yes so it's December 14th 2017 in
Mountain View California we're here
today with Professor Steve Mann from the
University of Toronto and Stanford and
Steve welcome today to the Computer
History Museum hello it's an honor to be
here it's great thank you
before we begin our interview you're
wearing something on your head there why
don't you take a few minutes and just
tell us what that is and and what the
theory or philosophy behind what you're
wearing is yes so this is an attempt
this this eyeglasses about 19 years old
this is a 1998 I guess when we completed
this and it's an eye tap device light
comes into the eye like this and it goes
through a computer system processor and
then the process light you know it's
reflected off the backs of the light you
can see there's a 45 degree mirror and
the light comes in here it goes into
this this camera here is pointed to the
to the right and what it does is it sees
the exact same rays of light that would
have gone into the eye if this apparatus
wasn't there and so the Rays of I Word
bound light are intercepted and brought
off this way and then resynthesized on
the other side is virtual light so this
is what I call real reality you know
virtual reality is the reality of
fiction and real reality is the reality
of truth so what I've been interested in
since my childhood has been sort of
seeing the world in
new ways like my my grandfather taught
me how to weld when I was four years old
and you know it was a crazy experience
you know seeing everything through this
dark glass and everything was almost
completely black except a little speck
of light and I thought well there's got
to be a better way to to see that that
the sort of experience of seeing and
trying to see and understand over that
kind of dynamic range and led me to
invent something called HDR high dynamic
range imaging and so you know what what
you see here on these typical phones you
know the HDR that's my invention from
the 1980s and 1990s which sort of came
out of this exploration and trying to
see and understand the real reality of
what's actually present and so the
eyeglass gives us this reality the
ability to see Soundwave see radio waves
see HDR vision to be able to see over a
complete spectrum from the infrared to
the ultraviolet as well as to be able to
see and understand the world in a sort
of phase coherent fashion what I call
phase phase coherent HDR is it correct
to call it augmented reality because in
a way you're you're supplementing the
world use the world out there with an
overlay is that correct
or maybe in some ways
I mean I've sometimes referred to
certain aspects of it as
phenomenological augmented reality PA R
which means the physical phenomenology
of the real world is overlaid back on to
the real world again oftentimes
augmented reality is the reality of
fiction kind of like virtual reality you
know pop-up caricatures and things like
that what I've been interested in is
seeing truth rather than fiction and in
that sense maybe real realities of
better framing or in some sense aughh
mediated reality might capture the
spirit of this in the sense that the
reality can be augmented as well as
diminished or mediated for example when
we're welding what I am doing in
essentially is diminishing the bright
areas of the scene and augmenting the
dark
areas of the scene mediating or
modifying to help people see that kind
of mediated reality or modified reality
is a reality that helps people see not
just adding more so if you've got an
already confusing scene that you can't
see well like the dazzling scene of an
arc welder what you don't really want to
necessarily do is just throw more
overlays on top of that what you really
want to do is team it down to the point
where people can see it first and then
add the overlays and I call that OGG
mediated reality it's an augmentation of
the mediation of reality right let's see
so what are you seeing right now through
your through your glasses so what I see
is it is just a computer screen of
reality and then so I see an HDR vision
so when I'm looking at really bright
scenes like bright lights or whatever I
can see the lettering on the lights and
so on oh my goodness
the lettering on the light bulbs yes so
I can see the bright areas of scene down
to the darker areas of the scene and
with some of the eyeglasses I can see in
complete darkness pretty much as well so
over this range of light that's one of
my inventions is HDR
but it's also there's also this notion
of phenomenology phase coherent HDR so
one of the things that I invented in my
childhood was this kind of lock-in
amplifier that allowed me to see sound
waves in radio waves right is there
anything more you want to say about this
and then we will go to your childhood
and like for example are there how do
you control the computer that modifies
what you see for example is that in your
pocket or or how do you is it just on a
permanent setting perhaps so some of the
eyeglass well I guess this is a this is
kind of an old prototype about 19 years
old now but the ones we're building now
just like look like ordinary eyeglasses
and
we're working on projects like I found
it accompany interacts on you know out
of my house originally with my students
and then the company gradually grew and
now we're partnering with others
together we're making brainwave
controlled eyeglasses that just wearable
computers that just look like ordinary
eyeglasses and have the world's most
advanced brain computer interface in
them and then we're working on a number
of other things that help people see and
the idea is there's a machine learning
algorithm so that you don't need to do
anything really you don't need to fidget
with it or whatever
there's a machine learning system that
learns what you want to see it helps you
see better by simply adapting to
whatever's there and adapting to you as
well
and there's a principle that we call
humanistic intelligence Marvin Minsky is
the father of the whole field of machine
learning and AI he's the one who
invented the field of AI and him and I
together developed this conceptual
framework and Minsky Marvin Minsky
together with Ray Kurzweil chief
engineer Google and myself the three of
us in 2013 wrote a paper on the Society
of intelligent valence and in that paper
we introduced the concept of humanistic
intelligence as a form of creating this
sort of cyborg entity you know is this
humanistic intelligence as intelligence
that arises by having the human being
the feedback loop of the computational
process and human and humanistic
intelligence is human-in-the-loop
AI and so there's a few things that we
have you know the the most advanced
vision algorithms that help people see
the most advanced HDR that runs
thousands of times faster than anything
that anyone else has and at the moment
we're developing this in hardware we've
got FPGA based implementations of HDR
that run real-time video and we're also
phasical here in HDR has partnered with
a company company in China where we
manufacture the world's most advanced
Lockean amplifier and so with these
technologies were able to use
learning to help machines see as well as
to help people see so we're looking at
self-driving cars
putting cameras and self-driving cars to
help cars see one of the things that I
really noticed early on is that my
vision system I had an active vision
system at one time and I would notice I
walk into a restaurant or something I
couldn't see properly because their
surveillance camera was blinding my
eyesight they had an active surveillance
camera with a ring of infrared lights
and it would swap my IR receiver and and
I wasn't able to see properly so I had
to boost the output of my infrared
system in order to see properly and so
in order whenever it encountered and I
had this with machine learning so
whenever it encountered whenever it was
blinded it would automatically boost its
output and so the effect was whenever
I'd walk into a place of a whiteout all
their surveillance cameras when you look
at the surveillance monitor when I walk
into a room their screen would go all
white because my system in order for me
to see I'd have to blind their system
and so I started to realize that these
active vision systems don't work too
well they don't play too well with each
other they tend to blind each other so
I'm these self-driving cars are great
when there's only one of them on the
road but when there's a whole bunch of
them on the road I could foresee or I
could predict a future where that's
going to be a problem and so what I did
is I developed the technology that would
solve that problem which I call phase
