At the end of last year, the American magazine “New Republic” named Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg “villain of the year”. The concept of a metaverse in 2009 is completely disregarded for what people really want to do in a non-virtual life, let alone in a virtual one.”

As we all know, Europeans and Americans hate Mark Zuckerberg. Hate his robot-like appearance, hate that he is a billionaire at a young age, hate Facebook’s control of the media, hate that Meta burns tens of billions of dollars a year in pursuit of the ethereal metaverse – even the VR that benefits from it Users and practitioners don’t have a good impression of Zuckerberg.

In the eyes of geeks who believe in technology, Zuckerberg is a speculative businessman full of copper smell, especially when he chose to take the lightweight route in 2019, making VR all-in-one machines, metaverse , and Oculus represented by Carmack. This skepticism also peaked when the technocrats were at odds. This is also why Zuckerberg posted a simple metaverse selfie some time ago, which caused a tsunami of ridicule in Europe and the United States.

You can question the success of Meta’s metaverse , but Zuckerberg, who spends $10 billion a year in “tuition”, can’t deny that he is still standing at the top of the industry today, with views overlooking VR / AR and The clearest view of the metaverse.

Perhaps to save his “hand slip”, perhaps to warm up the upcoming Quest 2 Pro, Zuckerberg recently visited the most popular podcast in the United States “The Logan Experience Show”, and UFC commentator Joe Luo Root had a conversation that lasted more than two hours.

In this podcast episode, Zuckerberg talks about key issues in the new Quest, VR / AR future technology roadmap, metaverse , neural interface, VR social, and VR office, etc., and talks about his current situation and views in detail. Unlike public relations occasions such as press conferences, Zuckerberg talked a lot about this conversation with Rogan.

The following is an excerpt from Joe Rogan’s conversation with Zuckerberg, compiled and organized by Geek Park.

 

 

 

01 “What we are doing is increasing the sense of presence step by step”

 

Joe Rogan: Your new Oculus is awesome and impressive. 

Zuckerberg: Yes, in October. We’ll be discussing it at the upcoming Connect Conference, and I’m very excited about that.

Joe Rogan: It was so funny when I put it on, I had an avatar in front of me and it was an alien woman. When I move my mouth, the Alien moves hers. When I moved my eyes from side to side, she followed my eyes. When I make an angry face, she also looks angry… Incredible. You can see the imitation process, it’s directly imitating humans in a creepy way, but it’s cool.

Zuckerberg: To me, these things are all about helping people connect. It’s just me starting to think, what is the ultimate expression of people using technology to feel each other’s presence? When it’s not a phone and it’s not a computer.

Like how do you get this sense of being there, like you’re with another human being, which to me is what virtual reality, and ultimately augmented reality, is going to achieve. You just have to run the technology roadmap over the next decade, unlocking it step by step. And for the next device coming out in October, there are some big features that, like you said, are essentially about social present.

There’s some sort of eye-contact capability in the new version of virtual reality that lets your face be tracked so your avatar isn’t just something static. If you smile, if you frown, or if you pout, whatever your expression is actually translates to your avatar in real time. Like when people stay together, there is more body language than verbal communication.

Joe Rogan: You’re absolutely right about face tracking. For example, if you’re on a FaceTime call, you can’t see the other person’s eyes. If you’re looking at the camera of your phone, you’re only looking up; if you’re looking down at a face on the screen, you’re not making eye contact. But with an avatar in VR , real eye contact can be recreated.

Zuckerberg: Yeah, it’s going to be the first time that’s actually done. Today, with technology we can make voice calls and video calls, which is great. Because if you can’t be with someone right now, it’s good to be able to see their face. But when you’re on a video call, you don’t feel like you’re really with the other person, even if you have a signal to get information and see their faces.

Throughout the process, you’re trying to convince your brain that you’re really with them, but your brain knows: on a deeper dimension, you’re not actually with each other, you’re just getting some Information such as who they are and what they look like.

Virtual reality, I think, essentially solves this: convince the brain that “it” is really there, even though you’re not there. Doing this requires solving a lot of conscious problems, and every time we make a new version, we’re just trying to break down one barrier after another.

The obvious first hurdle is having a headset that can look around. What needs to be done for this? Your eyes refresh basically every five milliseconds. So if you turn your head and the image doesn’t refresh to where you’re looking within five milliseconds, there’s a huge mismatch between your visual system and your vestibular system and the sense of balance in your ears, and people feel feeling unwell.

And then we got hands, and this thing was fun. At first we wanted to show the whole arm because it was a little weird just to see your hand. But in fact, your brain is perfectly willing to see your hand without the long arms, because it’s your hands that try to manipulate things. Also, if our frame insertion technique flips the arm position out of position, you’ll feel like: ah, my elbow is broken, and this is going to go wrong.

So even though only a limited number of signals are shown, they are getting better and better at simulating reality. All that needs to be done next is to increase the signal over time.

