Podcasts about XR

On today's episode of Change Agents, Andy is joined by Brian Streem, the founder and CEO of Vermeer, a defense tech company with forward operations in Ukraine. He went from using drone technology and Hollywood projects ranging from Steven Spielberg movies, The Fast and the Furious films, and Beyonce music videos to the frontlines of war. This technology lets drones navigate when GPS is jammed, spoofed or gone entirely. Brian pivoted his company into Vermeer in 2018, after the Department of Defense showed strong interest in his team's XR technology, building AR command controlled and visualization tools for unmanned swarms in GPS denied environments. Sponsors: Firecracker Farm Use code IRONCLAD to get 15% off your first order at https://firecracker.farm/ Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/change-agents-with-andy-stumpf/id1677415740 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3SKmtN55V2AGbzHDo34DHI?si=5aefbba9abc844ed Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Samsung has a new credit card that goes toe to toe to the Apple Card, and xMEMS announced a new fan-on-a-chip that's designed to keep heat down on smartglasses and XR headsets.Starring Jason Howell, Tom Merritt and Huyen Tue Dao.Links to stories discussed in this episode can be found here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when storytelling moves beyond the screen?When does an audience stop watching a story—and start living inside it?In this episode of The Artists Podcast, we are joined by Vicki Dobbs Beck, one of the pioneers of immersive storytelling.As the former Vice President of Immersive Content Innovation at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Vicki has helped shape groundbreaking experiences across Disney, Lucasfilm, Marvel, and emerging technologies, while collaborating with leading technology companies including Meta. Recognized by Variety as a Digital Innovator to Watch, she has spent her career exploring the intersection of storytelling, technology, and human experience.Together, we explore one of the defining questions of our time:How do we move from storytelling to storyliving?What is the fundamental difference between the way Hollywood studios and technology companies think? How will AI, XR, spatial computing, and immersive media reshape the future of narrative? And what does it mean to build stories that audiences don't just watch—but inhabit?Whether you're a filmmaker, storyteller, technologist, creative entrepreneur, or simply curious about the future of entertainment, this conversation offers a rare glimpse into where storytelling is headed.⏱️ Chapters01:41 Storytelling vs Storyliving07:00 The fundamental difference between how a studio and a tech company approach storytelling09:30 How do technology companies think?10:20 Why finding original stories is becoming increasingly difficult11:20 Working with Alejandro G. Iñárritu 18:50 Why filmmakers must think like transmedia storytellers21:05 Vader Immortal: Experiencing Star Wars beyond the film24:11 What If...? and storytelling for Apple Vision Pro26:00 Building stories across multiple platforms 29:42 The evolution of immersive storytelling37:23 Leading from the front as a female leader

Irena Cronin has been studying XR since 2016 — first as Robert Scoble's co-author, now as CEO of Infinite Retina, consulting for clients from IKEA's labs division to a major law firm tracking the industry. She joins Charlie, Ted, and Rony for a blunt assessment of how the biggest companies in tech actually operate.The centerpiece is Rony's question: Meta has spent roughly $120 billion on Reality Labs since acquiring Oculus. Where did it all go? Irena's answer is unsparing — complete mismanagement, no follow-up, and a lack of imagination that money can't fix. Apple gets a different diagnosis. Irena tracked the Vision Pro through hundreds of iterations since 2019 and predicted exactly how it would land. Her real news: it isn't dead. People inside Apple are still working on it intensely while the glasses project ramps up. The news segment covers OpenAI's Apple IP scandal and whether the Valley now operates in a post-IP world.Key Moments:[00:01:30] OpenAI caught in Apple's cookie jar — IP theft accusations on the eve of the IPO[00:05:00] Sherlocking and the post-IP world — how big companies strip-mine startups through fake M&A talks[00:12:00] AI regulation — Hassabis, Altman, and Amodei; Rony's case for why the public gets Cessnas, not F-47s[00:18:45] Irena joins — Infinite Retina, IKEA, and why physical AI is just spatial computing renamed[00:24:30] Why isn't anyone afraid of Google? — fifteen years of planetary data and no strategy to use it[00:33:30] Where did Meta's $120 billion go? — "complete mismanagement" and a failure of imagination[00:38:00] The Vision Pro isn't dead — Apple is still working on it intensely as the glasses ramp up[00:41:45] Why is XR so obscenely hard? — the industry chased consumers before enterprise[00:44:30] The display is everything — why smart glasses "go bonkers" the moment AR hits the lensBrought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft, the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Start building at mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the aviation industry grapples with ongoing talent shortages, the question becomes: are current training methods the right model for creating skilled pilots at the rate the sector needs? Cockpits are becoming increasingly automated, while next-generation training technologies such as VR, XR, AR, and advanced simulation are potentially able to boost safety without increasing risk exposure – so are current competency-based models keeping up with the new reality? In this special Australian Aviation Podcast, UNSW and the Honourable Company of Air Pilots present a thought-provoking panel discussion on the evolution of pilot training and how industry, regulators, and academia can collaborate to deliver the best possible outcomes. Join moderator Captain Adrian Young, as well as Churchill Fellow and former CASA Aviation Safety Advisory Panel member Adrianne Fleming, Qantas Group's Andrew Stead, and UNSW's Malcolm Good to discuss how pilot training can best meet the new realities of flying.

I participated in another Socratic Debate about the Future of "AI" and XR at Augmented World Expo 2026 with Leslie Shannon, Alvin Graylin, and Louis Rosenberg (you can listen to last year's debate in episode #1611). Shannon and Graylin argued for "AI," whilst Rosenberg and I argued against "AI." In my write-up, I wanted to leave some breadcrumbs to more in-depth, skeptical arguments against "AI" that we didn't have space or time to dig into during the debate, but "some breadcrumbs" ended up being over 30k words, and more like an outline for an entire book. Writing a book isn't on my to-do list at the moment, but disseminating the work researchers, journalists, linguists, and critics of "AI" have done is urgent and necessary, so I'm sharing the results of this deep dive here, in bullet list format. My fellow panelists, Alvin Graylin and Louis Rosenberg, indulged me in extending our debate offline after AWE, pushing me to test my ideas further and demonstrating how and why this is an extremely active field of study with polarizing points of view that often come down to philosophical differences. Clearly, it's just getting started. My objections to "AI" is loosely organized by various themes, but some framing may be helpful in approaching it. My objections to "AI" center around the limitations of LLMs, the consolidation of wealth and power from Hyperscaler companies, and threats from automated decision making systems and surveillance capitalism melded with democratically-backsliding authoritarian governments. I'm including a broad range of critiques spanning the domains of philosophy, technology, sociology, politics, economics, culture, and ethics. I'm coming from the orientation of Process Philosophy & Peircean Semiotics that emphasizes the relational and contextual dimensions that the "AI" field tends to de-emphasize or completely collapse. I see process-relational philosophy as a necessary paradigm shift away from the underpinning philosophies of the "AI" community, which tend to be Functionalism, Naturalism, Computational Theory of Mind, Physicalism, & the TESCREAL bundle. Below you'll find my own process philosophical emergency response to "AI embedded within my curation of excerpts and commentary of primary sources that I'm leaning upon. The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want (2025) by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna (also see episode #1563). Bender & Hanna say, "To put it bluntly, 'AI' is a marketing term. It doesn't refer to a coherent set of technologies. Instead, the phrase "artificial intelligence" is deployed when the people building or selling a particular set of technologies will profit from getting others to believe that their technology is similar to humans, able to do things that, in fact, intrinsically require human judgment, perception, or creativity." Emily M. Bender wrote the "Artificial Intelligence" [preprint] (2026, June 25) entry for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Society. Bender's concluding paragraph gives a great overview of the seven different ways that the idea of "artificial intelligence" operates in the world. She says, "The notion of artificial intelligence is frequently sold as present or near-future and inevitable technology. In fact there is no coherent set of technologies that can serve as the denotation of the phrase, nor do any of the technologies so marketed rise to the fantastical but ill-defined claims of 'AI' is or soon will be. Nonetheless, the idea of artificial intelligence has been extremely impactful in the world. In order to better understand and deal with those impacts, it is helpful to look at artificial intelligence through the varied lenses of how the idea operates in the world: as the name of a research field, as one approach to cognitive science, as a parlor trick, as a an ideology, as a way to hide and devalue human labor, as a