Kelly Fitzsimmons, Martin Geddes, Lindsay SeabrookMay 2016

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• This presentation summarises the research undertaken by the Hypervoice Consortium in 2014.

• Our goal was to explore the future of voice as computers join us in conversation

• We had the luxury to go away for six months, and both look at what is real and grounded, as well as to think big thoughts.

• We adopted an approach of thinking by first principles, not by analogies.

“Dream dreamsand write themaye, butlive them first.”

—Samuel Eliot MorisonHistorian and Sailor

• Our thinking was grounded in our past experience and expertise:

– Kelly Fitzsimmons is an information security expert. Her company, HarQen, had created the world’s first ‘hypervoice’ conference calling service (shown on the next slide).

– Martin Geddes is a computer scientist and network performance expert, with a decade of research into voice and messaging.

– Lindsay Seabrook is a marketing consultant, empath and (unlike the two Gen Xers above) a ‘millennial’.

We startedwith a

simple question

In the year

2024how will people communicate?

Perfected conference call?

• Our ingoing hypothesis was that the future of voice would involve some kind of ‘super-improved’ conference call.

• We had a list of ten ways in which the experience might change.

• You can view the presentation we used to start the conversation with interviewees here.

Interviews with experts

Who?Founders

CEOs, CTOs, Chairman Managing Directors, Director

EVP & SVPs

Head of Innovation

Analysts

Chief Strategist

Mobile Design/ UI Expert

Head of Digital Inclusion

Product Managers

Professor of Virtual Reality

Professor of Speech Processing

AI Experts

Infosec experts

Unify

BT

Google

Plantronics

SIP Forum

GSMA

KnowledgeVision

VoiceSage

Expect Labs

Venture Capital firms

University College London

Univ. of South Alabama Center for Forensics, IT and Security

University of Edinburgh

Industry survey

Articles

Videos (lots)

We explored the ecosystem…

150+companies and

products

“In exploration,there needs to be the set of people who haveno rules, and they are going into the frontier.”

—David E. KaplanPhysicist, “Particle Fever”

We allowed the journey

to take us tounexpected places…

What we found was jarring…

WHY? IT CHALLENGED OUR CORE BELIEFS AND ASSUMPTIONS

“Lord, we knowwhat we are, butknow not whatwe may be.”

—William ShakespeareHamlet

Optimism

• We took a fundamentally optimistic view of the future.

• The quality and quantity of human life on Earth has been rising substantially.

• We see no reason why progress should suddenly reverse in the near future, barring some cataclysmic event.

Corehumanneed

• Voice communication is integral to being human, and as such it will always be part of our ‘conversational DNA’.

• The idea that ‘voice is dead’ is tied to the decline of telephony, which is merely one format in which voice communication is packaged.

• There is a good case to be made that the speed of change is indeed increasing.

• As such, we are likely to see more change in the next ten years than we have seen in several decades.

• That means we need to take a quite radical stance in what is possible.

Information revolutions

Communications1. Computation

2. Sense

Information revolutions

CommunicationsComputation

1. Sense

We are all cyborgsC

ybo

rgs

Information revolutions

CommunicationsComputation

Sense

“Information is cheap,meaning is expensive.”

—George Dyson,Physicist

Sensors +Sense-making +

Sentience

Symbols +Structure +

Search

Senseless to SENSED

Voice belongs to the

sensor revolution

Sensors

Voice

Messaging

SYMBOLICSENSED

Hypervoice, or…?

Hypersense

• We quickly realised that voice could not be seen in isolation from a wider context of a sensor and sense-making revolution.

• Voice is intimate bio-sensed data. It is a product of our bodies. This means it belongs with other sensed data like heart rate, skin conductivity, or joint motion.

Timeline…

Web 1.0

Hypertext

Web 2.0

Hypermessaging

Web 3.0

Hypersense

Hyperlinks Link Sharing Activity streams

• The future of voice is tied to fundamental advances in how we contextualise information.

• The 1990s saw the hypertext Web emerge.

• The 2000s added in timelines and gave messages URLs. Social media is really ‘hypermessaging’.

• The 2010s are about adding sensed data types; ‘hypersense’ relates information to its physical context using activity streams.

“…the future alreadyhas begun…”

— Alvin Toffler,Futurist

Our 2024 vision wasalready happening…

“The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says itcan't be done isgenerally interrupted by someone doing it.”

— Elbert Hubbard,Writer & Philosopher

Our ideas were already features of OS releases!

End-of-historyillusion

• Our vision was myopic: the ‘end-of-history illusion’ had tricked us into a linear extrapolation of the past in a super-linear world.

• We needed to get far more radical!

Wild speculation?

Science fiction?

TCMS

Already shipping product!

To see further we had to look to edge cultures

HACKER

DISABLED

GENER-ATIONS

GAMER

“Mainstream”(10 years away)

To see further we had to look to edge cultures

HACKER

DISABLED

GENER-ATIONS

GAMER

“Mainstream”(10 years away)

Gaming annexes the world

“There is amass exodusto virtual worlds.”