coherent HDR phase coherent high dynamic
range imaging can you tell us a bit
about without getting too technical but
well what does that basically do or mean
the face coherence part of it well one
of the things that's fascinated me since
my childhood since I was about maybe
eight years old or so I started building
locking amplifiers to be able to see
phenomenology you know different things
and I built when I was 12 I built what
many people regard as the world's first
wearable computer back in 1974 was a
wearable computer system to pick up
sound waves and radio waves and make
them visible as an array of light
and one of the things I did in my high
school class physics classes I showed a
nice little experiment where you can see
the interference fringes of Soundwave so
as I had two transducers and as I varied
the spacing between the transducers you
could see the sound waves as I brought
the transducers closer together you
could see the interference fringes of
the sound wave spreading apart and so
just this ability to see this
phenomenology like sound waves and radio
waves was a whole new world that opened
to me and I realized it holds the key to
being able to see better and that I had
developed a technology that would help
people see and understand their world
especially in a world that's more opaque
I I noticed in my childhood you know I'd
look at a radio and there'd be no back
on the radio and you could look inside
and the lamps in there the the vacuum
tubes were all transparent and I could
look in and see and understand
everything about that radio how it
worked literally the technology was
transparent and this transparent
technology not only were the tubes
themselves transparent so you could look
into them and they're often these radios
had the back that could easily come off
or some of them didn't even have a back
you could just look in behind the radio
and see everything it's a complete
principle of operation was laid bare
totally not only that but the
manufacturer used to put a schematic
diagram in there on one side and a parts
list on the other so you could literally
look in there and understand and you
could mix parts you could take tubes
from a rate General Electric radio and
put them in an RCA radio you could swap
parts between different brands there's
this great interoperability between
components and there was this
transparency of the technology you know
I had my dad got me a cathode ray
oscilloscope tmv - one two two and as in
my childhood I got this thing it was
about 40 years old when I got it it's
about 80 years old now and it had a
completely clear cathode ray tube
transparent this is back in the 1930s
before they put that aqua dad stuff on
the inside of the tubes and so you could
see back in behind the tube exactly
you could see the electron beam
structure there and then you could see
the the back look at the front of the
tube but you could look in behind and
see everything backwards on the inside
of the CRT so it's just a totally
transparent completely understandable
technology and one of the things about
that scope is the the time base didn't
work on it that's part of the reasons I
got it because it was broken and the
time base didn't work in the dot would
only move up and down and so what I did
is I started pushing it along my
workbench you see to to make so that I
could see a timepiece I just did some
long exposure photographs where I'd take
a picture if it was sliding it down the
bench to trace out a waveform and what
it discovered by accident was I had a
transducer mounted to the oscilloscope
just screwed to the binding posts on the
input was a little amplifier and so when
I pushed it along my workbench it traced
out a waveform as a function of space
rather than time and I kind of stumbled
on this notion of shearing the
space-time continuum in a set of
coordinates in which the speed of light
or the speed of sound is exactly zero so
that I could see waves sitting still and
I discovered something that I call
sitting waves we all know what standing
waves are you don't want to violin
string or a skipping rope kind of goes
up and the amplitude goes to zero and
then down and then up and down and then
there's certain fixed points then in
between it goes up and down but a
sitting wave is where the wave just sits
perfectly still for the most part little
bit of statistical fluctuation but
otherwise the wave sitting still and it
was this concept of a sitting wave that
I developed that allowed me to see and
so I developed this concept of a
scientific Oats terment an oscilloscope
is a scientific instrument you know
where you can see inside of it it's all
contained and you see things as a
function of time on a time base but what
I did is took the wave outside of itself
and I call it a scientific out Sturman
in which the phenomenology is out in the
real world so I'd be looking at my
workbench where I'd have an antenna here
and I'd see the wave form from the
antenna I would see the electromagnetic
waves from
just kind of hanging there in space
[Music]
outside of itself and and so one of the
things I do you know I build smart
things and so I build these he's a fun
little thing I used to like to build
radio receivers and radio transmitters
in my childhood and build all these
smartphones and everything and so this
is a this is a smartphone here
homemade smartphone and this is a
replica of my wave machine you can see
okay there's a wave there right and you
can see the wave is stronger when I'm
closer weaker when I'm further away
right and I don't know if this will show
up on the video camera because you need
a shutter angle of more than 360 degrees
to be able to see it really well but
anyway the the human eye sees it as this
wave that's coming from the phone and
you know if I go through something like
if you have a book or something a nice
thick book even that no no pad thank you
see ya so I've got this New England
Journal of Medicine here
maybe I'll fold it over twice of this to
thickness well actually even just
holding it like this so you can see it's
a little bit weaker going through that
New England Journal of Medicine
oh yeah and purses here but if I go
through this bottle of water what do you
think we're gonna see nothing and if I
hold my phone like this if I block the
speaker it doesn't make much difference
or if I cover up the microphone doesn't
make much difference but if I cover up
the antenna oh yeah you can see the
signals a lot weaker in fact if I put
one finger over where the antenna is
it's quite a bit weak or two fingers
yeah three fingers four fingers so it
tells me that you shouldn't hold your
phone like this nobody can hear what
you're saying but smart people hold
their phone like this with everybody
damnit you're saying and otherwise if
you hold it like this the transmitter
otherwise I hold it like this otherwise
you hold it like this the transmitter
will go full power and it'll just waste
a lot of energy heating up your brain in
your hand and running your battery down
but your other person's I can hear very
much because you're blocking the signal
yeah I was like antenna gate
remember the Apple phone uh-huh that had
the the issue for a little while and
Steve Jobs came out and basically said
do exactly what you said you can't hold
you shouldn't hold it like that this
sort of death grip yeah you should hold
it a little more gently delicately so
yeah and that's why an important thing
is knowing where to put the antenna and
that's what this one of the things that
could see in my childhood was to be able
to see all these radio waves and sound
waves it's just so this thing that you
just showed us is what how would you
describe that to an to a an observer on
the street so this is a device this is
an invention from my childhood which I
called the sequential way from printing
machine which is I've got the original
wearable computer here I can show you
and that's I call it this SW I am
sequential way from printing machine
I used to say we're gonna swim out that
way if you know from that device and
we're gonna sequential eyes it make it
visible and so it sequentially imprints
the wave onto your retina or onto
photographic film okay
and by virtue of persistence of exposure
it made these waves visible yes so it's
kind of women keeping of your your your
overall life project of making things
visible and improving how we see things
in the real world yeah it sort of
extends our vision down into radio waves
right and so these these waves that are
being made visible they are the actual
radio waves from yeah this is not a
representation of the wave people ask me