In previous versions, eye contact was all just AI simulated, and we actually don’t know when you guys have eye contact because we didn’t track the eyes. Now in this version, we want to simulate a lot of different signals going forward. You’ll be able to have real facial expressions and map directly to your avatar.

In general, there’s this roadmap: it’s about how you deliver this real presence, as if you were with another person, no matter where you were actually.

Joe Rogan: It’s very impressive. The way [the headset] is tracked is not by putting the tracker on the body, but do you think that will be the case eventually? Will it be like a player has to wear a haptic feedback suit to enter the game? That way, you’ll be completely there. Or do you think it’s now possible to accurately mimic your body’s movements without requiring you to wear anything?

Zuckerberg: I ​​think there is an opportunity to wear gear to further enhance the experience. We’ve done these experiments with haptic gloves, and if you touch an object in a digital world, like throwing a ball from one hand to the other, you can physically feel the ball in your hand. It’s cool, but I wanted to design it in a way that you don’t need gloves.

So there are two main modes of tracking today, one of them is inside-out tracking, you’re wearing the headset and it’s tracking your movements, your arms, and eventually it’s tracking with an AI model Your leg. The biggest advantage of this mode is that you can do it all with just the headset, without having to have a lot of different devices or even a controller. At the same time, headsets will become smaller and more portable. You don’t want to have 10 parts in one unit.

Maybe sometimes you want to have that super immersive experience, or you want to have that experience at home, but I think in the end people just want to have products that can be easily carried anywhere, whether it’s on a plane or in the office work, or go to a coffee shop or something. For that, you really only want to make it work on one device, so preferably just a pair of glasses or something like that.

VR and AR are two different development paths, but they are clearly fundamentally interconnected and together make up virtual reality. So to go ahead and build Quest 2 today, it’s pretty popular right now, and it’s well done. And, I think the launch of the new version will be a considerable improvement.

 

Oculus Quest 2 | Meta

 

We’ve looked at a lot of new technology to integrate into it, but at the same time, it’s built on decades of advanced technology and display technology, including technology from TVs, laptops, and cell phones. Some of these display technologies are already building on the innovations of the past few decades.

AR is a very different beast because what you want is really not a headset, you want a pair of glasses that look normal. It’s not as simple as a product wireframe, because you need to put some electronics in it. Basically you need a computer, a speaker, a microphone, batteries and a laser projector in it, and then a monitor.

We and many people are looking at a technology called optical waveguides, which is totally different from a screen because it’s a special screen, and when you’re looking at something, you’re basically looking at all the pixels on the screen. The waveguide is different in that it’s actually thin enough to be transparent, so you can see the world through it, and then it’ll display a hologram and be able to image it placed in different depth-of-field spaces.

 

02 AR will make movies and games not limited to rectangular screens

 

Joe Rogan: As a technology, what is an optical waveguide? 

Zuckerberg: They can be made of different substances, different substrates like plastic, glass. At the same time, they are etched or printed in different ways, and there is still a big debate here. There is a lot of research going on right now: which method can create a waveguide with the right properties? Because the hope is to provide a wide enough field of view for augmented reality.

So you can imagine that five years from now we will have this conversation. I’m not here, and the hologram Mark Zuckerberg is here when you put our glasses on.

It’s not just working in a holographic fashion, but the presence that all these different dimensions bring. Like, if you want to play poker remotely, we can play holograms, I deal a hologram deck, you wear glasses, you can physically pick up hologram poker, and then have a poker night where we friends are It’s actually kind of crazy to be around your physical space, only some of them are here in the form of holograms.

One thought experiment I like to do is: think about how little of the physical things we have in the world that really need a physical presence in physical space?

Obviously, something like a chair needs to be in the form of an actual object, but most entertainment things, not just cards, but games, most media, television, probably don’t need entities. It’s like an app, put the hologram in there as a TV, and we put on the glasses and watch whatever you want.

These things are now confined to rectangular screens because there are a lot of constraints, like the physics of production, but in the future, there will be some high school students or college students who will develop apps and they will be crazy, crazy things will be created come out. So you end up building something that does everything. They are glasses.

Joe Rogan: So are these glasses in production or in development right now? Like this technology you’re talking about, you can see things that don’t exist, where you look at maps, watch videos, all on a little computer in a glasses frame. Do they exist now?

Zuckerberg: I ​​think in the next three to five years, there will be something that looks like a full version. The ultimate AR experience is like, you have a pair of normal-looking glasses that present holograms so you can interact with people anytime, anywhere. But it will also be very expensive at first, and it will take a while to get down to the hundreds of dollars.

But if you relax some constraints first, like form factor, you’ll start seeing some versions. There’s a headset that doesn’t require normal-looking glasses, and that’s the new device coming in October that brings mixed reality to virtual reality.

Mixed reality is when you see the physical world around you in the context of virtual reality, and it doesn’t happen through waveguides, but through a camera on the device that captures the world and then converts it into a stereoscopic image in real time. For 3D imaging, because we have two eyes, the two eyes see slightly different (field of view and image), the computer renders them together, and then you can overlay digitized objects on top.