—Edward Castronova

500 million gamers

3 billionhours per week

10,000 hours by age of 21

“Epic wins”

“There isno unemployment in theWorld of Warcraft.”

—Jane McGonigalGame designer and author

The Gaming Paradox

From the insideit’s meaningful

From the outsideit’s meaningless

“Blissful productivity”

• Jane McGonigal describes the feeling state that drives people to play games.

• There is a reward of ‘epic wins’, but between those you experience highly meaningful teamwork.

• This work that is so intrinsically rewarding that you want to do as much of it as possible. There’s no email or calendaring or traditional meetings.

• People are even willing to pay to do this work!

Today’s work: “Going postal”

Look to edge cultures

HACKER

DISABLED

GENER-ATIONS

GAMER

“Mainstream”(10 years away)

Glomads

Gam

ific

atio

n

BYOD = Revolt against the CIO

• The old and the young have an intolerance of complexity, and require extreme simplicity of UI/UX.

• They are motivated by the outcome, not the interaction with the mechanism. There has to be a clear answer to “why should I engage with this?”.

• Adding clutter and complexity drives these demographics away from technology. It’s all about what we can safely (and possibly magically) remove from the experience.

Look to edge cultures

HACKER

DISABLED

GENER-ATIONS

GAMER

“Mainstream”(10 years away)

Privacy is dead?

• There is a widespread mem of ‘privacy is dead’.

• Strangely enough, a lot of those spreading this meme have a strong commercial interest in your lack of privacy, in order to harvest your identity and resell it to advertisers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)#mediaviewer/File:Anonymous_at_Scientology_in_Los_Angeles.jpg

• The zeitgeist is very much concerned with surveillance and privacy. Many people and technologists are working to restore and enhance our online privacy.

Bring your own device leads to…

BYOID today

Right to be forgotten

Even Google’s founders might

regret weak privacy…

Look to edge cultures

HACKER

DISABLED

GENER-ATIONS

GAMER

“Mainstream”(10 years away)

“People with disabilitiesare the world's largest minority, an emerging market on par with the size of China!”

Source: Denis Boudreau

1 billionpeople

“There are 650m peopleclassified as hearing impairedin the world.

2%have treatment fortheir hearing loss.”

Source: heartoday.org

We are all disabled some of the time:Driving a car = paraplegic

Disabled people invent solutions to real

communications problems…

WHAT’S GOING ON?

SENSORS AND SENSING:A SENSUAL AND SENSORY

REVOLUTION

Sensualinterfaces

“Soundscaping” (and “Sensescaping”)Soundscaping

Wearables10x growth of device base?

WearablesIm

me

rsiv

e

Soci

alR

ob

oti

cs

IoT

• Nest

“Social” sensing devices

global connected carpenetration by 2020Source: Telefónica

$100 millioninvestment in perceptualcomputing

WHAT’S GOING ON?

SENSE-MAKING

“Machine learning isthe most significant technology trend. Computers have to get smarter and anticipate.”

—Kevin TurnerMicrosoft COO

Anticipatory Computing

Virtual Assistants

PROBLEM:We are the

sense-making machine

• When on a team retreat to process our research, we heard a ‘beep’ in the house. Then a short while later, another… and another.

• Where could it be from? We hunted and waited and hunted. Eventually we found it was a refridgerator door left very slightly ajar.

• This was an ‘aha!’ moment: the sensors were applying a new sense-making load onto us.

WHAT’S WRONG?

“Nearly all men can stand adversity,but if you want totest a man's character, give him power.”

—Abraham Lincoln

“Too many wrongly characterize the debate as ‘security versus privacy.’ The real choice isliberty versus control.”

— Bruce SchneierSecurity expert

The ethical hole

The biggestproblem

with voice(and all sensor data)

is privacy

• Companies harvest a crop that is our identity; the benefit to us is small in comparison.

• Voice exposes the disconnect between cost and benefit; the discomfort people have with voice recording is a wake-up call that we are giving too much away.

“Surveillance isn’t simplythe all-being all-looking eye. It’s a mechanism by which systems of powerassert their power.”

—danah boydScholar at Microsoft Research

It’s all about…

POWER

The crisis…? Power imbalance

Social & technical etiquette

“Can werecord this meeting?”

• The very process of doing interviews using a hypervoice application alerted us to the problem.

• We would ask interviewees if we could record the call for note-taking purposes only.

• Our ‘contract’ with them was not, however, being recorded. And there was no enforcement mechanism.

• This was an asymmetrical relationship; we had their voice, they could not control it.

Is this the only choice?

No privacy Decision fatigue

• As we move to more sophisticated processing of voice, the ‘refrigerator beep’ problem will just grow and grow.

• “Can we record your call, run it through my relational coach, transcribe it for our enterprise archive, store it in Iceland, use this data retention policy, test you for possible mental health issues…”

• This doesn’t scale as a user experience, or ethically.

“In this possibly terminal phaseof human existence,democracy and freedom aremore than just idealsto be valued – they may be essential to survival.”