how does it know where it is and it's
just bound by the rules of physics and
as such this thing updates at a rate of
about 1.6 million times per second and
it's accurate to within you know maybe
nanometer accuracy or whatever it
doesn't lag behind reality well see all
these virtual reality
well the fiction of virtual reality is
laggy and it swims behind everything the
irony of the swim is it's perfectly in
sync with reality because it's governed
by the laws of physics so its operating
at the speed of light rather than at the
speed of you know every once in a while
updates right
okay so Steve what have you got here and
can you tell us how it works so this is
the world's first wearable computer
I built it when I was 12 years old in
1974 and it it's controls these lights
you know it's a phenomenological
augmented reality amplifier it's a kind
of lock-in amplifier that picks up
signals and sequences lamps electric
lights in order to make real augmented
reality or phenomenological augmented
reality so it it I called it the
swimwear SWI M stands for sequential
wave and printing machines it's wearable
wave machine it has a little strap on it
and I used to wear this and walk around
as the lights and sequence and
understand and see reality and so
there's a it's an amplifier that picks
up weak signals there's antenna
terminals on the back where you can
connect rabbit ears to pick up
television signals and amplify them and
drives in to electric light bulbs and
there's a there's a gain and a
sensitivity so there's a there's a bias
here which is overall bias I can
increase this bias here and decrease it
and then separately there's a
sensitivity adjustment and various other
controls and sequencer forward reverse
automatic it will pass through different
kinds of computed sequences and it's a
fairly simple structure and then now if
I if I have a little bit of gain here on
this if I turn up the bias a little bit
so there's a bit of a bias voltage on
the input
or what happens is even when it's not
picking anything up that amplifies and
gives you something on the light now
what this does is when I bring it in in
front of this surveillance camera what
you'll notice is the light gets brighter
when it's in view of the surveillance
camera because what it's doing is its
receiving television signals even weak
television signals and amplifying them
massively massive amplification so it
was a huge amount of gain its amplifying
those television signals and so if I if
I hold this light here and I block it
with my coat
wherever the coat is blocking it see the
light falls dim when the camera can't
see the light when the camera can see
the light it glows much brighter and of
course if it's outside the field of view
of the camera it also falls dim it only
goes bright when it's within the field
of view of the camera so when the camera
can see the light it glows more
brilliantly and when the camera can't
see the light it goes less brilliantly
and so the the idea here is it creates
this phenomenological reality in which
it it it allows us to see these
otherwise invisible signals so this is
Madison vision you know when if I tell
you a a meta joke is a joke about jokes
a meta conversation is a conversation
about conversations meta vision is the
vision of vision this is seeing sight
visualizing vision and sensing sensors
and sensing their capacity to sense
can you think of an application where
this might be used so one one
application is say in a new kind of AI
test where you can test people's vision
and and see in a simple way like right
now if you have AI Diagnostics they're
all written but I've got something
called the IANA graph my students and I
are working on a kind of new kind of AI
test that we call the I am I in a graph
which is a vision of the eye it's a it's
a an eye test where you end up with a
photograph of what your eye can see and
so if you have a camera so for example
if we want to understand the Internet of
Things we can finally see the Internet
of Things because it's otherwise
invisible this sight field if you will
of the camera or its capacity to see the
capacity of humans to see of cameras to
see in other sensors sensing sensors and
sensing their capacity to sense allows
us to quantify and to speak in
quantified units meta valence or meta
vision are concepts that allow us to
quantify and scientifically analyze the
internet of things which is otherwise
just kind of a general vague sense
people will say well you know in
lighting we do lighting studies you know
we study likes and we see how much light
and measure how much light is in it how
many how much amount of light is present
in every part of the room that's a
scientific study that people value well
now with surveillance cameras that could
measure how much valence there is in
each part of the room
oh now you're using the word valence I
just picked up on that and not in this
chemical sense of bonds scene covalent
bonds no no but valence is in
surveillance
yeah brick well if you take the word
surveillance it has two parts to it sir
and valence sir means over or above as
in sir charger surtax and valence means
sight or watching okay so the closest
English translation to the word
surveillances name but it's a French
warrant surveillance the closest English
word is oversight but the word oversight
has a double meaning it means to watch
over like surveillance but it also can
mean an error or omission in our part
and so we tend to use the French word
but what I'm talking about here this
light bulb doesn't know anything about
political hierarchy so surveillance is
like when police are watching citizens
or shopkeepers watching shoppers mm-hmm
or a cab drivers watching the passenger
okay if surveillance implies us a
political hierarchy but this light bulb
doesn't know anything about politics
this amplifier here and wearable
computer doesn't understand politics it
merely measures scientific fact and so
in science I introduced the concept of
valence as a non-political surveillance
is a politically charged word but
valence if you take the word
surveillance and remove the first three
letters you've removed the politics from
it hmm and what remains is just a
scientific phenomenology yeah okay got
you okay now as Steve's you've got
something very interesting there can you
tell us a bit about that so this what i
did is i mounted 35 electric lights on
this stake here and they're connected
every they're connected together through
these these connections in a in a kind
of pattern that's useful and the way the
way it worked is that these these plugs
plugged into this machine here and so
this computer sequence through the
lights and
and so the way it worked is that I would
wear this and I was able to swing this
around and capture the pattern of these
phenomenology so it's sequence through
these lights at high speed in different
patterns and I had a different
computational framework for optimizing
the pattern so it would search through
it conducted a search space through all
possible through the different
permutations to rapidly identify your
the valence flux or the pattern in which
we're seeing and understanding this
world and so as I brought these lights
through space like this I would swing
these lights through space and by
persistence of exposure either on the
human retina or human visual system as a
whole or by persistence of exposure on
photographic film I'd be able to see and
understand the patterns so if I sort of
moving this back and forth in the space
of reality these lights would dance
around in interesting patterns and what
they did was showed me the valence flux
so I'd see the sight field of that
camera as a cone of sight all in one go
instead of having to swing a single
light bulb back and forth like this I
had this whole brush it's like a giant
paintbrush that painted onto reality
what was actually there and allowed
people to see what was actually present
so one of the things that I did is meta
vision meta valence being able to see
for example sight fields of cameras and
the other thing that I did was I took
the world's first photographs of radio
waves with this apparatus where I could
see I'd have some antenna and one or
more antennae you know like an antenna
that was transmitting a video signal and
be able to see the waveforms of the
electric or magnetic field coming from
the antenna so this was phase coherent
detection not just signal strength not
just a signal strength meter moving
through space but actually seeing the
radio wave itself in a set of
coordinates in which the speed of light
was exactly zero
Wow okay and so that was one of those
