years. So I hope that helps. I'm going to tell you, we are sadly out of time, but I don't care. We're going to keep going for another few minutes cause I know people want to ask questions. I want to get these questions.
If you got a question, shout it out or find somebody with a microphone, you're going to say, why haven't there we go right over there. A microphone is coming your way. Oh, it's right there in the aisle. Or I'll just walk up here. Hi. Hi.
Hey, I know that this panel was, specifically towards everyone. I can't help but notice everybody here is in New York City. So then that's not to slam on the on the list.
But what I'm trying to get at is, I think about our rural communities as well, too, where access similar numbers of, of Harlem and East Harlem are 35, 45%, do not get access. What it would be something. Thank you. What would be something that is more of a universal truth that you have learned, maybe apart from your location, but more with the groups with which you work that could be beneficial for others in other UN similar locations. Well, I'll just give you my opinion.
So I have a specific way of thinking of how everyone gets the internet, regardless of where they live. And, it requires that the governance has to be a part of it. in Biden's trillion dollars, I think that he put out a lot of it came for internet and the the areas that are being favored is rural, actually, because they just know that in cities it's dense and it's easier. Rule is a lot of space. You give somebody internet here and you gotta walk ten miles to the next person. So the providers find that to be very difficult to do.
It's really not. But you're absolutely right. This is not just for Harlem or just for a city or just for the heart spaces to be.
It has to be everywhere. You have to do that. So I think the money that governor has right now is about $600 million. A lot of it is going in upper, New York for the most part. We're getting some money here for the city.
At the end of the day, nobody tell anybody else that's outside of here. I'm trying to put out some, whether it's through governance or us as people. Why don't we create municipal broadband like water and electricity and everything else that gets subsidized and all stuff? Why don't we do that when the internet is as essential it as is those things? Yes, that's what I get. Let's do this serious, because if we do that, it doesn't have to hurt these big guys with the internet, right? So if you want a gigabit of speed or ten gigabit, you got to pay the extra money. But everyone should have some level of internet.
Is that help? And I would I would just add that if you if we continue to with any emerging technology, whatever technology we're talking about, if we continue to privilege wealthy white urban voices, we're going to end up in a place that's boring at best and dangerous at worst. And so and this means diversification very broadly, that we're going to be missing critical pieces of imagination, information, data and knowledge and input. If we don't engage as many people as possible. That would be my take away. I'll say I totally agree about municipal internet, but a lot of the big, access providers have lobbied against that for many years, and in a lot of cities have actually had ordinance passed to have ordinances passed that bar public support for municipal Wi-Fi.
do we have any other questions? Yes, please. Hello? Hello. Hi. Hi. I wanted to ask about. I love the fact of you were talking, hitting upon. If you build it, they will come. And just having the access first to having, all those things like the computer, the VR headsets, the consoles and everything, and then just having kids play, which is the best thing that you can do.
And you want to foster creativity and you want to show them that they can do things. Do you guys host like, really cool, like, you know, information sessions during these play sessions of like, hey, let's touch upon I, let's touch upon chat TVT let's touch upon. If you want to get into game development, let's touch upon. We want to get into creative creativity in the tech space, you know, do you have like speakers volunteer to talk because I feel like when you see someone that looks like you that's doing that, that is what opens doors in your head. You know, it's a different thing when you have a mindset, when you don't see someone who looks like you, that's, you know, in a place that's doing something. Creativity creatively and they love.
So like, I was just wondering, like how you guys are doing that here. Are you volunteering to. Yeah, I mean, I live in Virginia. I, but I just remember the first time I saw someone that looked like me that said, you know, I'm doing this, and I, I didn't I didn't think I had, like, barriers in my head, but it really did open up my opportunities and my mindset of like, okay, how do I connect with you and how did you get there? Yeah. So,
well, I'll just be as I'm going to be long. No, I'm very sure. so I'm glad you talked about that because it's so important. And for us, at least for me and my team, we bring in kids for a full summertime practice, right? Several weeks and months.
And one of the things that's really cool, where they start and where they finish is 100% different, 100%, but they come in with very, you know, yeah, why am I here when it's going on? And at the end they're like, I'm going to college. Yeah. So the point is a good example is, we want to we oh, we'd love to hear more about AI, Mr. Bass. What about AI? Yeah. And I laugh at myself because I've been around AI a long time.
And, you know, people talk about. Well, I want to learn more about AI. Well, you can't just make AI.
You gotta learn something, right? What's what's the fundamental of AI? Anybody know what the coding that used for AI. Right. Python. Right. So we teach kids how to do Python. And it turned out this last year we just we had a whole new cohort of kids this year, next week. But last year we were teaching them Python. And one of the kids had never been, code or anything like that, but got into it.
And she has become one of the greatest Python developers I've ever met. And she's gone to a great university. And so, yes, you know, I don't care if she ever becomes a python baby forever, but she loves it, you know, she I mean, and we so many of the teachers do that. I mean, a lot of the kids that we have do that kind of stuff.
So it's really a I'm glad you brought that because this is good stuff. That's good stuff. We got time for one more quick question. If anybody has one. Yeah. Go ahead.
Real quick because apparently it's lunchtime and, hi, my name is Ikram. I work for a layer one blockchain, based between Dubai and London. And first of all, thank you for all of the insights. I found it really, really amazing. my question is, how do we overcome the barriers for mass adoption, for emerging technology? Because people are so skeptical and, you know, yes, we do have to educate like but like on day to day, like what what actions we can take now for mass adoption.
And also do you think like, should we wait for like big players to adopt emerging technology for its mass adoption? Or we can do something right now, like on the ground, you know, to take it forward? Yeah. I mean, that's a great question. You know, it's always the chicken or the egg or the hardware or the content, you know, and for most people, let's say I'm an early adopter. For me, it was having access to projects that I think showed the possibility of these technologies. I think most people don't know that there are these incredible works, and I'm happy to email you or to let you know for me, the best way I get people to early adopt or to just get into it is I give them these ten things to experience, and I think a lot of it are already on a headset.
It's not you can do it on a website. It's just about getting them to realize that new technologies create new emotions, create new sensations is amazing and possibilities. So I think there's a canon of work that has been that film festivals since, you know, sorry, Free Love, at Sundance Film Festival has been doing this for over 15 years. And that body of work, if you just saw a sliver of it, you would change your career. You would change what you'd want to do. It really is that kind of experience.
So that's what I would say is to get access to that kind of storytelling and experience that changes what you're going to do. Well, that's a great answer to end on. Thank you so much. What a great panel this is. thank you Clayton. Thank you Courtney.
Thank you Garbo I'm Dan Ackerman from Microsoft News and thank you so much for joining us.
2024-08-12