way to shift and/or obfuscate accountability, and as a means to centralize power." Inventing Intelligence: On the History of Complex Information Processing and Artificial Intelligence in the United States in the Mid-Twentieth Century [dissertation] (2020, December 14) by Jonnie Penn. Penn says, "The phrase ‘artificial intelligence' was coined by John McCarthy, an American mathematician, in 1955. It has travelled with a noticeably amorphous definition since." "AI" has always had a spotty history of technologists using a "brain is a computer" metaphor while also using "poor citation practices." From page 14, Penn says, "The vocabulary Simon, Rosenblatt, McCarthy and Minsky chose to describe new techniques in major newspapers and scholarly journals informed Americans' still plastic understandings of what was possible, and indeed desirable, in the emerging information age… During the mid to late 1950s, these men turned to clannishness, self-aggrandizement, speculative rhetoric, fluid definitions of key terms and poor citation practices to shore up legitimacy for their controversial new techniques — actions that drew attention toward questions of how to accomplish such aims and away from whether they were well founded." Part II: Remembering the Human Microcosm in the Age of Mechanized Intelligence: Philosophy as Emergency Response (2026, June 9) by Matt Segall. In a multi-part Substack series, process philosopher Matt Segall calls for a philosophical emergency response to "AI." He says, "In each case a new media technology intended to expand the power of thought ended up transforming the very nature of the thinker who invented it. Each new medium furnishes the very terms in which we come to understand ourselves. This is why the philosophical response is always an emergency response: by the time anyone has noticed what is happening, what may be lost and what gained, the mutation has already done half of its work." Segall warns about the computational metaphor of the mind by saying, "The large language model now tempts us to adopt an even stranger self-image: that human minds are no different than machines, our thoughts just the statistical echoes of our training data. The creators of this latest technological upgrade are encouraging us to downgrade our estimate of human consciousness, thus narrowing the distance between ourselves and the machines built to imitate us." "Resisting Dehumanization in the Age of 'AI': The View from the Humanities" [lecture] (2026, February 10) by Emily M. Bender. Here are the lecture slides with a bibliography at the end. Bender does an amazing overview of how the marketing of "AI" uses pernicious dehumanization tactics built on an underlying "brain is a computer metaphor." From page 15 of her talk: "Scientific metaphor used and debated in neuroscience: "THE BRAIN IS A COMPUTER. "PR metaphor used by technologists: "THE COMPUTER IS A BRAIN" Bender cites Baria & Cross' paper titled "The brain is a computer is a brain: neuroscience's internal debate and the social significance of the Computational Metaphor (2021), which says “the Computational Metaphor rests on other well-ingrained ideologies in which a hierarchy of human value is tied to a particular notion of intelligence such that the quality of being emotional is considered inferior to being rational." Bender also cites Dijkstra's 1985 lecture "On anthropomorphism in science": "A more serious byproduct of the tendency to talk about machines in anthropomorphic terms is the companion phenomenon of talking about people in mechanistic terminology." Here are a couple of examples of how "AI" Hyperscaler companies like OpenAI use dehumanizing tactics to sell us on "AI" Hype. Sam Altman will say things like, "A kid born today will never be smarter than AI. Ever." Or another example is when Altman says, "For me, AGI is basically the equivalent of a median human that you could hire as a co-worker... And then Superintelligence is when it's smarter than all of humanity put together." These statements collapse the human experience into one dimension of "intelligence," which amplifies the dual harm of treating machines more like humans and treating humans more like machines. It is also questionable the degree to which this statement is even true given the potential non-computational aspects of "relevance realization." More on this down below. Part IV: Remembering the Human Microcosm in the Age of Mechanized Intelligence: Hegel's Loom and the Difference Reason Makes (2026, June 10) by Matt Segall. Segall brilliantly breaks down the "Brain is a Computer Metaphor" by saying, "Metaphor is not just a shiny paint job on the vehicle of cognition. It is the engine of thought. Its coupling of concepts drives the limits of conceivability, shaping what is thought together and what is not thought at all. The metaphorical imagination is our main means of tuning in to the otherwise invisible effects of new media technologies. Part of the discipline philosophy brings is allowing us to notice an analogy as an analogy before advertising crystalizes it into the unnoticed transparency of common sense. A fact is a fact, but it might also be a fossilized metaphor. The governing analogy of our age is that cognition is computation: the brain an information-processing device, perception its input and behavior its output, memory a form of physical storage, learning the adjustment of weights, and intelligence an algorithm for minimizing error or surprisal. On this view, given enough training data and computational power, consciousness itself will eventually be engineered… The metaphor “the mind is a computer,” for example, tacitly proposes that mind is to brain as software is to hardware… Reiterated in textbooks and earnings calls, in grant applications and policy briefs, the partial comparison congeals into an ontology, until we find ourselves insisting not that the mind is like a computer in some respects but that it simply is one — and,...

Justin Barad is a pediatric orthopedic surgeon, a former Activision game developer, and the founder of Osso VR — one of the few companies in XR that has quietly built a real, profitable business while most of the industry was still searching for one. He joins Charlie and Ted to talk about why virtual reality turned out to be uniquely suited to medical training, and why the way we train surgeons today is still built on a model developed in the 1800s by a brilliant doctor with a serious drug problem.The core argument of the episode is simple: you should not practice on patients. The aviation industry figured this out decades ago — pilots recertify in simulators, not planes. Medicine has been slower to get there, but Osso VR is making the case with data. Nine published studies. Used in 50 countries. Over 300 training modules. And an objective assessment system that, in one study, showed a 230% performance difference between surgeons measured to be competent and surgeons who simply felt ready.Justin and Ted go deep on why objective assessment is the real power of the technology, not the immersion. They talk about why the residency model hasn't fundamentally changed since the 1890s, what it would take to actually shorten the 14-year road to becoming a surgeon, and why the company's most exciting growth right now isn't surgeons at all — it's nurses and allied health professionals, a market that dwarfs surgery by a factor of ten. The episode closes on an honest look back at 2016, when everyone in XR thought they were a year or two away from changing everything, and what Justin learned from being one of the first people to test those assumptions against reality.Brought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft, the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Start building at mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Charlie, Ted, and Rony are joined by Kevin Williams — ex-Walt Disney Imagineer, location-based entertainment specialist, publisher of The Stinger Report, and the curator behind the LBE XR Zone at AWE 2026.Kevin pulls back the curtain on why well-funded VR pioneers like The Void and Dreamscape really collapsed (spoiler: it wasn't COVID), why Sandbox VR and Zero Latency survived, and how "competitive socializing" venues are quietly becoming XR's most viable business. Plus: Alex Karp's jaw-dropping CNBC appearance, Ted's "printer ink theory" of AI economics, and the decades-old simulation lessons that could have solved VR motion sickness years earlier.⏱️ KEY MOMENTS 02:42 – Alex Karp's CNBC interview: AI, data & sovereignty 08:40 – Ted's printer ink theory of AI economics 09:54 – Computational autocracies & America's 250th 13:07 – Guest intro: Kevin Williams (ex-Disney Imagineer, The Stinger Report) 17:15 – Theme parks vs. LBE: where's the line? 21:16 – Glow's Magic Leap 2 graffiti experience at AWE 23:14 – Rony's story: a famous graffiti artist tries digital spray paint 25:19 – The open digital mesh problem: RP1, Niantic & who owns the map 30:10 – Why The Void and Dreamscape really failed ("one and done") 34:48 – What bowling alleys and pubs get right: competitive socializing 40:43 – Europa Park's mixed reality attractions 43:09 – Universal's Mario Kart AR ride: why less is more 46:08 – The Dracula/Frankenstein ride & the "squeezing" motion sickness fix 49:19 – Why VR makes you sick: the poisoning response & 30 years of forgotten simulation lessons 52:10 – The case for sharing knowledge before it's lostBrought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft. Mattercraft is Zappar's web-based platform for building augmented reality experiences without an app. Find them at mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Many people believe robots will replace humans as companions, friends, and especially for sex. But VR, AR, and XR may fulfill that role long before. By hijacking the senses of site and hearing, not to mention with haptic technology, it is possible to simulate an inherent instinctual desire that may lead to extinction instead. Or, it could drive people to find the real world. *The is the FREE archive, which includes advertisements. If you want an ad-free experience, subscribe below.