things in it so this wearable apparatus
allowed me to walk around and explore
large landscapes and spaces for waves
and you know I was able to walk around
and be köppen spaces and paint out the
reality that I envisioned Wow amazing is
there a way to capture the experience
yes so what I used to do sometimes a lot
of times I would show people they're
just waving around they would see it
because if I move this fast enough of
course you can see those patterns right
especially in a dark room where your eye
adjust to the dark when your eyes adjust
to the dark the apparent exposure time
lengthens and so you're able to see
these patterns and I would tell people
don't you know don't let your eyes
follow the light just look at a spot so
I often have a little X or something
that we light up glowing so people could
look at her little pattern or dimly
glowing bulb and say just stare at that
bulb but don't let your eyes follow the
light right there swing the legs around
of course they would see this image of
this augmented reality overlay and I
used to you know I could have large
groups of people be able to see this
without having to wear any special
apparatus or awesome and then I also did
this on photographic film so I would put
a photographic plate or a photographic
film into my camera and then open up the
shutter of the camera and sweep this out
and let it go and then had a
radio-controlled shutter and I had even
had a camera later when these motor
drives came available I had a motor to
have to advance to the next frame so I
could have had this little cording here
actually I could issue commands to my
computer I could actually type ASCII
characters on this thing but squeezing
different combinations of these keys
here and issue commands and actually
control my computer send messages to my
computer and key out different messages
like each of these goes over one of the
fingers and the neck
get a whole bunch of different symbols
and different permutations in common
I've always admired people who can deal
with courting key sex yeah I call this a
kheer of course cuz it's like a keyboard
but it doesn't have a board yeah you
know it's just in free space as I'm
swinging this thing around issuing
commands to the computer that's
controlling everything uh oh that's
wonderful and you'd made this when you
were 12
yes Wow and so did you obviously you
didn't have the body of theory you do
now when you were 12 so what were you
what were what was going through your
mind when you built this well as I was
growing up I was I was fascinated by
certain things and I found a television
repair shop in my neighborhood where a
volunteer to help out oh yes and and you
see he became my mentor and tonin
Kimball Oh was his name you know he he
became sort of my mentor to teach me all
about television because I wanted to
learn about TV and so I talked to
different people's over the years and
then I found somebody who could teach me
the workings of television and when I
first showed up at his place he said
what can a young child do to what do you
know you know how can a child possibly
know anything so he he when I first met
him he went into the back room and he
took close the door and told me to wait
and then when he was ready he opened the
door and he said there's a TV fix it for
me and he was just testing me and so I
walked over and all the tubes were
glowing so I said well it's getting
power and I said you got a voltmeter he
said yes I started measuring the
horizontal oscillator wasn't oscillating
so finally I I measured the voltage
across the volume control on off switch
and I said all the problem is the on/off
switch and see what he done is taken the
set play and the TV and turned it to
face the wall so that the front panel
was pressed against the wall and it was
all open on the workbench and and he had
simply turned the TV off so the only
thing that was wrong with it was was
that it was turned off but within about
two minutes or so identified the problem
as a as the
switch right and because there's a
voltage across it yeah
and so he just wanted to see if I could
logically deduce or logically really
amazing for a twelve year old of course
in those days when you turn TVs off the
tubes would still glow there's a diode
across the on/off switch to keep the
filaments kind of half on right right
and so so there's a you know incision
instant on so the thing that looked sort
of looked like it was on you know made
an interesting little problem right but
he was convinced that I wasn't totally
stupid yeah so then he said hey you know
sort of volunteered help fixing sets and
I learned a lot and got a chance to play
around with locking amplifiers and other
things like that that most children
don't get acts now a lock-in amplifier
can you explain what that is if I'm
correct it's usually a fairly high-end
piece of test equipment is it not yes
they're very expensive yes and it's an
amplifier that amplifies that massive
gain phase coherently so it has a
reference input in a signal input and so
that's the fundamental principle of
being able to face coherently detect
something and so I kind of became
fascinated in my childhood or this kind
of concept of locking amplifiers and
phase coherent detection and I kind of
got into this this notion of of picking
off radio waves and sound waves as
they're traveling through space and
trying to freeze them and look at them
in a set of coordinates in which the
speed of sound or the speed of light is
exactly yeah so let's take a reference
signal I had I'd have if I had an intent
radio transmission I'd have an antenna
fixed here as my reference signal or
moved the other one this is kind of what
I discovered when I was sliding my asila
graft back and forth across the
workbench that had the broken time base
on it the dot would only go up and down
and when I moved it back and forth like
this I know it would trace out this
pattern because I had a sensor attached
to it against the reference of another
stationary sensor right and so I started
to get this idea that that I can pick
off these waves you know was lock-in
amplifiers as a way of massively
amplifying and very weak signals picking
up weak signals that are buried and
noise
mm-hmm you know any kind of thing that
you're trying to do whether it's
sweeping for bugs are picking up really
weak phenomenology in physics cryogenics
you know any there's a lot of many
things in physics where we're trying to
find a really weak signal and a lock-in
amplifier can sort of answer this
fundamental question of what what is it
due to something else you know how much
of this is due to that if you can get
access to the thing that's causing
something as a reference signal then you
can see how much of what you're
observing is caused by the thing that's
your reference to thank you for showing
us that the swim machine who really
appreciate that the the it's quite
amazing that you built that when you
were 12 that's remarkable and you can
see the roots of your sort of life
purpose if you like of extending the
range of human sense of sensing
abilities or or ability to see things we
don't usually see beginning began really
early with you and so let's just start
with the sort of more formal part of the
of the oral history and talk about about
where you grew up what your parents did
and and what school was like did you
like school did you have hobbies those
kind of things yeah I guess when I was
growing up you know my my father worked
at a men's clothing company so he was in
the clothing business and so I guess I
learned a little bit about clothes and
how close they're designed but he was
also into tinkering and building things
too so before I started kindergarten you
know we were built often building things
I can remember you know building radio
receivers and things like that was my
dad and my grandfather was sort of like
that too you know he was into building
things he used to build airplanes and
sometimes he'd let me fly as airplane he
wouldn't let me take off or land it but
when were in the air you know he'd put
his hands up on the bars to let me know
I could grab onto the stake and take
control of it
I used to fly as little airplane around
when I was a young child this is a model
aircraft no I like a like a two-person
really a real aircraft just a small
airplane whoa he'd often fly in on these
little airplanes well that's fun don't
what was his job well he'd like to build
things he was a refrigeration engineer
okay he fixed refrigerators that was
back in the days when a refrigeration
was fairly new as a field people still
had ice the ice man would come around