For example, when I do fencing, my people and swords are digital virtual versions, otherwise all I can see is the hall. So you can see those AR experiences that are starting to be built, and the VR / AR experience takes precedence over the form factor requirements of the headset (lightweight). This is one of the directions the industry is exploring.

The other direction is that the headset form factor has to be a priority because of wanting to have something that looks like regular glasses. (And then to think) What is the most advanced technology we can fit in a pair of ordinary glasses today? Kind of like starting from the side.

On the smart glasses side, we’re partnering with Ray-Ban, and they’re going to be the best-selling smart glasses ever. We’ll keep working on new versions, but basically, you get a pair of smart glasses that look like the Ray-Ban Voyager. Now, it has a phone, a speaker, and the ability to take photos and videos; with voice commands, you can post these to Instagram.

 

Ray-Ban Traveler | Meta

 

Joe Rogan: What’s the quality of the pictures taken with these things? 

Zuckerberg: Very good. If I’m not mistaken about the specs, it’s not as good as today’s rear cameras, which look like front-facing cameras. It can be fitted to the corners of glasses.

Joe Rogan: Will there be privacy issues if people start shooting with it?

Zuckerberg: Yeah, so we did the design, it had the lights on it, it was there at all times, and I think that’s actually a very important part of that.

Joe Rogan: So can you put a piece of tape on the lamp?

Zuckerberg: In theory it should be possible.

Joe Rogan: So that little thing in the corner is a lamp?

Zuckerberg: No, that’s the Lastolite flashing, it’s a very active indicator, and if you put a piece of tape on it, it might interfere with the camera.

Joe Rogan: Are these Voyager smart glasses the same size as regular Voyager glasses? Or will there be thicker frames?

Zuckerberg: Slightly thicker, but about the same weight. The reason we work with Ray-Ban is because they know a lot about eyewear design and are very keen, which is not our specialty, and I learned a lot working with them. In terms of constraints, for example, they know how big it can actually be without being too heavy and uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time. Ray-Ban is a great company, the collaboration so far has been great, looking forward to developing more with them.

Generally speaking, there are two technical routes. Add as many features as you can, but in a device that’s bigger than you want; or, every year or two, add more tech to the form factor you want to make it a better the design of. Eventually, these things will converge and you’ll get both functionality and form factor, but it’s still a bit expensive for a while, and then after a few years of fast-moving, it’s going to be mainstream.

But even today’s VR is doing well. We won’t release exact sales numbers, but it’s on the same scale as Xbox, Playstation, or other similar platforms.

When we started doing it, gaming was the first scene in VR . But soon, VR will add different scenarios. Because the main thing people do, is actually communicate, which is how we get meaning in our lives – interacting with others, so that’s definitely going to happen in VR. If you look at the top apps and VR out there right now, most of them are basically social metaverses where you can hang out with friends in an app, not centered on any particular game.

From the beginning of the game, the VR scene is still evolving, and it will become a huge social platform to soak in with friends and be immersive. These scenes are crazy and happen sooner than I thought.

An important scenario is fitness, and VR is like the first physical computer platforms for fitness. When you’re on a computer, you don’t like to move around; when you’re on a phone, you might be able to move around, but it’s a little awkward because you’re looking at a small screen. But things like VR/ AR are really designed so that you can move around, do things, and interact with the world, which is really important to me. I hate sitting at the desk, it makes me feel lethargic and wastes my day.

In this regard, there are already several companies with some great content, such as Peloton ‘s experience built specifically for VR . Peloton sells you a bike or treadmill, then you buy a subscription and you get a class with a real experience. There are also several companies doing aerobics, dance, boxing classes. But you don’t need to buy a bike, you just need your Quest headset.

Once you have a headset, you can subscribe to classes from these companies to do different things, exercise, and I think that’s pretty cool and wild. We all know these things are bound to happen in the long run, but it’s happening now, faster than I thought, which is really cool.

 

03 The end of VR doesn’t have to be The Matrix

 

Joe Rogan: If you do boxing, you immediately realize it’s a really good physical workout. When the virtual boxer comes up to you and throws you in the ring, you move your head, you get a very high heart rate, it burns a lot of energy, and it’s very good cardio. And, you find your feet hurt because you keep spinning and moving, changing positions, trying to get out of your fist. And as you continue to unlock higher levels, some games like opponents get tougher, and the experience is exciting and fun. When you finally leave the game, you’re really exhausted, and it’s a really good workout. 

Zuckerberg: Yes. That’s the essence of the whole platform, and one of the reasons I love it. But those aren’t even trying to be fitness apps, they just happen to be exercise programs.

Joe Rogan: It’s really interesting that VR can have two people having a fencing match tonight. In a virtual fencing match, you’re facing one direction, about 30 feet away, and I’m facing the other, and we’re not even facing each other. But it doesn’t matter. You are in Bangladesh, I am in Rome, we can still play together. But can VR enable boxing to do that?