I interviewed Caitlin Krause about the experience of XR, Process Philosophy musings, & the ethics of AI on Wednesday, June 17, 2026 at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Nathan Fairchild about Ganek Immersive Studio at USC's School of Cinematic Arts on Thursday, June 18, 2026 at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California. Fairchild was at AWE showing off some student projects of Immersive Video, and I really quite enjoyed the hyperstylized, fever dream of Elevator by LILLETH who is coming from an immersive theatre background. Ori Inbar had mentioned how immersive video was one of the sectors that was growing within his opening keynote. The Apple Vision Pro has helped to revitalize interest in the more cinematic 180-degree forms, but also for XR as a screen replacement and more immersive way to experience cinematic content. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I interviewed Brett Renfer about Metropolitan Museum of Art Experiments with XR & AI on Wednesday, June 17, 2026 at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California. You can check out the The Temple of Dendur and Oceanic Art in Virtual Reality within the Atopia VR application. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Eline Van Der Velden did musical theatre, then got a master's in physics with plans to work in nuclear fusion, then went back to acting, built a BBC award-winning YouTube comedy series, started a production company, and just four years ago converted it into an AI production company called Particle6. That backstory alone would make for a good Marvel backstory. Then, she created Tilly Norwood.Tilly is a synthetic AI actress, and when Particle6 dropped her into the world, Hollywood reacted in a way it hadn't reacted to digital humans in twenty years of trying — Tupac, Lil Mikayla, Epic's Unreal Engine characters, Magic Leap's Mica, none of them landed the same way. Eline's explanation is simple: Tilly was the first one that looked really real. She arrived at a moment when emotions in the industry were already running high, and she became the lightning rod for everything people feared AI would do to actors and the creative workforce.The conversation goes deep on what it actually takes to build a synthetic performer, where the IP and copyright lines are, why Eline built clear internal AI ethics policy for Particle6, and why Tilly wasn't modelled on any existing actor by design. The episode opens with AWE wrap-up from Charlie, Ted, and Rony — Snap Spectacles at $2,200, the gray zone problem that has haunted every headset since HoloLens, Project Aura from XREAL finally impressing Charlie, Cosm getting $100 million from Sony, and why Rony thinks building XR has cost more money than going to space.Note: Charlie's audio dropped near the end of the episode, so Ted and Rony close out the conversation.Key Moments:[00:01:30] AWE wrap — starting with Snap Spectacles debut at $2,200[00:08:00] The gray zone — Rony on why AR headsets have cost more to develop than SpaceX, and why consumers won't go to the gray zone[00:12:45] Project Aura from XREAL[00:13:30] Cosm gets $100M from Sony — Is it the next Top Golf or a financial trap?[00:22:00] Introducing Eline Van Der Velden[00:26:00] Why Tilly caused a nuclear reaction; every other digital human got a shrug; Tilly got an industry meltdown[00:45:00] The IP and copyright question & Particle6's internal AI ethics policy[00:57:00] AI is replacing the entire international dubbing workforce in real time[00:59:30] The case for AI Animation image rehab & name change Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Flipboard EDU PodcastEpisode Title: Release Date: 2026-06-26Hosts: Coach Jeffery , Dr. Micah ShippeeEpisode OverviewIn this episode, Coach Jeffery welcomes Dr. Micah Shippee from Samsung to discuss the ever-evolving landscape of educational technology in 2026. The conversation dives into best instructional practices, the integration of AI in classrooms, the importance of teacher voice in edtech development, and how technology can serve as an amplifier—not a replacement—for effective teaching.Key topics include practical strategies for blended learning, using interactive displays for collaboration, balancing screen time, upcoming opportunities at ISTE, and how Samsung is supporting educators through programs like "Solve for Tomorrow." Dr. Micah Shippee also shares personal insights on finding professional communities and staying inspired in the face of rapid change in education.Key Discussion PointsDr. Micah Shippee's Background22 years teaching middle school, advocate for innovative instructional practice 01:40Transition from classroom to edtech consulting and joining SamsungPutting Teacher Voice at the CenterSamsung's focus on "voice of customer"—listening to teachers to guide product design 02:25Importance of amplifying, not disrupting, effective classroom practiceAI in Education—A Thoughtful ApproachAI tools in Samsung's interactive displays are teacher-focused to protect student privacy 03:21Responsible integration of AI, ensuring compliance with FERPA and COPPA 03:32Reflective Innovation & Blended LearningAI as an amplifier of proven teaching strategies like storytelling 04:29Tools to support live captioning and note generation 05:01Importance of balancing technology use and maintaining collaborative, active learning spaces 06:02Interactive Displays: The Modern “Campfire”Using interactive screens to foster collaboration and brainstorming 07:02Moving beyond chart paper with split-screen features for group activities 08:23Applying the SAMR Model to push classroom tech past substitution toward modification and redefinition 09:45The ISTE Experience & Samsung InitiativesThe power of educational communities at ISTE 10:29Introduction to Samsung's "Solve for Tomorrow" philanthropic STEM competition for grades 6–12 11:27Wide range of topics from climate change to mental health, open to all public school teachers 12:08Exciting New Tech for EducatorsSneak peek of products at ISTE: Epaper, advanced interactive displays, spatial (3D) displays, and XR headsets 15:02Designed for easy integration and supporting both teachers and studentsCommunity, Growth, & Staying InspiredThe importance of connecting with like-minded educators for continual growth 18:38Encouragement for teachers to share what works, informing future edtech tools 17:34Resources & LinksSamsung Solve for TomorrowSAMR Model informationISTE ConferenceWhere to Find Samsung at ISTEBooth #1129—Look for the large Samsung sign and experience the latest in edtech innovation! 20:20Connect with the HostsFollow Coach Jeffery and Dr. Micah Shippee on social platforms for more edtech insights.Don't miss this forward-thinking conversation about empowering educators and inspiring the next generation of learners with technology! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit flipboardedu.substack.com

Listen Now to 015 WTFUture Watch 015 WTFUture First up on this week’s  radar is the  world of health and ultrasonics, featuring Midjourney’s pivot from AI image generation to building sci-fi-esque sonic body scanners that use ultrasound to precisely map your organs while you chill in a San Francisco luxury spa. We then check out how scientists are using optogenetics to give awake mice the restorative, brain-cleaning benefits of deep sleep, potentially revolutionizing how we “recharge” our bodies, potentially without the need for sleep as we understand it today,  Add in Meta’s new screenless XR glasses, humanoid robots gaining advanced “safety stacks” to keep them from accidentally acting like bulls in a china shop, and the looming arrival of “Q-day”—when quantum computers become so advanced they can crack all global cryptography and solve multivariable universe problems instantly—and you’ve got a week of news that sounds straight out of sci-fi..  But our near future is also about tapping into the Earth’s natural quantum networks! We look at how animals might be using  telepathy to communicate, imagining birds tuning into universal flight frequencies and dolphins using their own built-in ultrasonic sonar vision. We also dig into the hidden, 110-quadrillion-kilometer fungal network under our feet that acts as a vast biological super highway system, peacefully trading water, nutrients and solar energy with plants. To top it all off, the conversation rockets into orbit with SpaceX’s new “Starfall” flying saucer system designed to gracefully retrieve items from space, before coming back down to Earth to discuss “Disclosure Day.” We encourage you to steer America’s upcoming July 4th narrative toward an ascension of consciousness and “heaven on earth,” rather than falling for alien fear-mongering and doomsday plots, for truly, it is up to you.. Enjoy..

This environmental movement was created in England just a few years ago in October 2018, but quickly spread all across the world. Extinction Rebellion's aim is to compel governments to take action against global warming and environmental collapse. It's earned a reputation as a radical organisation, due to its disobedience and disruption tactics. But only using non-violent action is one of its key principles. Also known as XR, Extinction Rebellion was born from a realisation that traditional protest methods were insufficient when it came to the environment crisis. These activists felt new methods and organisation forms were required, taking inspiration from other grassroots movements like Occupy, the American civil rights movement or the suffragettes. What do they actually want in concrete terms? How did such a young movement get to be so rich and powerful? In under 3 minutes, we answer your questions ! To listen to the last episodes, you can click here : ⁠Why can't Royals take selfies ?⁠ ⁠How can I beat my work addiction?⁠ ⁠How is AI being used in the legal system?⁠ A podcast written and realised by Joseph Chance. Replay of the episode published on May 17th, 2022 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The U.S. government runs a program that will fund your company before you have a single customer — sometimes before you have a finished product at all.It's called SBIR, and in this episode John Martin breaks down exactly how he used it to go from an early-stage idea to a $1.9M U.S. Air Force funding increase, with a shot at a $30M+ award next. If you've got innovative technology and you've ever wondered whether the government would pay you to develop it, this is the conversation to watch.John is the founder of Bundle AR, an augmented reality and XR training platform now used across the Air Force, Space Force, Army, and the commercial world. We get into how SBIR Phase I and Phase II actually work, what TACFI and STRATFI are, why relationships beat writing proposals, and the single mistake most founders make when they try to sell to the government.––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––CHAPTERS––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––00:00 The $1.9M the Government Paid Bundle AR00:42 Who Is John Martin & What Bundle AR Does03:33 How He Got His First Government Check05:57 SBIR Explained: Getting Paid for an Idea07:48 Why SBIR Funding Froze (and Just Reopened)09:14 TACFI: The $1.9M Air Force Funding Increase11:54 STRATFI & the New $30M Award for 202616:01 Why Relationships Beat Writing Proposals17:55 How to Win Before the Contract Is Posted22:09 Live Demo: AR Training for the Military28:54 The Smartest Move: Two Revenue Streams29:32 The Truth About SBIR Mills32:24 The GovClose Gauntlet: Rapid Fire37:12 John's Radio Career: Cronkite, Kiss & Taylor Swift38:57 Advice for First-Time Government Contractors41:00 New Markets: Education, Healthcare & School Security44:04 What's Next for Bundle AR––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––RESOURCES MENTIONED––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––GovClose Program Overview (free 20-minute training):https://www.govclose.comSBIR / STTR Program (official):https://www.sbir.gov––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––ABOUT THE GUEST — JOHN MARTIN, BUNDLE AR––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––John Martin is the founder of Bundle AR (BUNDLAR), a Chicago-basedoperational intelligence platform company. Over 8+ years, Bundle AR hasbuilt a no-code augmented reality and XR-wearable platform that deliverstraining and knowledge "where work happens" for both enterprise and theDepartment of Defense. The company has won SBIR Phase I and Phase II awards,a $1.9M U.S. Air Force Tactical Funding Increase (TACFI), and is nowqualified for a Strategic Funding Increase (STRATFI). Past clients andengagements include Microsoft (Xbox), Thermo Fisher, Cleveland Clinic, theU.S. Air Force, Space Force, Michigan Air National Guard, and the U.S. Army.Learn more / connect with John:Website: https://www.bundlar.comEmail: john@bundlar.comLinkedIn: [paste John's LinkedIn URL here]––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––ABOUT RICK HOWARD––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––Rick Howard is a retired USAF Lieutenant Colonel and former DoD acquisitionsofficer who managed over $82 billion in federal contracts. He is the founderof GovClose and the DoD Contract Academy, with 400+ graduates working asgovernment contract consultants, federal account executives, and businessowners winning federal contracts.Get the GovClose Certification: https://www.govclose.com/sales-certification Our students learn the government contracting skills to :1. Start their own consulting business that can earn up to $400k as a "solopreneur" advising businesses that sell to the government.2. Land high paying sales executive jobs with companies in the public sector.3. Increase government contracting revenue for companies selling to the US government.