and you'd get a 25 pound or a 50 pound
100 pound block of ice and he made these
mechanical refrigeration type things and
he was kind of in that world as a
refrigeration engineer but he also liked
to build things so he used to build
Stirling engines in his garage and he
taught me how to build them and I'd
build these various engines he also
built airplanes so he was a pilot and he
also built airplane helped others build
airplanes and a lot of his friends with
pilots as well and was into that world
of making things yeah so you had a
pretty good some good role models when
you were young yeah terms of tinkering
and in working with with mechanical that
working with your hands and so on and
what what was school like for you
generally as an experience was were you
a happy student or kind of Oscar was
kind of meaningless I was always sort of
teetering on the brink of dropping out
of school when I was in high school I I
really wanted to quit school and do
something meaningful with my life
because I felt school was useless or
actually provided a negative value in
many ways and it's interesting I met one
of my math teachers his name was Ron
Lancaster
I met him he's maybe the only reason I
stayed in school because you know he
sort of showed me that school can be fun
and math can be math is fun math was the
only subject I really liked
I was in school okay if I had my way I
would have just cancelled all the other
classes and had maybe mathematics all
morning and physics in the afternoon or
something but the other stuff I didn't
didn't see it wasn't really wasn't
really interesting and even the math
that they taught in school was kind of
dull and watered-down and uninteresting
you know really interesting mathematics
problems didn't didn't come my way I
remember when I was in high school I
think I placed 2nd place in a math
contest that was made for university
students I was okay in math but then I
was close to failing math because I was
just not my mind wasn't switched on it
was just ignoring what the teacher was
saying or doing I think maybe I said a
lot of my teachers by not paying
attention because it was kind of
uninteresting and so that the real
mentorship I got was you know
volunteering in a TV repair shop and
learning about the real world and what
kind of hobbies did you have at this
time I'm sure you had some I know at 12
you built the swim so you must have been
somewhat into electronics or electricity
at some point yeah I like to build
things you know I I did a lot of that
used to take television sets and turn
them into Scylla graphs you know I
turned that deflection yoke sideways 90
degrees and get that vertical oscillator
going across as a sweep and then in
where the horizontal was I Drive an
external waveform and you know I it's
kind of a couple of times you know the
TV would not like it and it would start
to smolder a little bit when you had the
horizontal
operating differently so I raised a
dummy load the horizontal side with
another deflection yoke and yeah I kind
of just figured out in my childhood from
television sets that people were
throwing away how to get the television
sets to draw waveforms and make them
into a silica ATS and I was kind of
interested in tinkering and playing and
something I called tinker II tinkering
as a form of inquiry
you know this notion of exploring the
world through experimentation right
I think there's huge value in what in
what you say in in simply taking things
apart when you're a kid yeah with no
goal of putting them back together
necessarily which is good because often
you can't yeah I would often take things
apart and turn them into other things
yeah like like I wasn't necessarily
interested in just taking things apart
for the sake of taking them apart or for
putting them back together I mean it did
fix TVs I was kind of I had my own
business I was an entrepreneur in my
childhood and my entrepreneurial
practice was to fix televisions for
people on radios and so I had my own
business repairing all the televisions
and radios from you know most I'm from
different around the community and so
it's kind of widely known as the guy to
fix the TV but that was just a way to
make a little bit of money you know as
an entrepreneurial pursuit but I was
more interested in kind of exploring
reality and so let's just skip ahead you
got out of high school which sounds like
it was a blessing for you that actually
completed it as amazing got to thank Ron
Lancaster for that otherwise ever
probably dropped out and I don't know
maybe I would have been an entrepreneur
and been been successful in that side
who knows yeah it all it takes is one
good teacher sometimes to just keep you
on track you know just to show by way of
example yeah there is something of value
there right yeah and so I presume you
went to MIT at this stage or two yeah I
took a after I finished high school I
went to McMaster University and and then
I went to MIT okay and I took my
wearable computing inventions to MIT a I
at McMaster I did work on radar came up
with a new way of a new mathematical
transform called the chirp let transform
so the wavelet transform is pieces of
ways wavelets are little pieces of waves
and rough
speaking and I invented something called
the chirp let transform which is a
mathematical representation on little
pieces of chirps so a chirp is a
waveform that varies in frequency so a
wave is like you know you know just if
you look on a silica it's this wave
whereas a chirp he's like you know you
know varies in frequency so it starts
out with long ways and gets short or
vice versa as a down chirp you know
it'll be like now down or often
frequency so right I created a new
mathematical transform called the chirp
lit transform when I was at McMaster in
Hamilton and I did a lot of wearables
things there too I grew up in Hamilton
Ontario near Toronto I'd come into
Toronto and do these wearables events
kind of like like Hardware har dwar
kind of events and organize organize
different things where we'd do different
wearables and I did a lot of sort of
phenomenological augmented reality
performances and stupid crazy things as
a cyborg performance artist as a we'll
get to that in a second but just to pick
up on the triplet transform is that has
that been taken up by the community as
an effective DSP yeah there's a lot of
companies now using it it's fairly
widely used Wow and there's different
hardware implementations of it faster
but transform implement in hardware
that's pretty pretty impressive you see
people have traditionally looked at
waves and Fourier analysis in a warrior
transforms in waves like waves
hold the answer to things that are that
are of constant pitch you know like in
music we think of you silent
[Music]
you know the notes that have a certain
duration and a certain frequency neatly
organized but in nature if you look at
the song of the birds you know it's like
you know it doesn't stay at these things
frequency oh yeah and so if you look at
the musical musical instruments it makes
sense to do Fourier analysis of notes
that are sustained at a certain pitch in
human music we have a note that
sustained at a certain pitch then
another note that's sustained at another
pitch and so on but in nature the song
of the birds or bats when they're
echolocating they chirp dolphins chirp
just about anything in nature even brain
waves and heart rate variability you
know people are looking at the triplet
transform for HRV heart rate variability
or looking at the triplet transform for
brainwaves I started that company that
brain wave company and we're doing this
sort of triplet based analysis of brain
waves and everything so there's lots of
different things where waves are not the
right framing for it you know even you
look at a picture of something like if I
if I look up at the ceiling here what
you see is their ceiling tiles and
although they may look like a periodic
pattern which would have a Fourier
series if you look at a camera
photograph of it the ones closer to the
camera appear bigger and the ones
further away appear smaller and that's a
chirp you know that's a the frequency if
you if you just take a picture of
railway ties you've got wood stones wood
stones with the railway tracks meeting
you know parallel lines meet at the
point at infinity for projective or they
never meet if you're not projective but
you you you you look at the picture as
we get closer to the point at infinity
that the spatial frequency increases
you've got wood and then stones then
wood and then stones and it gets closer
and closer together right in the picture
and that's a church it starts out at low