Zuckerberg: The fencing demo was made by our internal team because we haven’t released a new device yet. So, to make the hardware work, we developed this demo ourselves.

However, boxing games are made by other game developers, different developers, and I’m not sure if any of them support multiplayer. All I’ve played are the single-player formats, which really make boxing fights more exciting, and I really like Creed (note: a boxing VR game). I think they can do multiplayer, and there’s nothing stopping them from doing it. So I guess over time they will add this feature.

Joe Rogan: It seems like a smart move. If we talk about martial arts like muay thai and so on, i think jiu jitsu would be a real problem because you have to have something physically to resist. But if you can want to do a muay thai mod, the only problem to solve is that objects change when you touch them. Objects change with the person’s position and movement. You may or may not escape. Boxing is pretty good at this by comparison, it’s probably the best fighting sport in virtual reality because you don’t even have to hit anything to feel like you’re being punched and your screen will light up like you It feels like I’ve been hit.

Zuckerberg: Yeah, it’s easier to make a VR game that throws a fist . In jiu-jitsu, if you don’t have a special mat or something, it’s actually very difficult to simulate rolling or other movements and add the real weight of the human body.

Joe Rogan: Whether or not you imagine one day what your body actually feels like playing a game will be irrelevant because everything happens in your head. Whether it’s haptic feedback or other types of input, even if there are no real objects, the body feels the same as real existence, just like “The Matrix”. Will this be the final direction?

Zuckerberg: I ​​don’t know. But I think a lot of our experiences are based on our bodies, not just our minds.

There is indeed a philosophical thought that human beings exist only for the brain (I think therefore I am). But I don’t agree at all, I don’t know how you perceive things, but I feel like my vitality and emotions, and the way I interact with the world, are based on the body. It might be possible to simulate the real world through your brain over time, but I don’t believe it’s just the brain at work, I think the body is equally important in all experiences.

 

Movie “The Matrix”

 

Joe Rogan: I agree. But I’m also thinking, if technology goes further, more immersive, more convincing, the “uncanny valley” is connected, and all of a sudden you have a real-life experience, whether it’s through some kind of Isn’t neural linking or other new technologies to trick the brain into actual experience the way of the future?

You can have experience without experiencing it, it’s not that it negates the beauty of real experience, it’s not that we don’t have real experience anymore, but if you want to have real experience, go to another world, we can wear Go there with Oculus. You can have a very realistic 3D mirror image, which is pretty cool. Like you think that eventually through the development of technology, it is possible to make the conversation we have today, it doesn’t make any difference whether we are in the same room or not.

Zuckerberg: It’s interesting to speculate on the extreme state of development of a thing. But I think a more reasonable way of thinking about technological evolution is that some things are easier to imitate or replace than others. Like the VR fitness we talked about earlier, boxing content can do well right now. And muay thai and jiu-jitsu, maybe one day we can simulate it in VR, but it will be difficult because you need to eliminate all kinds of resistance factors.

So, I think the way this technology progresses is to be able to continue to do more things well; at the same time, other technologies or other things in the world are progressing, and no one can do it all.

Maybe it’s just because I’m trying to develop these things every day, I’m thinking about some achievable, good experiences. It’s certainly not a bad thing to jump to such a good point in one go, but those ideas are way ahead of where we actually are today. I’m in the trenches every day, trying to make it happen early.

 

04 The possibility of VR office and VR social interaction

 

Joe Rogan: Yeah, but looking at where it’s going in the long run, it’s going to be more immersive, better, more convincing, and that’s a real argument for simulation theory. If there are so many civilizations in the universe, and they are all so advanced, then eventually a simulated world must be created. This seems to be happening if humans survive another 100,000 years. 

Zuckerberg: Yeah, I think the question is how realistic and how well it can be done. To me, it’s like the Holy Grail, building something that can create a sense of human presence.

It’s like I’ve spent nearly 20 years building social software that allows you to share your experiences no matter how limited your computing power is. What started out in the form of text, became in the form of photos with a smartphone and a camera. Now that the mobile web is good enough, more content is starting to be shared in the form of video. As far as I’m concerned, an immersive experience would obviously be the next step. Being able to feel the presence of you when you are with other people unlocks many different values, such as social, recreational, professional.

Some economists believe that economic opportunities and class mobility are limited, which is related to your region, and different places will have different opportunities. But imagine it would be great if you didn’t have to move to some city with different values ​​than you to get all the economic opportunities. So in the future, you can use AR , VR to teleport to the office in the morning, and then appear in the form of a hologram, which will be very intimate. For many, it will unlock a wealth of economic opportunity.

Is it possible to be 100% as good as being there in person? Probably not, but it still creates a lot of value. Like when we were discussing doing this talk show, we had a conversation on the phone, and I didn’t fly to Austin to discuss whether to have this conversation.