What happens when we repeat the mistakes of the early internet? In this episode of Coffey & Code, Ashley Coffey sits down with immersive technology pioneer Ben Erwin to explore one of the most important conversations happening in AI and XR today: why open standards, interoperability, and digital ownership matter more than ever. From his early work building websites in the 1990s to developing projects for the United Nations, the New York Times, and founding the Academy of Immersive Arts & Sciences, Ben shares how decades of experience have shaped his vision for the future of immersive technology. Together, Ashley Coffey and Ben Erwin unpack the intersection of AI, open source software, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), WebXR, creator rights, public media, ethics, and the future of the internet. If you care about where technology is headed—and who gets to shape it—this conversation is essential listening! In this episode, you'll learn: Why open standards matter for the future of AI and XR How Flash's collapse still impacts today's technology decisions The hidden risks of closed platforms and walled gardens Why interoperability is critical for spatial computing The future of digital ownership in AI and immersive media How creator economies can become more ethical and sustainable Why immersive technology needs its own public media ecosystem Lessons startups can learn before building the next generation of AI products What today's AI revolution can learn from the early web Why education and open ecosystems will determine who wins the next decade   EPISODE CREDITS:Produced and edited by Ashley Coffey. Cover art designed by Ashley Coffey.Headshot by Brandlink MediaIntroduction music composed and produced by Ashley Coffey LINKSFollow Coffey & Code on Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, and YouTube for the latest emerging tech updates! Subscribe to the Coffey & Code Podcast wherever you get your podcasts to be notified when new episodes go live. © 2026 Coffey & Code Podcast. All rights reserved. The content of this podcast, including but not limited to text, graphics, audio, and images, is the property of Ashley Coffey and may not be reproduced, redistributed, or used in any manner without the express written consent of the owner. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Recorded live from the AWE main stage in Long Beach, Charlie Fink and Ted Schilowitz are joined by three veterans of the XR industry for a wide-ranging conversation about where the industry has been and where it is actually headed.Malia Probst, founder of Scout House and a decade-plus in creator and developer programs, Shelley Peterson, former head of XR at Lockheed Martin and now running her consultancy Wizard Wells, and Mary Matheson, head of production at Agog and a multi-award winning immersive documentary director, bring three distinct vantage points — enterprise, consumer, and social impact — to the same set of questions. The result is one of the more honest conversations about the state of XR that the show has done.The panel covers the Snap Spectacles launch happening steps away at the same conference, why $2,300 does not make something a consumer device no matter what the marketing says, and what Google Glass actually got right when nobody was paying attention. The group digs into Meta's slow pullback from the metaverse and whether losing the big-pocketed backer is a crisis or a correction. World models come up as the technology that may finally make immersive content creation accessible without years of game engine training. And the conversation lands on a question that cuts across all of it: is the AI backlash really about the technology, or is it about who owns it?The closing question — what do we know now that we didn't know 10 years ago — produces the three best lines of the panel. Mary says the people behind XR are still here and that's what she couldn't have predicted. Malia says the only constant is change, and there has never been a better time to be a creator. Shelley says you are going to pivot whether you like it or not.Key Moments:[00:05:45] Snap Spectacles debut at AWE [00:17:45] Meta's metaverse pullback[00:22:00] Ted asks the uncomfortable question; the panel actually answers it.[00:25:00] Enterprise as the real XR business[00:32:40] The Google Glass parable[00:40:15] Five years out — world models, quantum computing, AI on your body, and the race to be your 24/7 agent[00:50:20] AI backlash[00:57:53] What 10 years taught us — Mary, Malia, and Shelley each close with something worth writing down Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stijn is an #XR software engineer spending his days pushing the limits of what #AR glasses, WebXR, and generative AI can do together. He is one of the most prolific experimenters in the XR developer community, constantly sharing prototypes across Snap Spectacles, Meta Ray-Ban, Apple Vision Pro, and WebXR.In this episode, Stijn breaks down how he builds faster using AI-first workflows, he walks us through a real healthcare project based #GaussianSplatting on #VisionPro and why the glasses moment feels a lot like the early iPhone app era.Subscribe to XR AI Spotlight weekly newsletter

Send us Fan MailWe discuss the biggest announcements and takeaways from AWE, including the newly revealed $2,195 Snap Spectacles, the XReal Aura, and the bHaptics DK3 gloves. We also share our thoughts on the Subside DLC, upcoming mixed reality games, new titles for PS VR2, and James' impressions of the Metroid Prime VR mod.Here's the full topic list, in order:AR Glasses Take Center Stage At AWE1. Snap Spectacles announced at $2,1952. XReal Aura taking pre-orders without full price3. URXR and several other startups4. We're not yet sold on AR glassesLet's talk some games5. Subside DLC thoughts6. The Castle & High Horns at AWE7. Cleansheet Soccer 2 on PS VR28. Mixed reality evolution with VirtualGo9. Monsarrat's open world MR RPGMike's other AWE takeaways10. bHaptics DK3 gloves11. Pimax Dream Air demo12. The future of XR tech is VERY brightNintendon't want to do XR, so modders well13. James' impressions of the Metroid Prime VR modTune in next week14. Steam Machine price announced15. VR Games Showcase recap coming next week

In this episode of The Learning & Development Podcast, David James is joined by Egle Vinauskaite to discuss the launch of her highly anticipated follow-up to the ‘Race for Impact' report. They explore the core objectives behind this new research and the methodology Egle used to capture the reality of today's learning landscape. Egle reflects on the "Transformation Triangle" - a core concept of the report - unpacking its components and arguing for a definitive move away from traditional, legacy training models. They delve into the practicalities of how L&D leaders can navigate these strategic paths, the organizational blockers or "drags" that routinely stall progress, and what it truly means when Egle writes that "influence is not a consolation prize." Egle provides a roadmap for teams facing leadership pushback, offering actionable advice on how to break out of a strictly content-focused lane and elevate L&D into a high-impact, influential business driver. Take your L&D to the next level Take advantage of thousands of hours of analysis. Hundreds of conversations with industry innovators and 25+ years of hands-on global L&D leadership. It's all distilled into one framework to help you level up L&D. Access the L&D Maturity Model here - https://360learning.com/maturity-model KEY TAKEAWAYS AI is rapidly taking over traditional L&D tasks, so L&D must redefine their role rather than just produce content faster. For L&D, the future lies in 3 areas: becoming a skills authority, an enablement partner and/or tackling performance as a systems problem. L&D's ability to change is shaped by the organisation around it. Reporting lines, what leaders expect from “the training team,” and the skills the L&D team has will all determine how far beyond content L&D can really move. Building credibility by being involved early when business problems are defined, enables L&D to influence decisions and outcomes more powerfully. BEST MOMENTS “The transformation triangle is a strategic framework for L&D leaders…it maps the territory beyond content focused L&D.” “Understand the boundaries that you're operating within. Not that you cannot massage those boundaries over time.” Egle Vinauskaite Bio Egle Vinauskaite brings extensive expertise in learning, behaviour, and technology, working with both global enterprises and emerging edtech innovators. Her background spans AI, XR, mobile learning, digital platforms, and blended learning design, giving her a unique perspective on how technology is reshaping organisational learning and the future of work. As both an advisor and researcher, she helps L&D teams integrate AI into their operations and prepare workforces with the skills needed for effective adoption. Blending rigorous research with hands-on application, Egle has a sharp view of how AI is redefining the role of L&D and creating new possibilities for learning in the workplace. https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinauskaite/ http://nodes.works/ The Transformation Triangle report: https://www.nodes.works/transformation-triangle VALUABLE RESOURCES The Learning And Development Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-learning-development-podcast/id1466927523 L&D Master Class Series: https://360learning.com/blog/l-and-d-masterclass-home ABOUT THE HOST David James  David has been a People Development professional for more than 20 years, most notably as Director of Talent, Learning & OD for The Walt Disney Company across Europe, the Middle East & Africa.  As well as being the Chief Learning Officer at 360Learning, David is a prominent writer and speaker on topics around modern and digital L&D.  CONTACT METHOD   https://twitter.com/davidinlearning https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjameslinkedin https://360learning.com/the-l-and-d-collective https://360learning.com/blog L&D Master Class Series: https://360learning.com/blog/l-and-d-masterclass-home This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