frequencies in one place it goes to high
frequency and frequency increases
without bound towards infinity when you
go towards the vanishing point and so in
nature photographs pictures signals by
all signals from human as well as
as other animals and just any
phenomenology that we might observe in
nature often has chirps in it and what I
noticed is that accelerating radar
targets have chirps in it little iceberg
fragments and the ocean chirp around as
they Bop around I call those war Bloods
you know where the frequencies periodic
English if weakens it goes up and down
and up and down as you got this iceberg
fragment that's accelerating and I used
was able to use the triplet transform to
detect small iceberg fragments in a way
better than any other means of detecting
them and these were harmful to ships you
know little iceberg fragments about the
size of a grand piano too small to see
on any existing radar at the time but
we're immediately visible with my cheer
flat-faced radar set right and so I
invented a new kind of radar evasion
that allowed people to see these
somewhat hazardous objects that were
otherwise invisible to every other radar
at the time so would this be in would
this be expressed in the form of an
enhancement to existing radar or as an
add-on or either way I mean the Triplett
transform can can be its own in its own
right or it can exist on top of existing
radar sets right I think the word chirp
comes from radar as well does it no idea
well chirp is the sound that's a fairly
common word people will say the sound
that a bird makes as a jerk sure are the
sounds of bats and dolphins or sweat
frequency wave packets Sophia is an in
shortwave listening or a ham radio isn't
the word chirp forget where I've come
across that maybe those old Soviet
jammers use some kind of chirping one
radio we often sweep across frequency
ranges and so that's fairly common to
have a chirp in sound systems you know
to measure the spectrum of a sound
system you may have a wrong way input
sweep across frequencies like so
chirping phenomenology has been around
for years okay but what I did is
invented the first mathematical
transform that uses us what frequency
wave packets has its fundamental basis
and so that was at mcmaster where you
did a bachelor's and a master's in
engineering I figure right Electrical
yeah right and then you went to MIT in
the media yeah then I left to MIT then
when I finished my master's in
electrical that oh I want to work as a
radar engineer or do I want to pursue my
dreams and so I asked myself what is it
that I really love and I asked myself
the question that I always ask my
students when they want to come and work
with me I say what is it that you did in
your childhood before anybody told you
what you should be doing because
everybody told me I should get a good
job you know my parents said go into
engineering and management because
that's where the money is and you know
their parents were saying you should be
an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer or a
dentist or something somebody that who
makes money you know right and I kind of
I kind of rebelled against that and I
said well what is it that I liked to do
in my childhood before anybody told me
what I should do before any teachers
told me what I need to do for an
assignment before any employer or
prospective employer told me what I
should do to make myself ready for the
job market I said my true passion in
life is to see phenomenology my
sequential way from printing machine so
I applied to only one place I applied to
only MIT because that's the place that I
thought was right for my what I want to
do at the Media Lab and I put in my
portfolio of the sequential way from
printing machine to swim this is this
thing here basically right and and I
said you know what I want to do in life
is this wearable computing and seeing
and understanding the world and and so I
got accepted into the MIT Media Lab and
I brought all these inventions down
there with me from inventions from my
childhood the true passion the true
things that I wanted to do not you know
not necessarily make a lot of money but
I started to realize that deep down
inside I'm an inventor preneur it's a
word that I made up an inventor an
entrepreneur and you see it occurred to
me the people who just try and make
money often get by in a mediocre sense
it
get by you can say okay I'm gonna set
out to make money and you see musicians
do this sometimes they say well I'm
gonna just try and make some money but
there's a there's a lack of authentic
critique and I call it authentic ready
the integrity of authenticity there's a
an authenticity to doing what to
pursuing your own dreams because I think
when you do that you've become much
deeper and you can't help but succeed if
you're there's doubts to what you're
doing you look at the best musicians are
the ones who are really doing it because
they love it
and I think the best engineers ought to
be the ones who are doing it because
they're really in their passion they're
really in their zone that's kind of what
I asked my students that I've attracted
some really great super bright students
by asking these fundamental questions
they say what is it that you really like
to do and I seem to attract these super
brilliant students who are really into
following their dreams and when our
dreams and visions align I say well
that's great you know that makes sense
okay so what can you give us a year that
you started at MIT for example and and
when you graduated just to give us a
framework yeah yeah it was like 19 1992
to 1996 I was there a little bit off
because I spent a little bit of time at
HP Labs I went down to MIT I founded the
MIT wearable computing project there as
its first member in the words of the
Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte
II he said Steve Mann founded a new
discipline he recognized early on that
what I had brought to there to the loud
there was the seeds of a new discipline
a new field of research and you see HP
Labs was really interested in that and
so they brought me out to California for
a little while during my time at MIT
and so HP Labs was a sponsor to the
media lab and I worked there for a
little while and I lived in Palo Alto
you know in the early 90s for a short
time period working at HP Labs kind of
bringing this vision out to the west
coast and then I went back and finished
my PhD at MIT and what what I did was
was you know explore these new ways of
seeing new ways and I kind of also got a
little bit of a following there I
applied to the New England spectrum
Management Council for a hundred
kilohertz spectral allocation for this
sort of community of cyborgs and when I
got when I arrived there you know I put
this antenna on the roof for the toll of
the of the building of the media
leverage and then I put on the roof of
the tallest building in the city you
know the Green Building got my antenna
up on the roof of that building and had
the signals beamed back by microwave
downlink to the roof of the media lab
building that had a piece of coax
running down there and some some some
rg-58 coax running down the side of the
building into 19-inch really rack I had
full of equipment in my office because
back in those days there was no wireless
service like there is today you know so
I was my own service provider and so I
had this coverage through what most of
the city
oh and of my own doing and then but I
wanted to expand that and bring in a
community of cyborgs and kind of get
that idea of a small community of people
wearing and using these computers to
stay connected so I sort of started
exploring a lot of these ideas there can
you tell us a bit about the the wearable
computing as a field as a discipline who
the major players are besides yourself
and a bit of it maybe a capsule history
of the discipline it's it's maybe 20 or
25 years old so maybe yeah there's a lot
of companies and there's a lot of
there's a lot of companies in this space
now you know Woodrow Barfield
collaborated with us a little bit
quite a bit about augmented reality and
it's interesting that the world of
wearable computing it's interesting that
the world of wearable computing is at a
certain stage now were were were it it
it it's sort of I kind of thought there
would be a big industry around it
because Nicholas Negroponte he said oh
steve mann founded a new discipline so i
was expecting i was expecting you know
kind of a big explosion of this this
material when i was in 1998 i made the
world's first SmartWatch and it was on
the cover of linux journal in 2000 and
then i sort of got this idea well