So no matter the level of emulation, it brings a lot of value. You’ll never be able to do everything in person, but we’ll be doing it more and more in VR , gaming or hanging out today, work in the next few years. The work scene will gradually approach the asymptote of real experience, you can teleport in, appear as a hologram, work remotely; and the body can live anywhere you want, with your family, wherever they live where. That’s going to be great, and I think we’ll do well.

Joe Rogan: This creates real problems for commercial real estate. Because if that experience really became as good as having a phone in your pocket and being able to make calls, there wouldn’t be as many offices. I probably don’t want to go to the office anymore when I can teleport to work.

Zuckerberg: Probably. While I think the presence of being in a physical space with friends is important, the way people work has changed dramatically over the past few years. I meet people in person almost every day, but at the same time, I probably have more meetings at home than I used to.

Joe Rogan: I think so too. There’s really a lot of resistance right now about people going to the office instead of working from home, and people would rather work from home. Why do you have to be in the building to get work done when you can use an internet connection and conduct video conferences?

Zuckerberg: Yes. I agree. Our company is actually quite avant-garde when it comes to telecommuting, especially certain types of jobs, like software engineering. You can be in a different place and do a good job at the same time. Also, if you’re an engineer, sometimes it’s best not to be in the office because then people won’t bother you. You can have a full five hours to focus on solving a problem.

Like doing something, I would be in a state of concentration, and at this point, my wife would ask me some daily questions. Then I lost my focus, but from her point of view, even God was no big deal.

So I do think that at some point, enabling people to work remotely is actually useful for a lot of things, especially in the long run, but I also think we need to find a balance between remote work and offline work.

Joe Rogan: If my wife was talking and I happened to think of a joke, I would run away from my wife and signal her to understand. I was writing and she came in and interrupted, and it was over. So, in some ways, you have to have a really quiet and safe place. And I think for a lot of people, the pain in life would be so much better if you could eliminate wasted commute time and all that with AR , VR .

Zuckerberg: Yes. Over the past few years, the COVID-19 pandemic has made me rethink the way I work. I think reducing commuting is one of the great things to do with efficiency, but it’s also nice to be able to live in a different place.

I spent a lot of time in Hawaii and I really enjoyed surfing and laying on hydrofoils, I would wake up in the morning to do these, refreshed, and then have a full day of meetings. But that’s obviously not something I can do in Palo Alto. I have a very positive attitude towards all of this.

I think if you can give people the ability to be “present”, to work remotely, or to teleport to another place again, to be present and present as a hologram, that “flow state” would be very valuable. But it cannot replace everything.

One of the things I find most useful about larger meetings isn’t actually the meeting itself, but the opportunity to catch up with people before and after the meeting. Being able to teleport in and out is efficient, but has the downside that you might miss some leisurely breaks in the hallway or elsewhere. But overall, I still think it creates crazy efficiency.

Joe Rogan: Yeah, I think people will still crave real-world experiences, like I do sitcoms, and obviously in order to get that experience you have to be there, and being in a physical space with people is fun a part of.

I can imagine technology evolving to the point where you can create a virtual comedy club where you’ll see all the different people in the room wearing headsets, like doing stand-up comedy on Zoom during the pandemic, but that sucks, Because there is no audience, like public speaking, there is no feedback.

In contrast, there are some really great podcasts, like shows like Bill Burr, that just talk to himself and rant about life and other things that work so well that he doesn’t necessarily need someone to echo it. But different things are different, like comedy, no audience is bad.

Zuckerberg: Yes. In fact, I’ve had this experience at least once. So we made the Horizon social platform where people can build the world.

In it, people built something called the Soapstone Comedy Club in it. This is actually a very moving story I’ve heard of people using virtual reality.

It’s really sad that this woman has lost her son. And comedy is a very important outlet for her. But in a real club, performing in front of people would give her social anxiety. So, she started doing it at the soapstone comedy club. At the same time, thanks to the presence that virtual reality provides, she feels like she is with those in the virtual space. For her, the experience was a creative outlet to help her overcome her grief, but sharing such extreme emotional experiences may not have made her comfortable in offline comedy clubs.

Joe Rogan: My friend Brian Redban made something called Virtual Redban in Oculus. He logs in at the same time with a group of friends, walks into a room together, and hangs out and plays in it together. It’s really fun to have an online community where you go to a place, meet each other, talk to each other and hear each other’s voices.

The Avatar you see inside moves like the Alien you showed me today, and it looks very real. It’s an animation, and I would compare it to Avatar in the movie Avatar. Inside is like going to the world of the Na’vi people in the movie. On top of many technologies, great progress has indeed been made, and it is more realistic. I can imagine a lot of people wanting to be a penguin today, going to this restaurant, hanging out, hanging out with a bunch of penguin guys, it’s so exciting.

 

The movie “Avatar” 

 

Zuckerberg: That’s the part where it’s a little psychedelic. The experience of some scenes is more real than others because the way our memory works is based on space. When I leave here today, I will remember that you are across from me, and there is symmetry, I am across from you, and we have a shared memory of the space of this place.

