Welcome to the After-On Podcast. I'm Rob Reed, and I'm Tom Merritt. And this is a special

episode designed around the book, After-On. Each of these special episodes focuses on one

aspect of the science, tech, and social issues explored in the novel. Now, you don't have

to read After-On in order to learn from or enjoy these podcasts. That's because we

wait until the very end to discuss the book in detail and to really tie it to this week's

topic. That last section will make perfect sense if you're reading the novel, but if you're

not reading it, just tune out at that point. You can always come back if you decide to

read it later. And we'll warn you before we get to that part. But first, we have a lot

of things to talk about which should be interesting to everybody. Specifically, this week we're

talking about augmented reality, or AR. This is a big topic in the first 51 pages of the book,

which we'll discuss in detail toward the end of the podcast. For now, suffice to say that Rob

writes about an AR rig that seems very science-fictiony, or at least it did to me, only it sounds like this

technology may only be five years off. So, to give people the reality behind the fiction, Rob sat down

with Marone Gribitz, CEO of Metta, one of the three leaders in the augmented reality field. So,

Rob, you and Marone are talking about the real augmented reality device that people could get,

or at least pre-order today. I mean, it's kind of being used, isn't it? Yeah, there are lots and

lots of corporate customers right now. They're generally using it for internal applications that they're

developing on their own. There's not like the equivalent of Microsoft Word shipping on it yet.

There are any shipping apps. People are developing stuff. And so, Marone and I talked about this company,

Metta, an actual augmented reality company where it came from, what it's up to now, how the

technology actually works. But I also wanted Marone to give us a picture on the ethical issues

connected to AR that are we're going to have to deal with in public spaces. So, that's another topic.

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