SmartWatch is kind of limited because
you got to keep looking at it and I
thought well you know it really should
be AI glasses that are the thing and
when I was at MIT a guy named Mark
Spitzer came and started talking to me
and said hey those glasses look pretty
cool I could build something like that
you know like he wanted to make
something like what I had he heard about
my work I guess and so he made this
eyeglass and he showed it to me he
brought it and he showed it to me and he
said hey I got this eyeglass what do you
think and I said oh that's great I can
see letters on the screen yeah but I
said how is that connected to realities
that what do you mean he didn't
understand what I was trying to do and I
said how can this ever help people see
if it doesn't have any kind of camera or
sensing it it's just a display it's just
going to show me stock quotes and well I
smashed into walls when I'm walking
around you know I said the fundamental
purpose of eyeglasses to help people see
and I said imagine a wristwatch that
could not tell time when that deserves
the sledgehammer award and it sort of
told him your glasses deserves a
sledgehammer award oh because they can't
help people see yeah and then he put a
camera in there just a little camera off
to the side and I told him well you know
cameras off to one side I did that in
1978 that made me throw up you know
because it's dizzy it's disorienting -
yes I taking out and placed over to
one's right right and and then his
company got bought up by Google and they
called it Google glass
oh my goodness and it's funny how people
say oh it's that Google glass and I say
well this is like built before Google
even existed yeah but you can see
there's kind of a lineage maybe
archaeological yeah you can kind of DNA
that's just one piece that goes all the
way around with no hinges piece of metal
frame you know right and and so it's
just kind of interesting but the
difference is that in some sense the gue
glass as we call it is kind of a bad
copy of this like this it's interesting
because when you look in my eye you see
a reflection of this camera in the
mirror and it sort of looks like I have
a glass eye you know okay and so people
people call this the eye glass or the
glass eye are just glass for short so
people used to call this glass and it's
funny Google use the same term they call
it glass but theirs isn't really glass
because it doesn't give you the glass
eye effect because the eye itself is not
the camera and I think what I saw
happening over and over again is a lot
of my inventions were misunderstood or
understood in kind of a shallow
superficial way and and so I felt sort
of disappointed that the industry I I
realized I could not just be an academic
and invent these things and expect
industry to do it right and so you
started your own so then I said am I
gonna start - we got to start our own
company so I got together and my
students and we started this this brain
computer interface company interacts on
started and looking in the back of my
house in the back room there and then
expanded to the whole main floor and
okay
I've got a house and kind of a
commercial mixed residential area so
it's kind of an industrial building and
it works as a business oh it's kind of
my incubator so our entrepreneurial
pursuits well what's your ultimate
fantasy as far as the oh your life's
work what would you love to see happen
I guess I'd like to see I'd like to see
I'd like to see things done right I'd
like to see technologies I like the I
Triple E slogan I really like to live by
the I Triple E slogan which is advancing
technology for humanity I figure that's
that's a that's a slogan we should all
embrace and what I think is missing is
the humanity and so what I've come up
was as something I call humanistic
intelligence which is intelligence
arising from the human being the
feedback loop of the computational
process you know sort of human and aloof
intelligence right because aside from
the technical sort of engineering part
you do you have a sort of a philosophy
behind your work yeah as well and can
you share a bit about oh god like yeah
the philosophy is that really the human
should be in the loop and what I think
it really comes down to is valence you
see surveillances when machines are
sensing us and what I see a lot of is
that machine sense us but they don't
reveal their own internal intent and
something as simple as a television for
example in the old days I could click
the switch on and immediately I knew it
was on up as on down as off now you got
a button that you push and sometimes
it's not even a button you just touch it
somewhere and it goes off so I touch it
and there's a bit of a delay so then I
touched it again and maybe we have
turned off and then back on again and
everything is very slow about delaying
giving its feedback so these systems are
all sluggish in terms of their response
and I call that sousveillance when we
can see and understand our world so
surveillance is when something
understands season understands us and
sousveillance is when we see and
understand now as part of sousveillance
also involved what you might well I'm
just gonna call like countermeasures
that is you filming the people filming
you well I think a lot of people mistake
surveillance for counter Valence but
it's all okay because a person can be in
favor of both surveillance and
surveillance you can actually I like to
think of a valence compass like let's
say surveillance
is-is-is in one particular direction
like this the x-axis let's say and
sousveillance is maybe like the y-axis
and you can have a combination a person
in favor of both balances might be along
the diagonal a person more in favor of
sousveillance but still as someone in
favor of surveillance might be up this
way let's say you're walking down a dark
alley late at night if you're wearing a
camera might deter thieves but you might
also welcome additional surveillance
cameras under those circumstances and
there might be other times when you
don't want the surveillance so you can
have people who are in favor both
valances people who are opposed to both
Valence --is people who are in favor of
one but not the other
I call it Mik valence you know like when
you're in favor of surveillance but you
don't allow people to have their own
cameras you know like a McDonald's
restaurant where you know maybe they
have surveillance cameras watching you
but they don't allow you to use a camera
to translate the menu from one language
to another you know that kind of thinks
so you can have different valence 'iz
and so you think of a valence compass
maybe like the cardinal directions of
the valence compass and you can look at
it that way
but I think in order to have an
effective machine learning system with
human-in-the-loop you need both balances
and so if we're going to have a
technological universe that works
properly you need to have both valence
ha's if you only have one of the valence
as you've broken the loop because for
example oftentimes we're since the TV
has a camera at watching us recognising
your hand gestures but it's rather slow
to reveal its internal state yeah I like
your idea of a spectrum of a graph along
which people you know can choose their
own spots because for example in in the
web but there's very ambiguous people
share information on social media that
they would never share with the
government or you know other
institutions there's a great saying I
don't know who said it but maybe you've
heard of it where basically something
like Orwell got it wrong what he
couldn't what he didn't predict is that
we would buy the cameras ourselves and
be disappointed that no one was watching
yes so it's so true because you see it's
a matter of choice
you know if you think of you know it all
of these things come down to a violation
of personal space versus choice like if
there's a lot of things that we would we
would do to ourselves happily or allow
others to do to us by choice that we'd
object to if they were done forcibly you
know even simple things like you might
you might go to you might go for a swim
and be prepared to take your clothes off
and have a shower and not think anything
of it but if somebody stripped you down
to check for weapons or whatever you'd
be really upset and filing a lawsuit
against them right so a lot of things
that are done by choice it's really a
matter of self determination and mastery
over own destiny right that's really
important I think yeah interestingly
report just came out on the use of
police body cams showing that they'd
they don't seem to appear they don't