But the headset might not work that way. If you’re speaking from that direction, spatial audio builds a spatial model of things in a way that’s how we make memories. So if you use Zoom to chat, you totally screw it up because every meeting you have looks the same and there is no symmetry. So if you’re in the top left corner of my screen box, it doesn’t mean I’m in the same place as you, in fact, we don’t have any sense of shared space.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, if I had a Zoom call for a day, everything would get mixed up and it would be hard for me to remember what was being said in what meeting.

然而，如果你进入虚拟现实，你有一个化身，那么随着计算能力变得越来越好，它会随时间变得越来越好。我并不相信：相比更具表现力的化身，人们会更喜欢哪怕有照片般逼真的化身。这是一个完全独立的切线，我们可以往下走。你显然会希望两者都有，既逼真又具有表现力的化身。

如果你坐在那里，有人是企鹅，或者你的朋友是卡通人物，但是你们围坐在桌子旁，有一种共同的空间感，你的朋友在你的右边，你在他们的左边，当他们说话时，你听到声音从那个方向传来。事实上，你记得这种空间感，就像在物理空间一样。

我在推进所有这些细节。对我来说，这是一些最令人兴奋的工作，因为我觉得在手机上建立社交体验在某些方面受到了限制，而我们有能力定义下一个平台将是什么，让它们打破适用于电脑、手机的这些奇怪条框限制，因为这些条框不是为通信和交互而设计的，而是为某种工作和某些计算工作负载而设计的。

所以我正在尝试做的很多事情是，用一种真正以人为中心的方式设计下一个计算平台。如果你以我们大脑的运行方式来处理外部世界、思考事物和做重要的事情，你不会建立一个旨在运行App 的平台。

你会把它建立在这样的基础上：如何与周围人互动的基本单元，你如何表达自己，你希望能够有一个化身，一种你身份的表达，能够在一系列不同的经历之间跳跃，而不是让一切都如此孤立。

这就像是一个从头开始的尝试，建立这一切是非常疯狂的，因为这涉及的领域之多和技术之难令人难以置信，我经常受到批评，因为我们在这方面投入了大量资金，仅仅过去的一年，我们就在所有这些不同的研究梦想上花费100 多亿美元，但这种梦想的广度极其广。

化身（avatar）的所有工作，你如何表达自己，如何建立世界，然后是所有虚拟现实的东西。一起致力于今年的设备和明年的设备，以及之后的设备，还有雷朋眼镜，我们有下一个版本。同时我们也有研究走向完整虚拟现实的路径，我们甚至已经到了神经界面，但是我们肯定要在这上花一些时间。

正是如此广泛的技术都建立起来，才能基本上建立和提供一种真正的在场感。让你感觉和身处不同空间的人仿佛待在一起。我认为这是世界上最神奇的事情。

 

05脑机会实现吗

 

 

乔·罗根：嗯，听起来就令人兴奋。你可以在丛林中拥有一间办公室，突然之间我们就一起召开这次会议，我们可以登上月球，我们可以到一个正在冒泡的火山，这一切很酷。我喜欢像你这样的人在做的这件事，这扩大了这种东西实现的可能性，但是对于神经接口，你有什么看法？比如，它在哪里？它要去哪里？我们现在在哪里？

扎克伯格：回到你对《黑客帝国》的评论，当人们想到神经接口或者任何接口时，我认为分离出来是很重要的。你给计算机的反馈，计算机给你的信息，你可以把这两个东西分开。

我实际上认为，这里最难的部分是拥有一台计算机，把信息直接给你的大脑，但这不是我们正在做的事情，Neural Link 的伊隆·马斯克在做，这是非常遥远的事情。也许它会在几十年内准备好。短期内，对于受伤的人来说，可能会有一些有趣的用例。但我认为，在未来10 年或15 年内，正常人可能不会想在大脑里安装什么。

 

脑机接口示意图| Neuralink

 

乔·罗根：我不想成为早期植入者。 

扎克伯格：对，你可能想要植入成熟版本的脑机芯片，而不是你需要每年升级你的大脑植入物，因为明年的版本更好。

我花了很多时间思考：如果有了AR眼镜，你将如何控制它？你当然可以控制任何计算设备，这是平台的基础，但你有很多不同的操控模式。

其中之一是语音，你可以和它说话，但这并不总是有效的。如果你在公共场所，或者你想保持谨慎，或者你不想惹恼周围的人，你不会大声口述一切。

第二种方法是用手。比如我打个响指，我们就会有一个象棋游戏或者扑克游戏。这是我们的棋盘，我用手移动一个棋子。这有点酷。但是，你不会像用手操纵东西一样走在人行道上。我的意思是，如果你能克服这种奇怪的感觉，就达到了基础阶段的水平。并且，大多数人的手都会累的，如果你像这样伸出你的手足够长的一段时间，最终你还是想要把手放下来。所以问题是，你如何做到：可以让你的想法给电脑下命令。