—Noam Chomsky

"Manufacturing Consent"

THE ABYSS

“The single biggest problem in communication isthe illusionthat it has taken place.”

—George Bernard ShawPlaywright

Informationobesity

Data spills:Expensive clean-up costs

Webserfdom

• We are experiencing web serfdom. We are the tenant farmer on the Internet. Our identity is being tilled and sold for profit, without us reaping the benefits.

• We relinquish all rights when we are in a corporate context, and nearly all right just by using applications. It’s in or opt out.

• There is no ability to negotiates terms of use, manage the outcome, audit the process or hold parties accountable.

THE IDEAL

“Doubt and mistrustare the mere panic oftimid imagination, which the steadfast heart will conquer,and the large mind transcend.”

—Helen Keller

What technologies can get me to this end state?

How do we

rebalance powerto get to “blissful productivity”

(sentient machinesworking for us)

and avoid the abyss(us working

for sentient machines)

?

THE BEGINNINGS OF AN AHA!

Som

eth

ing

Mis

sin

g…

• We must offload sense-making and decision-making to smart dynamic systems that act in our interest.

• How can this be done? We need to become aware of the framing of the issues that we are attracted to as technologists.

LogicDominant technologyparadigm

FeelingsSubservient technologyparadigm

“Voice isreally aboutemotional connection.”

—Daniel Berninger,Telecoms Analyst

Today: masculine paradigm

• The mainframe, minicomputer, PC and smartphone all follow a ‘yang’ paradigm.

• There is a closed and known universe with explicit rules that we ‘program’.

• The ‘command line’ is perhaps the most obvious exemplar of the masculine paradigm.

Domination vs Partnership

Ecologicalperspective

Adaptogens

Image: Wikipedia

Biomimicry

Image: Wikipedia

Permaculture

Image: Wikipedia

spirit of america / Shutterstock.com

• The current ecology of data is living in an isolated biodome.

• Sensors puncture the biodome. Our view of ‘digital ecology’ needs to adjust accordingly.

DIFFERENT APPROACH?

Artificial Intelligence?Make machines more like us?

Make us more like machines?

Artificial Intelligence?

Identity Augmentation?

• Self-augmentation is archetypally female: make-up, hairdos, ear piercings, neck adornments, carrying loads on heads with cloths, breast enhancement.

• Is there a fundamentally different paradigm approach? Is “artificial intelligence” even the right framing for the sensor world where we all have bodies?

The ethical dream

The biggest problem

with voice is privacy

We have virtualised machines…

• Compute

• Transmission

• Storage

Computation Storage Transmission

We have not (yet) virtualised…

US

Why?

HACKER

DISABLED

GENER-ATIONS

GAMER

Blissfulproductivity

What?

HACKER

DISABLED

GENER-ATIONS

GAMER

Virtualisedidentity

How?

HACKER

DISABLED

GENER-ATIONS

GAMER

GUARDIANAVATAR

THEGUARDIAN

AVATAR

Digital doppelgänger

Your better self

• We are intolerant of machines joining us in conversation for a good reason.

• To get blissfully productive, we need to get superhuman.

• We need new savant qualities.

• The Guardian Avatar embodies this; a virtual ‘you’ that has the aspiration of accentuating the best of you and your life.

The “Guardian Avatar” is…

1. An ethical stance

Self-sovereign identity

The “Guardian Avatar” is…

1. An ethical stance

2. A thinking tool

3. Practical technology

“Fourth wall”

The “Guardian Avatar” is…

1. An ethical stance

2. A thinking tool

3. Practical technology

Browser for ahypersense “metaverse”

“The best time toplant a treewas 20 years ago.The second best timeis now.”

— Chinese Proverb

Automated TOS lawyer

Why?

2 million factor authentication: continual sensor data montitoring

Datadestruction

How does it work?

• Existing technologies– Personal data locker

– Federated ID

– Distributed identity & trust systems

– Distributed storage systems

– Biometrics

– Inference engines

– Privacy filters

– Assistants

– ASR

– Machine translation

– Sentiment analysis

• New & emerging technologies– VRM

– Gesture recognition

– Activity recognition

– Automatic content linking

– Homomorphic encryption

– Artificial sentience

– Inclusive & adaptive design

– Avatar animation

– Engagement analysis

– Voice reconstruction

Ultimate selfie

Dynamic vs static identity

“We change every second that our heart beats.Our identity systems do not reflect this.”– E.K. Fitzsimmons

Why Believe?

Why does it make sense?

• Computers are far better at completing tasks where the rules are explicit and the data set is extremely large.

• Logical systems are indefatigable and will perform explicit tasks more reliably.

Why should you care?

• It will protect our sanity, optimize our work flow to fit our mood, expand our time available for highly rewarding work and allow us to achieve blissful productivity.

Why is it important?

• It a moral imperative that we own our own identity.

–Self-soverignty should be an inalienable right.

• Governments have proven poor at protecting the privacy and managing identity.

“Greater technology will selfishly unleash our talents, but it will also unselfishly unleash others: our children, and all children to come.”

— Kevin Kelly,Founder of Wired

www.hypervoice.org

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