appear to be changing the behavior very
much which is I guess a good thing maybe
there wasn't much just record in the
first place uh-huh
or they've all of a sudden gone on their
best behavior and which doesn't seem
statistically likely but that's another
example of bringing cameras more and
more into the daily life of our citizens
you know yeah and I think really in
terms of machine learning which is
really where my focus is we need to
think about a new kind of intelligence
that is take something simple like a
television you see in the old days I
would plug my TV in this TV screen or
the BNC connector I'd connected and
immediately I would see if the camera
was connected to it say I've connected a
camera to a television or I'm connecting
my computer to a TV display I plug it in
within less than a sixtieth of a second
I know exactly even one millisecond I
can see a little flicker when I plug it
in so I know right away that I've
connected it but with something like
HDMI when you plug it in it goes into
this long negotiating process yes so
I've got like three different HDMI
connectors on my computer and four
different HDMI inputs on my TV
I'm not sure which one to connect so I
plug the first one in then I go to the
next one I try all 12 permutations and
none of them work well the thing is I
didn't wait long enough yes when I
plugged in I plugged it in and then
figure out it's probably not working I
better unplug it and try a different one
what you have to do is plug it in and
wait a really long time for it to show
you that it's worked and then try the
next one and wait a really long time now
that's only 12 permutations but what if
you have three cables and you're not
sure which one's working that's now 36
permutations yes and what if the cable
is a little loose and you gotta wiggle
it you see in the old days you would
wiggle the cable and immediately see
that there's a little blip there on the
screen telling you that it's the right
thing to do yes but now you wiggle the
cable it doesn't it waits a long time
you see and so what we're seeing is what
I what I would say is that feedback
delayed is feedback denied well some
things just should not have a
microprocessor well I'd like that way
don't it shouldn't have a mica process
whether it has a microprocessor or not
isn't is is the means but I'm talking
about the principle yeah and the
principle is that feedback delayed is
feedback denied we should say
immediately what the effect is as a joke
I put a light switch in my office push
on push off and I wrote above a digital
light switch and so I had a random three
to five-second delay when you push it
and then I had a random 10% packet loss
and then I in some versions I had people
would push it and then push it again and
would say hey you idiot you turned me on
and back off again yeah and so there's
this notion of valence these machines
are watching us evermore intricately
collecting more information about us but
revealing less about themselves right
and so something like HDMI is a curse
because it's so slow to reveal
information about itself and so I gave
HDMI the sledgehammer award which is
with a big anvil and gave it a smash the
connector and so there's something
there's there's certain things yeah as
you know Negroponte I wrote that great
book being digital and
which was pretty groundbreaking I
thought no the do you know his book
being digital yeah I read it when it
first came out and I wrote a response to
it calling on digital did you you did
you like it or not like it ah I love
nature panties original work but would
remind me of is that everything that was
good is what was analog including simple
wires are now digital and you know like
the little lightning cable even has a
micro a little chip inside it what I the
thing that bothered me though about
being digital is that it's not whether
it's digital or analog whether the word
length is finite or infinite in being
undal I wrote a paper called being undid
util HDR is kind of using digital
cameras to be on digital to recover the
original continuous analog spirit of the
world it's not about whether it has
finite word length you know that's not
the issue the issue is really about
being connected and so if you can
underlie unlock the underlying analog
continuous signal of eight chdr get the
full dynamic range then that's really
what you want not a quantized version of
it so quantization is not in my mind the
the thing you want in fact the digital
Ness is the undesirable attribute what
we'd love to do is be be undid leakin
ected continuously fluidly connected we
didn't have the old phone system the old
analog phone system switch circuit both
system that was a pretty awesome
probably the largest technical system
ever built yeah all analog and you know
switch simple switches and so on in yeah
yeah anyway is there anything else you'd
like to to chat about today about your
work or your your thoughts about your
work over the past few decades yeah I
guess
yeah you know now I'm teaching this
course huh
now I'm teaching this course call I call
it von trapp ownership invention and
entrepreneurship and what I want to do
is continue to attract really bright
students and Cole and gent file patents
together create companies start things I
think the idea of an vaunt Renisha
taking inventions taking ideas the idea
of an vaunt Renisha is to take ideas
from the idea stage into product
development and forward you know being
able to take things from an initial idea
into a product I think makes a lot of
sense in there so in in many ways I want
to kind of bring these these these
things to the world that's that's great
that it's much easier to to be a
hobbyist nowaday well it's easier and
it's harder on the one hand we have
surface-mount which is impossible to use
for people with somewhat shaky hands or
just poor eyesight whatever as you get
older you know it gets more challenging
and then but on the other hand you have
PCB manufacturing shops that'll do three
circuit boards for you for 50 bucks and
yeah two-sided and drilled and solder
mask in everything so it's kind of an
exciting time to be doing what you're
doing and things I think it's an
exciting exciting time it's more
difficult for the individual now for the
individual hobbyist it's more difficult
but for the connected hobbyist
collective it's much simpler so you know
if you have a small collective and this
is where I think I can really serve
hopefully as a role model and and help
people I want to much of much of what we
do is is is from you know there's really
bright collaborators like all the people
who have collaborated with me I really
reach out to you know
people we've co-authored papers together
[Music]
much of the people I've collaborated
with they're really wonderful you know
we've co-authored papers together done
things together and this is really where
I think the future is for the individual
hobbyist it's a lot tougher now because
everything's all kind of larger at scale
but I think for the small collective
medium size to small to medium sized
collective the opportunities are more
than they ever were because you can get
circuit boards made so cheaply and
easily you can have things fabricated 3d
printed so for the individual it's
harder to understand the world but once
you do understand a little bit of it
it's a lot easier to bring your vision
to reality like what would kids for
example these days if they want they we
don't have any old vacuum tube TV sets
around anymore so how would they learn
how what advice would you give to a
young person that's say 10 or 12 and is
sort of interested in electronics in you
know I would say the same advice that I
would think of before is I think
nowadays a lot of people turn to
software without understanding how
anything works you know we say those
people have gone soft you know they've
they've lost touch with any fundamentals
and I think that's a big mistake I think
that you you you people should learn try
to learn as much as they can about math
and physics fundamentals of things and
that's what I try to teach with is
phenomenological real realities to teach
how things work fundamental concepts in
my courses I try to teach fundamentals
of how things work you can always learn
software and add that layer on top of
everything but it's really important to
have the foundation to understand why
these things are right so your advice is
for them to stick to the basic sciences
and math and yeah math and physics worry
about programming later yeah don't go
soft yeah
spoken like a true hardware engineer ok
well thanks so much to Steve we really
appreciate it - ok thank you