在这种情况下，眼镜不需要大声说话，也不需要挥舞你的手。对于一些场景，你不总是想要。所以我们正在做的研究，是基于它的输入。不是试图向你的大脑发送信号，而是试图让你的大脑可以与计算机通信。

我们拥有的路径是基于我们身体中所有这些额外的运动神经元。举个例子，如果你受伤了，你有神经可塑性，你可以重新连接做一些事情，比如找到一个不同的路径来发送信号，指挥你的手指或其他东西。从结果上来说，可以有很多不同的方式，让我们的大脑可以告诉手指移动。

我们已经单独优化了一些，我们加强了某些路径，使用了11 种运动神经元路径来做一件特定的事情。最终的结果，你可以在手腕上有一个设备，你的大脑可以与你的手交流。

你的手会以不常见的模式移动，然后腕带可以接收这些信号，并将它们转化为完全不同的东西，比如让一只虚拟的手在你面前移动。而你的物理手待在身体一侧。

你将来可以有这种体验：我们坐在一起聊天，你妻子发短信给你，它突然出现在你眼镜的角落里，你想回复她。但是你不想拿出手机，因为这有点不礼貌。你不用挪动手腕，只需要做一些微小的动作，甚至没有人知道你在做，就能够传递信息。

 

 

06元宇宙会让年轻人更加脱离现实？

 

 

乔·罗根：这似乎会造成很多分心。我的意思是，人们已经被他们的手机分心了，比如当人们收到短信时。你坐在那里和朋友在一起吃午饭但是没有交流，因为都在看手机。如果现在他们会一直看着这些AR眼镜，只是脑海里想着这些短信，你甚至都不会知道他们分心了。

扎克伯格：我不知道。但我觉得这对我可能是一个有趣的事情，对我很有用。我一直在Zoom 里，尤其是在Covid 的早期，对我来说，既能在Zoom 里视频会议，又能和更多的人聊天。或者说有些事情你不想对在场的每个人说，但是你想问某一个人，就像，嘿，你能展开讲讲你刚才说的，或者你不想在别人面前说的话吗？

这样的问题很多，因为我在公司有很多机密信息，我不会和每个人分享，但是我想得到某些人对事情的看法。如果我在开会，而且是线下办公室开会，我发现有时候我需要等到会议结束才能得到我想要的答案，而当我在Zoom 或虚拟现实工作室里进行虚拟会议时，你可以在开会的时候给人们发短信。所以我实际上认为这将释放人们之间沟通和表达的巨大效率。人们不必等待会议结束，就可以向别人发送信息。

当然，你说的这些对于智能眼镜也是一个问题。我们可能需要的是某种非常智能的，勿扰模式。举个例子，比如你正在做一些重要的事情，你觉得某些事情不应该打扰你，这其实是一个非常重要的AI问题。我认为未来AI 能够理解什么信息是应该通知你的，而不会像现在的「勿扰模式」这样黑白分明。

乔·罗根：也许是让某些人有优先权，比如如果你的妻子或家人试图联系你，他们可以通过，但是生意人不能通过。

但我担心其他问题。我的意思是，我不会让我的孩子远离社交媒体，因为我觉得社交媒体是他们生活的一部分，我不想让他们完全脱离。但我限制他们使用手机的时间，试着让他们不要沉迷于此。现在这些新事物让他们上瘾，让他们停下来吃饭都不容易，需要一遍一遍叫他们放下手机，停止和朋友拍照。

但放下手机其实还好，如果变成智能眼镜，那会更加困难，尤其是如果眼镜有社交媒体App。但智能眼镜也能提供某种好处，比如，可能会给你关于你拿起食物时卡路里含量的信息，告诉你这个食物很油，为了健康着想你不应该吃。

扎克伯格：是的。我认为这最终会达到平衡，希望我们的计算机和平台能帮助我们找到合理的平衡。就像你一直在说未来的脑机很酷，但我不确定我是否想用数字方式来实现它，我想在现实世界感受，我认为这是一个哲学问题。

我实际上认为你说的现实世界是物理世界，我认为有物理世界和数字世界，我认为它们的结合越来越多地成为现实世界。我们今天获取的信息，很多来自肉体体验以外，有的是通过数字方式，有的来自学习研究。而二者的比例可能会随着时间的推移而变化。

在未来的世界里，今天很多东西可能是物理的，比如我们的艺术品、雕塑和其他东西，也许在未来，它们不是物理的，也许它们只是全息图，因为随着时间的推移，你可以很容易地改变它们。

过去所有物质我们只与他们有物理层面的接触，很少有信息或数字覆盖。现在我认为它正在稳步增加。我认为这对我们来说可能会更健康，不是通过手机这个小窗口来展示我们所有的信息，这是我对AR的看法。对于数字技术是否会侵蚀现实，我可能更乐观，或者说我相信物理世界对我们在的意义。我是真的很关心如何取得二者的平衡。

