Future Computing the Facebook Way

Uncanny Valley | WIRED

WIRED

Technology

4.1 • 571 Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How will we interact with computers in the future? When we finally evolve beyond keyboards, mice, touchscreens, and voice controls, what’s next? This month, Facebook hinted at how it’s thinking about the future of human-computer interactions. The company unveiled a concept for a wrist-worn wearable that can interpret the nerve impulses in the wearer’s arm to virtually mimic hand movements and finger taps. Also, we witnessed a debate about how facial recognition should be used in the AR glasses Facebook reportedly plans to release later this year.

For this episode, we are joined by WIRED editor-at-large Steven Levy, who has written extensively about Facebook for WIRED, and in his book about the company, Facebook: The Inside Story, which is now out in paperback. We discuss Facebook’s vision of future interfaces, possible applications for these wearable devices, and whether Facebook has earned the public trust necessary to tap into people’s brain signals.

Show Notes:

Steven’s book is now available in paperback. Read Lauren’s story about the wrist wearable concept. Read our original news story on the Facebook Portal’s launch, as well as Adrienne So’s story about how she grew to love the device during the pandemic. BuzzFeed News reported on Facebook’s internal meeting about AR glasses and facial recognition in late February.

Recommendations:

Steven recommends Tom Stoppard: A Life by Hermione Lee. Lauren recommends enabling the handwashing timer on your Apple Watch. Mike recommends the Showtime series City on a Hill. Season two starts on March 28.

Steven Levy can be found on Twitter @StevenLevy. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Lauren.
0:01.0	Goulad, is that you?
0:02.0	Lauren, it's me, it's Mike, Snack Fight.
0:04.0	Who?
0:05.0	Oh, God, I go away for one week and this whole place falls apart.
0:07.0	Where's Goulod?
0:08.0	I'm Lauren Good. I'm, senior editor at Wired. And the actual co-host of this show,
0:21.6	we should say. I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior writer at Wired and the other co-host.
0:26.6	We are also joined this week by Wired Editor at Large Stephen Levy. Stephen, welcome back to the show.
0:31.7	Thank you. Today we are talking about Facebook.
0:34.9	Some of you might know that Stephen literally wrote the book on Facebook. It's called Facebook The Inside Story. It's called Facebook. Some of you might know that Stephen literally wrote the book on Facebook.
0:39.5	It's called Facebook The Inside Story. It's 15 bucks on Kindle. It gets a 4.4 out of 5 rating on Amazon.
0:45.2	You should definitely check it out. Stephen covers a lot of ground in the book, but this week we're
0:49.6	going to zoom in on one particular corner of the Facebook Empire, the company's research and development
0:55.1	labs. We're talking about that this week because Facebook just unveiled some of its concepts
1:00.0	for new forms of human-computer interactions. Basically, the company is thinking about what sorts
1:05.8	of new and different gadgets and devices we can use to send signals to computers. So if you throw away the keyboard and
1:12.1	the mouse, throw away touch screens, throw away voice controls, what's next? Lauren, you wrote a
1:18.5	story about this for Wired this week. What problem is Facebook trying to solve here? Okay, so first off,
1:24.3	I think it's important to note that this is in Facebook's labs, which
1:28.2	they call their reality labs, but they are their research and development labs.
1:32.4	So what we saw this week were concepts.
	...

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