乔·罗根：我认为平衡很重要，但我认为你是对的。我认为数字世界的景观不断增加，这是不可否认的，它现在是生活的一部分。随着技术的进步，它将成为生活中越来越重要的的一部分。但我不会说我的恐惧消失，我认为我们会有一天，人们会完全沉浸在一个非物质世界中，7X24 小时，我认为这就是Matrix（注：《黑客帝国》中的虚拟世界）。

这就是人们所担心的，随着技术的进步，尤其是有了某种神经接口，我们将到达一个我们不再真正存在的地方。你如何限制自己和孩子的社交媒体使用？你是怎么做到的？

扎克伯格：就我个人而言，因为在做很多事情，实际上一天中没有那么多时间。对于我的孩子，我没有时间去想那么多，因为他们都很小，一个六岁一个五岁。社交媒体是他们正在使用的东西。事实上，我希望他们将技术用于不同的事情。我教他们如何编码。我认为这就像是创造力的发泄渠道。

当我每天晚上和他们一起睡觉的时候，我试着尽可能结束我的会议，能给他们留出时间，问他们想做什么活动。是想看书还是想摔跤什么的。八月的时候，我的女儿和我说想做代码艺术，这是一种非常有趣的思考方式。她想让电脑创造艺术。无论如何，我认为这是我认为让他们接触到这种东西是有好处的。

但是我做了这些事情，并没有什么特别的地方。有很多关于幸福的研究表明，你是否积极参与其中很重要。你是在和一个人交往，还是在建立关系，还是只是在消费。如果你正在建立关系，那么这通常与许多长期利益和幸福有关，我们生活中的关系就是这样。

 

对我来说，这就像我认为随着时间的推移，吃东西通常会给人们带来幸福，但是如果你只是坐在那里消费东西，这不一定是坏事，但它通常与你积极参与或建立关系中获得的所有好处无关。

乔·罗根：可以在网上积极与人交往，建立数字关系，尤其是随着技术的进步，你实际上可以和某人的化身有一些有意义的经历。但这听起来很奇怪。

扎克伯格：所以，我只是想让它变得更好。从我的角度来看，这是心理问题。今天人们花了很多时间在屏幕上，基本上是电脑、手机和电视。我自己绝大多数时间都花在手机和电脑上，但我很惊讶的是，对美国人来说，他们花在屏幕上的时间几乎有一半是电视，很多人只是看有线电视或其他类似的东西。

当我们想到新的体验时，我实际上认为要做的第一件事就是干掉电视。当人们谈论担心花费的时间在不同社交产品上时，我认为要看看时间是从哪里来的。如果来自睡眠，这可能不太好。但如果它来自锻炼，我就不会那么高兴了。如果它来自电视，我对此没意见。

这实际上可能是对人类有益的，我们从消费状态转变为真正积极参与，潜在地建立关系，而不是把大量的时间花在看电视。所以在担心新产品越来越多消耗人们的时间之前，实际上只需要想想人们今天做的事情的组合变得更好。

我的目标是对于VR / AR这些下一代平台，它们将更加身临其境，希望它们会更有用，但我不一定希望人们花更多的时间在电脑上。我只是希望人们花在屏幕上的时间更好，今天很多时候你只是坐在那里消费一些东西。

 

 

乔·罗根：你一直是一个注重身体健康的人？我在Instagram 上关注你，我看到你在玩滑水和其他运动，这对你来说很好，对外界来说也是一个很好的信息。这个家伙非常忙碌，他的生活被科技淹没了，但他不断地做与身体相关的事情，锻炼身体，亲近大自然。

扎克伯格：是的，我认为这是我父母很早就对我强调的事情。他们在这方面给了我很大的压力。就像你要在学校表现出色，你要加入三支大学运动队之类的。我非常感激，他们没有告诉我必须做，然后我告诉我必须做哪些运动。但他们说，这很重要。我已经找到了平衡，尤其是当公司规模扩大，在某些方面变得更加紧张的时候。

这是我的一天，早上醒来，看着我的手机收到一百万条信息，发来的东西通常都不好，因为人们通常会把好消息亲口告诉我。就像每天醒来，就像肚子被打了一拳，然后就没事了。而我需要重置自己，能够有工作动力，而不是为此感到压力。

我该怎么做呢？基本上我会去我喜欢阅读我获取所有的信息，然后我去做一些身体上的运动，一两个小时，随着时间的推移重置自己。我过去经常跑步，因为可以在跑步的时候思考很多。但尤其是在过去的几年里，我真的很喜欢需要全神贯注的事情。

所以我刚才提到，在新冠疫情开始以后，我很长时间待在在夏威夷，我们家在那里有一个农场。在那里，我花了很多时间玩冲浪，冲浪的时候你必须一直保持专注，否则你会摔倒，被海浪压在身下。我体验过，这不是什么美妙的经历。

 

本文转自： https://www.geekpark.net/news/308306
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.