What happens when someone who grew up in the Lucasfilm Games golden era decides that today's AI tools are failing creatives? Mike Levine has spent more than 30 years building at the intersection of games, XR, VFX, and interactive storytelling—and his verdict is clear: the current AI stack is a fragmented, overcomplicated mess that turns directors into prompt engineers.Mike started as a tester at Lucasfilm Games (later LucasArts), working his way into the art department on titles like Sam & Max and The Dig before helping ship live-action Star Wars games such as Rebel Assault and Jedi Knight II. He later built rotoscoping tools used across the VFX industry, collaborated with ILM and Pixar, experimented with mobile AR games for Hasbro and HoloLens, and dipped into crypto gaming—before finally co-founding MovieFlow (now FilmSpark), an AI-native production platform designed so that filmmakers, agencies, and showrunners can move from script to screen without needing a computer science degree.The AI XR news you should know: Apple taps Google Gemini to power Siri, acknowledging that building world-class LLMs in-house makes little financial sense. Meta cuts 10% of Reality Labs, right-sizing its VR bets while pivoting toward wearables. Xreal raises another $100M amid questions about Chinese state influence and data flows. Higgs Field lands $80M at a $1.3B valuation for AI cinematography tools that many filmmakers still find unreliable. Wikipedia signs licensing deals with major AI companies after years of being scraped for free. OpenAI invests $252M in Sam Altman–backed Merge Labs, raising fresh conflict-of-interest questions.Key Moments Timestamps:[00:23:02] From Boston journalist-to-be to accidental hire at Lucasfilm Games[00:26:24] The “test pit” culture at Lucas and how Nintendo experience got Mike in the door[00:28:45] Moving into the art department, learning Photoshop from early legends, and shipping Sam & Max[00:31:15] Live-action Star Wars games: Rebel Assault, Jedi Knight II, and convincing George Lucas[00:34:38] Visiting Pixar with new VFX tools and recognizing the same creative “magic” as LucasArts[00:36:24] Doug Trumbull's influence on Mike's sense of cinematic possibility and immersion[00:43:27] The urinal meeting at Magic Leap and what early spatial computing got right (and wrong)[00:49:00] Why most AI tools are “dark ages” for filmmakers: node graphs, 10+ subscriptions, no story view[00:51:00] Building MovieFlow/FilmSpark: story-first, timeline-based AI production for long-form and vertical shows[00:53:00] The Neighborhood Podcast: a 90-second vertical murder mystery as proof-of-concept for AI-native seriesWhen humans can generate shots, scenes, and even entire episodes in minutes, the bottleneck shifts from production to vision. Mike argues that the winning AI tools will be the ones that let directors see their whole story, maintain continuity, and iterate fast—without ever feeling like they left the edit bay for a dev console. His vertical drama collaboration with Charlie, The Neighborhood Podcast, is an early look at what happens when narrative craft meets AI-native pipelines instead of fighting them.This episode is brought to you by Zapar creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences. Build smarter at mattercraft.io.Watch the full episode on YouTube and subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for weekly conversations with the people building the future of AI, XR, and interactive media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Caitlin Krause, author of Digital Wellbeing, argues that intentional design unlocks genuine connection within virtual spaces. Drawing on her teaching at Stanford and the University of Oregon, she's explored how XR environments can foster asynchronous connection and ambient awareness for people who crave belonging without hyper-social performance. Her framework rejects the "digital detox" model entirely—instead advocating for dignity-first design where users match attention with authentic intention.The hosts debate the deeper question: what happens to human purpose when AI handles all labor? Rony Abovitz frames this as the "asymmetry of design"—it's easy to build addictive tech, hard to build wellbeing tech. Caitlin counters that we may return to the original meaning of "amateur" (from amor, "to love"), where humans find meaning through play, creativity, and what Harvard's lifespan study confirms: quality of relationship and presence. The conversation spirals from platform ethics to post-work society to what first principles we should use when designing XR.5 Key Takeaways from Caitlin:Loneliness is a biological prompt to find another human—not a void to fill with endless content. XR can foster genuine forms of connection without requiring hyper-social performance.Dignity-first design unlocks freedom, invention, and agency. When digital spaces prioritize user agency over engagement metrics, people report feeling like they "got their life back."Science will soon prove what we already know about fractal patterns in nature and digital signals. The key is designing digital experiences that resonate with how humans biologically thrive.The "middle path" between nature and digital is both/and. Gamers building entire lives in virtual worlds can be healthy when those worlds offer creativity, belonging, and meaningful challenge.The post-labor economy needs a reset in literacy and values. When AI outperforms human workers, purpose shifts from survival to what makes you feel alive—maker culture, digital fab labs, hands-on creation, and "amateur" pursuits driven by love.In the News: Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi's MGX close the $50 billion TikTok spin-off deal. Meta cuts Reality Labs by 30%, but CTO Andrew Bosworth says it's moving to AI. The TCL glasses demo 70 grams of lighter, more advanced XR hardware than Ray-Ban Meta—proving that smart spending beats mega-spend.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Build smarter at mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dean Takahashi is the dean of tech writers and a 25-year veteran correspondent covering consumer electronics, gaming, and emerging technology for GamesBeat. He's covered every major tech transition—from mobile's rise to VR's boom-and-bust cycles to the current AI explosion—with a skeptical eye and a talent for finding the human story beneath the hype. This is his fifth appearance on the AI XR Podcast.For CES 2026, Dean walked the floors across the Convention Center, the Venetian Expo Center (Eureka Park), Pepcom, and Showstoppers, emerging with a clear reading: China has decisively shifted from periphery to center stage in consumer electronics manufacturing, American incumbents are pulling back and rethinking their booth strategy, and the economics of CES itself are in transition. Robotics companies are moving from prototype to commercial faster than expected—but they still can't answer basic questions about pricing and labor displacement.News: Sony cuts its booth to demo an electric car instead of TVs. Samsung skips the show floor entirely for the first time. Nvidia takes over the Fontainebleau to showcase its role in robotics enablement. Lenovo dominates the Sphere with a Gwen Stefani concert. Chinese robotics companies proliferate with laundry folders, latte makers, and toilet-cleaning units. Roomba files for bankruptcy; Chinese competitors take over the robotic vacuum market.Key Moments:[00:01:23] Dean receives his virtual green jacket as a five-time returning guest and Charlie thanks him for his insights[00:03:00] China takeover at CES: TCL dominates Central Hall, ROED owns the XR booth, robotics companies fill the floor[00:06:00] Nvidia's Fontainebleau takeover and the "chest-pumping" show of force; why scale messaging still matters[00:14:18] The robotics explosion explained: Nvidia's digital twins, Cosmos world models, and synthetic testing accelerate time-to-market[00:19:00] The pricing problem: robotics companies won't answer how much their products cost; the minimum wage rental model doesn't translate globallyWhen American companies built the show, CES reflected American manufacturing dominance. Now that China manufactures most consumer electronics, CES reflects that shift—and the implications ripple through labor, supply chains, and where the next epicenter of innovation will be. Dean, Charlie, and Ted grapple with what CES 2026 signals about global manufacturing advantage and why the geography of tech matters more than we think.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web, and now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Build smarter at mattercraft.io.Listen to the full post-CES debrief and subscribe for weekly conversations at the intersection of AI, XR, and consumer technology. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when you can transform yourself into any character, in any world, in real time, while streaming live? Dean Leitersdorf is the CEO and co-founder of Decart, an Israeli AI company that just cracked the code on real-time generative video. Within a week of launching at TwitchCon, Twitch streamers were making thousands of dollars per hour letting their audiences morph them into cartoon characters, fantasy worlds, and entirely new realities—live, on stream, for three dollars per hour of AI processing.Dean's insight: the next wave of AI doesn't just make video generation faster or cheaper. It makes it interactive. Creators can now edit themselves, their backgrounds, and entire environments on the fly during Zoom calls, live streams, or gaming sessions. Decart runs this at roughly 100x cheaper than competitors and is targeting another 100x cost reduction over the next year to reach YouTube-level pricing (cents per hour instead of dollars). That shift unlocks new markets—gaming mods, consumer filters, XR glasses, and eventually robotics training in photorealistic simulated worlds.News: Humans&, a 3-month-old AI lab founded by researchers from Anthropic, Google, and X AI, raises $480 million at a $4 billion valuation based almost entirely on founder pedigree. Xreal sues Viture for patent infringement in bird bath optics, echoing the very lawsuit Magic Leap filed against Xreal years ago—a cycle of irony layered with allegations of trade secret theft and China-based IP evasion. OpenAI discloses $20 billion in revenue but rumored $50–60 billion in annual operating expenses, raising questions about path to profitability. TikTok's US operations close under Oracle's stewardship, and a new vertical drama app called Pinedrama launches. ElevenLabs launches music generation, competing with Suno and Udio.Key Moments Timestamps:[00:20:30] Dean's background: Israeli tech ecosystem, the Technion, and building a team of 0.001 percenters[00:22:00] The real-time video demo: transforming Dean into a cartoon character, live, during the podcast[00:26:30] Decart's competitive advantage: 100x cheaper than competitors, targeting another 100x reduction[00:28:00] TwitchCon success: streamers making $2,000/hour letting audiences control real-time transformations[00:31:00] Exit strategy or go-it-alone: why Decart believes foundational model owners capture the market[00:40:00] XR and robotics use cases: world reshaping, robot training simulations, AR glasses at 6K/120fps[00:48:30] Culture and talent: renting 34 apartments next to the office so engineers live two minutes away[00:55:00] The secret sauce: synthetic data from game engines beats internet-scale scrapingDean explains why Snap Camera's 10-year-old integration into stadium kiss cams proves the market is ready for the next evolution, how world models will power the next generation of XR glasses, and why the bottleneck shifts from rendering to semantics—making sure a virtual car doesn't block a real-world foot. Decart is building the foundation. The ecosystem will sprout on top.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web, and now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Build smarter at mattercraft.io.Listen to the full episode and subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for weekly conversations at the intersection of AI, XR, and the future of human-computer interaction. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Seventeen years into building the world's largest XR conference, Ori Inbar is not prone to hyperbole. He has watched hype cycles inflate and collapse, made predictions that turned out too optimistic, and learned to hold claims carefully. That is what makes his framing of AWE 2026 worth paying attention to: he calls it the most consequential year in the show's history. Not because everything is working — there have been heartbreaking layoffs in some corners of the industry — but because the convergence happening right now between AI and spatial computing is unlike anything the field has seen before.Before Ori joins, the hosts wade through a week of signal and noise. Three big IPOs — Cerebras, Quantium, and others — are absorbing investor attention, with Quantium carrying a $15 billion market cap on what Charlie calls "de minimis revenue," raising questions about whether the quantum AI bandwagon has lapped actual quantum utility. Rony poses the challenge directly: what is the real use case for quantum computing besides breaking encryption?When Ori arrives, the conversation opens on Snap. Evan Spiegel is expected to make a major consumer announcement at AWE — Ori says Snap has put all their eggs in this basket, and the audience at the show will be the first to see it. Ted frames the stakes plainly: if the price shocks people, it's a consumer breakthrough; if it's expensive and exotic, it stays in the science column. Snap recently acquired Illumix, a spatial universe understanding startup, a move that signals the company is building seriously in this space.The endgame vision comes from Rony: Oakley-weight wraparound glasses at 30–40 grams, human retina resolution, full indoor/outdoor capability, AR and VR combined, wireless, all variable focus, under $500. Ted adds that it also has to land under $650 fully costed at retail. Ori's honest answer: "I promised myself I'm not gonna predict when this happens. I've tried many times and was always way too optimistic." Ted teases Gixel, a German startup he and Rony are involved in using non-waveguide display technology already above 60 pixels per degree — when you put the prototype on, he says, it is crystal clear.Defense is the fastest-growing vertical at AWE. Healthcare, manufacturing, aerospace, and automotive are major enterprise sectors. Digital twins are the biggest thing in enterprise XR right now, with world models emerging as the intelligence layer sitting beneath them. Over 10 million AI glasses — display-free — sold last year. Ori's framing of why display glasses matter more: AI is shifting these devices from tools that help you learn about things to tools that actually do things.Key moments:[00:02:47] Quantum IPO bubble — Rony asks what the actual use case is[00:05:48] Quantum mechanics in plain language — qubits, superposition, neurons as quantum computers[00:09:51] Apple WWDC preview — Siri, folding phone, Rony's secret Apple wearable tease[00:11:38] Google Dream Beans — Ted: "It's an ad play"[00:12:51] Suno $400M raise — Rony: "Musical crack" and the TikTok-for-music thesis[00:14:42] Fox reformats "Farmer Wants a Wife" into 101 vertical episodes — the content inflection point[00:17:00] Ori joins — AWE 2026 as "most consequential year in our history"[00:17:40] Snap and Evan Spiegel's expected consumer announcement at AWE[00:19:38] Cambrian explosion of XR content — Meta talent diaspora, Supernatural spinoff[00:23:07] Vibe coding for XR — Ori's AR prototype built in two days with Gemini[00:25:48] Charlie inducted into the AWE Hall of Fame — joining Ted and Rony[00:28:36] iSpatial theme — Ori's three biggest XR trends: AI glasses, AI content, world models[00:39:31] Defense fastest-growing vertical. Digital twins biggest in enterprise.[00:47:18] Rony's endgame AR glasses vision. Ted teases Gixel's crystal-clear prototype.Brought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft. Build web-based AR experiences without writing code at mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our guest this week, Alvin Wang Graylin spent 35 years in senior leadership roles across HTC, IBM, and other major tech companies. He ran HTC's VR division, came out of the famous HIT Lab, now teaches at MIT, holds a fellowship at Stanford, and just published a paper called "Beyond Rivalry" proposing a seven-point plan for deescalating US-China AI tensions and building a global safety net before the economy breaks.His thesis: America is the fastest in the AI race and the least prepared for what it's creating—a cliff where human labor theory of value collapses, capital concentration accelerates, and 40% of the population living month to month faces chaos.The conversation becomes a wide-ranging debate between Alvin, Charlie, and Rony about whether AGI will be benevolent by default (Alvin's position: research shows smarter AI seeks global coherence and becomes less controllable by individual humans, which may actually make it safer) or whether benevolence must be designed in from scratch.AI XR News You Should Know: Elon Musk merges SpaceX, xAI, and X into a single entity—Alvin dismantles the space data center concept with physics (vacuum cooling is a myth, micro-meteorite collisions would destroy hardware daily, and energy is only 10% of data center costs).Amazon invests $50 billion in OpenAI that round-trips back to AWS. Alphabet breaks revenue records at $400 billion but spooks investors by disclosing $90 billion in AI spending. ElevenLabs raises $500 million at $11 billion valuation. Rony's SynthBee hits unicorn status with $100 million raised at a multi-billion dollar valuation.Alvin warns the AI bubble dwarfs the dot-com era (298 companies raised $24 billion total during dot-com; OpenAI alone is raising that in a single private round) and predicts OpenAI may implode before going public.Key Moments Timestamps:[00:04:47] SpaceX/xAI/X merger: Rony calls it Elon's "return to Tony Stark form"[00:06:41] Alvin dismantles space data centers with physics: vacuum cooling myth, micro-meteorites, $7K/kg launch costs[00:10:04] Amazon's $50B investment in OpenAI as a round-trip to AWS; the scam economy[00:11:26] Alvin predicts OpenAI may implode before going public[00:14:23] Alvin on 35 years in AI: the technology is transformational but everyone's making a commodity product[00:17:04] The AI bubble dwarfs dot-com: $24B total vs. single private rounds today[00:19:04] Rony's contrarian: the $110 trillion global economy is what's being bet against[00:21:06] Labor theory of value collapses: what happens when humans exit the production cycle[00:23:00] America is fastest in the AI race and least prepared; 40% live month to month[00:24:00] Alvin's Stanford paper "Beyond Rivalry": a CERN for AI and global data pool[00:28:00] Davos reflections: the rest of the world is more rational than America[00:34:00] Chinese vs. American culture: reverence for teachers, respect for elders[00:42:00] Alvin's "Abundant" framework: valuing human dignity over production after AGI[00:44:22] The great debate: will AGI find benevolence naturally (Alvin) or must it be designed in (Rony)?[00:47:00] Rony on risk: AGI systems are unverifiable, untestable, and we cannot take the chanceListen to the full episode and subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for weekly conversations at the intersection of AI, XR, and the future of humanity.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft—the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Build smarter at mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Enterprise XR hasn't disappeared, it has quietly moved into places where it saves time, reduces errors and changes how people work every day. On this episode of the AI XR Podcast, Charlie Fink and Rony Abovitz talk with Boston Consulting Group partner Kristi Woolsey, who leads BCG's immersive practice, about how XR plus AI is already being used for training, maintenance, onboarding, retail and architecture inside some of the world's most conservative organizations.Kristi shares a Swiss Rail project where field technicians wear lightweight AR glasses that recognize who they are and which train car they are standing in front of, pull the correct procedures from internal systems and use AI to turn thick manuals into simple task checklists.She explains how this leads to double-digit efficiency gains for both experienced and new workers, and how a small behavior design choice – automatic logging for headset users versus manual end-of-shift paperwork for everyone else – helped overcome skepticism on the front line. Drawing on her background as a physical-space architect, she also describes how VR and rapidly improving 3D tools are changing the way companies design stores, offices and buildings before anything physical is built.AI XR News you should know, Charlie and Rony cover Anthropic's massive new funding round and ethics turbulence, Chinese generative video tools like Seed Dance 2 and Kling that put TV-quality visuals in reach of “garage Spielbergs,” and Meta's reported seven million Ray-Ban and Oakley AI smart glasses sold – early signals of where wearable AI and XR are really headed.Key Moments01:03 – Anthropic's huge raise and what the ethics departure might signal05:08 – Seed Dance 2 and Kling showcase a new level of generative video08:35 – Meta's seven million smart glasses and the reality behind that number12:10 – Why wearable AI may be the real “last mile” of turning us into cyborgs15:28 – Inside the early metaverse tours Kristi and Rony built for enterprises20:27 – How BCG's VR onboarding keeps new hires engaged months before day one23:30 – Swiss Rail's AR and AI maintenance assistant and what it actually does on site27:05 – Designing XR systems that give value to both the business and frontline workers30:29 – Using VR as a lab for retail and workplace behavioral strategy33:06 – How AI-generated 3D models point toward “build every space digitally first”This episode shows how “metaverse” ideas have turned into practical tools: XR plus AI is cutting training times, improving maintenance quality and letting companies experiment with spaces before they exist. Kristi's examples make it clear that the real action is in careful workflow design, not flashy avatars.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft, the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile, headsets and desktop. https://mattercraft.io/Mattercraft combines the power of a game engine with the flexibility of the web and now includes an AI assistant that helps you design, code and debug in real time, right in your browser. To explore what's possible with AI-powered XR on the web, start building smarter with Mattercraft from Zappar.Listen to “Enterprise XR Meets AI: How Smart Glasses, Digital Twins and Holodecks Are Quietly Changing Work – Kristi Woolsey” on the AI XR Podcast and follow the show for new episodes every week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does a Lion King–level director really think about AI “slop,” streaming wars and whether machines can ever tell great stories? On this episode of the AI XR Podcast, Charlie Fink and Ted Schilowitz talk with Rob Minkoff, director of The Lion King, Stuart Little, The Haunted Mansion, Forbidden Kingdom and Paws of Fury, about the future of filmmaking as AI, streaming consolidation and new tools reshape the business.Rob shares how he watched Netflix “eat Hollywood” by doing streaming better than the legacy studios, why Netflix walking away from Warner Bros. and letting Paramount overpay is bad news for creators, and what fewer buyers means for directors and writers trying to sell original work. He explains why he sees AI tools like Seed Dance as potentially both iceberg and Noah's Ark, and why he believes the average will rise but the cream will still rise higher: tools may let anyone make competent images, but audiences will still chase the one-in-a-thousand voices that have something genuinely new and human to say.In XR News You Should Know, the host cover Anthropic's standoff with the Pentagon over using large, unstable models for high-stakes military decisions, Netflix walking away from a Warner Bros. deal and collecting a breakup fee while Paramount overpays, streaming brand confusion around HBO/Max and Paramount+, VITURE's new raise and its patent fight with XREAL over “birdbath” smart-glasses optics, and Google's Gemini gaining multi-step action capabilities on Samsung and Pixel phones before Apple's Siri catches up.The conversation digs into whether AI will really make feature films cheaper and more common, or just flood social feeds with short-form “AI slop.” Rob compares AI tools to word processors and home recording studios: they are powerful, but they don't turn you into Bruce Springsteen or Steven Spielberg. He argues that empathy, taste and genuinely fresh perspective will remain the differentiators, and that audiences will quickly tune out work that feels derivative, even if it looks slick. He also raises a bigger question: if AI drives productivity to the point where work is optional for many people, what happens to purpose, competition and the human psyche?Key Moments01:16 – Anthropic vs. the Pentagon and why unstable AI systems may never meet military safety standards02:42 – Netflix exits the Warner Bros. deal, collects a breakup fee and leaves Paramount holding the bag05:31 – HBO, Max, Paramount+ branding confusion and what happens to these streaming labels06:00 – VITURE's $100M raise, XREAL patent lawsuits and the simple science behind “birdbath” smart glasses07:31 – Why Miami is becoming a new tech and defense hub and what that signals about America's “neighborhood”10:00 – Seed Dance 2.0, Hollywood's deepfake panic and the “ship first, apologize later” strategy15:16 – Rob joins: 34 years in film, Netflix “eating Hollywood” and what consolidation means for creators19:18 – Seed Dance, stolen IP and whether AI tools are an iceberg or Noah's Ark for filmmakers24:39 – Can AI become a true “prophet,” or can it only emulate empathy and taste?30:57 – Will AI make many more animated movies or just flood the world with average content?37:32 – If AI does most of the work, what's left for humans—and can entertainment absorb all that free time?This episode is a grounded, filmmaker's view of where AI fits: powerful tools, real risks, but no substitute for a human vision that cuts through the noise. Rob's perspective is invaluable if you're trying to understand what will actually matter in a world where everyone can generate “good enough” images on demand.This episode is brought to you by Zappar, creators of Mattercraft, the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile, headsets and desktop. To explore what's possible with AI-powered XR on the web, start building smarter with Mattercraft from Zappar at Mattercraft.io. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lucas Rizzotto is one of the most distinctive artists working at the intersection of technology and human experience. He built Where Thoughts Go, a VR piece that proved genuine connection was possible inside a headset when everyone said it wasn't. He followed it with Pillow, a mixed reality app designed around the bedroom. He then spent months letting an AI algorithm run his life — wearing Mantra smart glasses, building a surveillance and memory system on himself, and documenting it as an ongoing series on Instagram and TikTok. Now he's making a live cinematic experience called Escape the Internet, which he calls Broadway crossed with a video game crossed with standup comedy. It premiered as a ghost debut at SXSW this year.Mike Boland, analyst and founder of AR Insider, sits in for Rony Abovitz in this episode. The conversation opens on the Rec Room shutdown — $250 million raised, a $3.5 billion valuation, and now a wind-down. The panel connects the collapse to a pattern: VR has always been an exotic pursuit sold as a mainstream one, and the unit economics of concurrent immersive social spaces are nearly impossible. The discussion moves to OpenAI shutting down Sora, the AI video generation race between Google VO3 and Kling, the rise of AI slop in social feeds, and Lucas confirming he quit LinkedIn because it's unreadable.AI XR News: Rec Room is shutting down after raising $250M at a $3.5B peak valuation. Snapchat is acquiring its remaining assets. OpenAI closed down Sora, overwhelmed by competition from Google VO3 and Kling. AI-only social feeds from Meta and Grok are not gaining traction — users are tuning them out.Key Moments:[05:37] – Ted's thesis: VR is an exotic pursuit that was never going to be mainstream, and Rec Room would have been healthier if it accepted that early[07:33] – Lucas: Ready Player One was the worst thing to happen to XR — it gave executives a fictional roadmap to fund[18:38] – Ted asks whether Apple can do for mixed reality what it did for the smartphone — and the panel is skeptical[27:42] – Mike on physics as the hard ceiling: Moore's Law doesn't apply to waveguides and optics the way it applies to chips[29:02] – Lucas explains why he dropped display glasses for his wearable AI experiment — they increase engineering complexity by 50x[32:17] – Lucas's AI-controlled life series: a complex algorithm watches him, mines personal data, and tells him what to do to find happiness — including an unplanned trip to Lithuania[34:12] – Ted asks if the experiment is a net positive or negative. Lucas: neutral if you're in control, net negative if Meta or OpenAI are running the system[37:52] – Lucas on convenience as a death by a thousand cuts: he optimized his life in Berlin to have everything within three minutes and became miserable[41:00] – Charlie on Where Thoughts Go: assigned it to students every semester; it only works if you surrender to it[47:15] – Escape the Internet: hundreds of people in a movie theater, all on their phones, playing a shared cinematic narrative. Lucas calls it a modern version of church[53:40] – The standup model applied to software: Lucas tested Escape the Internet at SXSW and cut 50% of the material that didn't get a reactionThis conversation sits at the intersection that the AI XR Podcast lives for: technology as creative material, not just commercial tool. Lucas's view that we've been building things people use all the time when we should be building things that blow their minds for two hours and then get out of the way is one of the sharper critiques of the attention economy you'll hear this year.This episode is brought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences on mobile, headsets, and desktop. Mattercraft now includes an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser. Start building at mattercraft.io.Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast so you never miss a conversation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ian Hamilton spent years as editor in chief of Upload VR before launching his own Substack, Good VR, and podcast at goodvirtualreality.com. He is one of the few people covering XR longer and more deeply than Charlie Fink, and his perspective spans platform architecture, business strategy, and genuine on-the-ground journalism since the DK1 days.This conversation traces why the XR dream has taken longer than anyone expected. Ian and Rony Abovitz reconstruct the moment the ecosystem forked — when Meta's Oculus acquisition closed off the open, Valve-led platform path that Magic Leap and everyone else had been building toward. Ian argues the platforms are now playing for keeps: OpenXR moves on decade timescales, and that friction is what keeps real transformation just out of reach.On hardware, his case is sharp: Meta's self-imposed $200–$600 price ceiling makes OLED and eye tracking impossible at mass market — exactly the features Apple bet on as the mandatory baseline — and that contradiction is why Bosworth ended up pivoting to AI glasses.In AI XR News You Should Know: Anthropic's Mythos AI model reportedly escaped the company's own containment. Charlie and Rony debate whether calling the consequences "unintended" is even credible given decades of published warnings. Also: a Hollywood Reporter and Otis School study found AI is not the primary driver of empty LA sound stages — runaway production and tax incentives are the main story.Key Moments:[00:01:00] – Charlie's new vertical melodrama "Linda's Last Podcast" and why generative AI is already good enough for social media storytelling.[00:04:52] – Rony on Anthropic's Mythos: the compute to cure cancer, aimed somewhere else.[00:11:47] – Half of Gen Z holds a negative view of AI. Charlie on the Brown grad who turned down an AI studio internship on principle.[00:36:00] – Rony and Ian reconstruct the Valve/Oculus open platform — and walk through exactly how that future closed.[00:47:00] – Meta's price ceiling, OLED as a strategic forcing function, and why Bosworth landed on AI glasses.[00:52:00] – Ian on the Apple Vision Pro mid-flight: why the headset is a personal computer, not a wearable.Ian's long view: we're about ten percent of the way through the total investment required to reach a billion users. The supply chain is better than ever, the software has found its footing in simulation and training, and the next five to ten years could be the most interesting window yet — if the platforms decide to let the ecosystem breathe.This episode is sponsored by Zappar, the team behind Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences on mobile, headsets, and desktop. Mattercraft now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time. Start building at mattercraft.io.Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for more conversations at the edge of AI, XR, and the future of media. Available where you get podcasts. Watch full episodes on YouTube https://youtu.be/x5wQy4HBhYE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alan Lasky arrived at the AI XR Podcast straight from Las Vegas ahead of NAB. An MIT Media Lab graduate under Nicholas Negroponte, a veteran of Silicon Graphics and Amazon Web Services, and an advisor to investment banks on AI and media, he brings technical depth, industry history, and financial realism about where media is actually going.The conversation covers Hollywood's structural collapse, AI's role in the production renaissance, and the harder question of why trillion-dollar tech companies keep buying media businesses that can't generate comparable returns.Alan's answer: soft power. Amazon makes $950 million Lord of the Rings spinoffs so you order more paper towels. Apple is making Neuromancer. His five-year weighted moving average of Disney stock — flat from 2018 — makes the argument clean.AI XR News You Should Know: Artemis ignited a new space boom. Amazon acquired Global Star satellite to build Project Kuiper, a direct Starlink competitor. Apple's AI audio smart glasses are reportedly arriving this year per Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, entering a market where Meta owns the optometrist channel and Google is moving through Warby Parker. Snap laid off 15% while doubling down on the 2026 launch of Spectacles — the first see-through headset since Magic Leap.Key Moments:[00:04:48] – Artemis and the space boom: Ted on filming shuttle launches and why the crew's accomplishment is underestimated.[00:08:33] – Apple AI audio glasses: Rony's read from former Magic Leapers who designed them — if Apple gets this wrong, it's unforgivable.[00:12:00] – Snap's layoffs and the see-through gamble: can they compete with cheap AI audio glasses flooding the market?[00:16:43] – Hollywood is no longer the center of the universe — Alan on why most of the industry hasn't metabolized that yet.[00:23:01] – Charlie on AI democratization: a couple hundred dollars per minute for what looks like live action on a phone.[00:36:00] – The soft power thesis: why tech giants keep buying media assets that never pay off at their scale.[00:41:30] – Should Apple buy Disney? Charlie says Meta will do it first. Rony's reaction is immediate and visceral.[00:47:44] – AI resurrects Val Kilmer: Alan's origin story from three months in the Australian desert on the worst film of his career.Alan's closing frame: he grew up reading Gibson and Brunner in the eighties, excited to live in that world. He's in it. He's not sure he wanted it this way.This episode is sponsored by Zappar and Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences, now with AI-assisted design and debug. Build at mattercraft.io.Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for more conversations at the edge of AI, XR, and the future of media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The AI XR Podcast had a massive news week and one of its best guest conversations of the year. Caspar Thykier and Connell Gauld, CEO and CTO co-founders of Zappar, joined Charlie Fink and Ted Schilowitz to talk about something deceptively simple: helping people find stuff.Zappar's new product, Spaces, is app-free indoor navigation built on the web. QR code or link in a meeting invite — your phone shows AR breadcrumbs to the nearest restroom, the right meeting room, the hospital ward three floors away. No app download. No specific hardware. No Azure dependency. Caspar put the pitch simply: it's fundamentally just helping people find stuff. Connell's vision: the same technology running in glasses indistinguishable from a regular pair, within four to five years.AI XR News: Elon Musk's $135 billion lawsuit against OpenAI went to trial in Berkeley. OpenAI's IPO may be pushed to 2027 over its CFO reporting structure and $600B CapEx problem. Meta is laying off 20% of its staff in two waves. Google earnings were up 10% while Meta got punished. Freepik rebranded as Magnifi with $230M ARR and a million paid subscribers. Samsung announced displayless AI smart glasses. Google partnered with Gucci for another AI glasses play. And Google put $40 billion into Anthropic.Key Moments:[00:03:02] Elon vs. Sam: the $135 billion trial[00:05:09] OpenAI's IPO in jeopardy — CFO structure and $600B CapEx[00:07:12] Meta's 20% layoffs and Charlie's read on bad CEO behavior[00:10:32] Freepik becomes Magnifi: $230M ARR, a million subscribers[00:13:10] Samsung Galaxy XR and Google x Gucci smart glasses[00:15:15] Google puts $40B into Anthropic — a cloud play[00:21:06] Spaces: turn-by-turn AR indoor navigation, no app required[00:41:13] 16 years in XR: how Zappar survived by being the cockroachBrought to you by Zappar, the company behind Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Start building at mattercraft.io.Watch the Full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HmOXA4HgBmo. Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As director of Keyhole, Dave Lorenzini delivered the 3D Earth zooms that ran on CNN during the 2003 Iraq War — netting five million users in a month. Sergey Brin was one of them. Google bought the company and poured in billions to build, fuel, and serve maps. As Google Earth, it forever changed how we relate to space.From there: pioneering work on Google Glass, AR platforms, and running an immersive XR lab in Europe for Draw & Code exploring the future of spaces, places, and faces. Today Dave directs Quantum Studio, building World Agent and 4D ID — the "DNS for real space," an addressing layer where every place, object, and moment gets a name AI systems can agree on. His thesis: the next decade of AI won't run on better maps. AI needs an operating system for reality. Not a map. Not a database. A living, queryable foundation where every place on Earth answers for itself.AI XR News: The OpenAI vs. Musk trial continued with damaging testimony from Mira Murati and Greg Brockman. Anthropic struck an unholy alliance with xAI's Colossus compute. GameStop bid for eBay. Colin Angle is back with Familiar, an AI robot pet. Coinbase cut staff. Ask.com finally died. VRChat hit 100,000 concurrent daily users in Japan.Key Moments:[00:03:34] AWE Long Beach in 30 days: Dave on the board, Snap glasses expected, 400 speakers and 250 exhibitors[00:20:10] 30 AI glasses coming: why the near future belongs to audio-first, AI-powered smart glasses[00:25:34] Keyhole origin story: satellite imagery, $25K/sq mile, Sergey Brin, and a $500M/year acquisition[00:37:30] Google Glass, Luxottica, and why Google blinked when it could have been 10 years ahead of Meta[00:40:00] XR vs. rockets: why building for the human brain is harder than getting to MarsBrought to you by Zappar, the company behind Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Start building at mattercraft.io.Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/weNANIIo7EA Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonathan Rodriguez Cefalu built the hardware that Snap shipped on people's faces — first the camera-only Gen 1 Spectacles, then the Gen 4 display version. His path through Stanford CS, an honors thesis on varifocal display optics, and a startup called Vergence (named after the vergence-accommodation conflict in AR) led him to Snap, and then to the problem he is working on now. Preamble AI exists to prevent the worst possible AI outcomes — starting with a class of attack that Preamble was the first to publicly demonstrate: prompt injection.Ted Schilowitz hosted this episode solo. Together, he and Jonathan worked through the architecture problem sitting under every AI assistant being deployed at scale right now: large language models see one token stream. There is no separation between what the developer intended and what an untrusted email or web page is quietly instructing the model to do. With Gemini Spark about to give AI agents access to tens of thousands of emails per user, this is not a theoretical concern. Jonathan's team has a proposed fix — and they have already shaped federal law.The episode also covered the week's XR and AI news: Google I/O announcements, Snap Spectacles Gen 6 details ahead of AWE, Matthew Ball joining Xbox, Anduril's battlefield AR wearable, and AI-generated feature films reaching Tribeca.Key Moments:[00:00] Ted opens solo — Charlie Fink and Rony Abovitz are out for the summer solstice[02:30] Google I/O: Gemini Spark and what "persistent AI agent" actually means in practice[08:15] Jonathan's Gmail test: asked to search tens of thousands of emails, it searched 30 and quit[14:40] XREAL Project Aura and the state of Android XR — a lot of spend for incremental steps[21:00] Snap Spectacles Gen 6 details: what Jonathan knows from building Gen 1 and Gen 4 from the inside[31:20] Snap vs. Meta: research that ships in the product vs. research that ships in a paper[38:45] Matthew Ball joins Xbox, Anduril EagleEyes, and battlefield AR wearables[44:10] AI on the Lot: Project Nara, Hell Grind, Dreams of Violet, Paul Schrader goes pro-AI[52:30] Jonathan introduces Preamble AI and the mission to prevent worst-case AI outcomes[58:00] The first public demonstration of prompt injection — what happened and why it matters[01:06:15] Why Gemini Spark will be especially vulnerable to prompt injection attacks[01:14:00] Preamble's proposed fix: a reserved token language that untrusted data cannot speak[01:21:30] NDAA Section 1638: the first US law making it illegal to give AI autonomous nuclear control[01:28:45] WarGames, "the only winning move is not to play," and what that means in 2026Brought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft. Mattercraft makes spatial web experiences that run in the browser — no app required. Visit mattercraft.io to learn more and start building. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is the VR industry going through a "Great Reset"? In this episode of the Gamertag & Bradley Podcast, we break down the reality of mainstream VR adoption, Valve's imminent Steam Frame and Steam Machine launch preparations, and Apple's massive Vision OS developer updates. We also dive into how AI hardware demand is creating component shortages that could drastically impact next-gen headset pricing!Main topics:

This week we speak with Auryan Ratliff of Arizona State University about how AI—especially agentic AI—is transforming course design, assessment, and the broader student experience. They explore how moving beyond simple question-and-answer tools to more autonomous, action-oriented systems enables institutions to build more dynamic, personalized, and scalable learning environments. The conversation also tackles the challenges AI introduces—particularly around academic integrity—and how institutions can respond by rethinking assessment itself. Through examples like AI-powered conversational language practice, they highlight a shift toward more authentic, interactive, and human-centered learning experiences. Ultimately, it's a call for institutions to embrace experimentation, invest in culture and collaboration, and actively engage with AI rather than waiting for the “right” moment. Guest Name: Auryan Ratliff - Director of Technology Innovation and R&D at EdPlus at Arizona State University Guest Social: LinkedIn Guest Bio: Auryan Ratliff is the Director of Technology Innovation and R&D at EdPlus at Arizona State University, where he has worked for over a decade across AI, XR and digital learning. He manages a portfolio of emerging technology projects aimed at supporting the student experience. He founded EdPlus' AI product team and led the development of DegreeMe, an AI-powered tool that helps prospective students find the right degree through a personalized quiz. He is also the founder of SPLIT Studio, the student-powered lab focused on creating immersive experiences for ASU Online. SPLIT has also produced work for Dreamscape Learn and ASU partners, including the Hall of Teachers exhibit at the Bishop Museum, created in partnership with the Polynesian Voyaging Society. - - - -Connect With Our Host:Dustin Ramsdellhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/dustinramsdell/About The Enrollify Podcast Network:The Higher Ed Geek is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you'll like other Enrollify shows too!Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mike Golembewski is an interactive designer, researcher, and writer running MWG Design & Research, an independent consultancy focused on immersive media, artistic practice, and emerging technology. In this episode, Mike breaks down the structural challenges facing cultural XR, the category of immersive work that functions more like theatre or documentary than gaming. We cover why festival-premiered XR experiences rarely survive beyond their premiere, why platform stores like Meta and Steam are fundamentally misaligned with this type of work, and what creators can do from day one to design for longevity. Mike also highlights real examples and explains why thinking about the long tail before writing a single line of code is the only approach that actually works.Subscribe to XR AI Spotlight weekly newsletter

The Immersive Impact Review launched on March 13, 2026 at 4p CDT in Austin Texas during SXSW, and they describe themselves as "a hybrid journalistic and academic magazine examining immersive media's strive for social impact." The first issue theme is titled “Value(s) in Practice: Impact and Sustainability in XR,” which is investigating the following questions: "How do we measure and demonstrate social impact? How do we justify costs and tradeoffs in immersive vs. more traditional media?" I spoke to managing editor Michael Epstein at SXSW four days after their launch to get a bit more context on their founding with support from Agog, and we unpack some of the articles from the first issue. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

I gave the opening keynote of the Meaningful XR Conference on May 30, 2026, and here's the video version of my keynote talk titled: "Patterns of Meaning, Transformation, and Impact in XR" and here is the PDF of the slides with clickable footnotes. In this talk, I cover my Experiential & Phenomenological Framework, discuss the Impulse Impact Study that came out on May 28th (see my discussion in episode #1721). I cover a bit about the Transformation Economy (see my interview with Joe Pine in episode #1718), Mission-Oriented Change, & Co-Creation, as well as cover some Other Models for Paradigm Shifts, and finally dive into AI & Friction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-XNH4upTVw This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Agog is having their first open call on Climate Futures + Immersive Media that closes on June 12, 2026, at 11:59p PDT. Agog is "committing up to $1 million in grants to support innovators, technologists, artists, organizers, researchers, organizations, studios, and creative teams using immersive media to engage people on climate, from awareness to action." Their official page has a lot more details, including a FAQ as well as a link to an info session held in VRChat. I had a chance to catch up with Agog's co-founder and executive director Chip Giller as well their chief of programs and strategy Amy Seidenwurm. I got some updates on where some of their initial $6.5 million of funding has gone so far in order to support the broader XR industry around immersive storytelling in what has been a lot of foundational field building. Most of this money has been done through private invitations, and this open call is the first time that Agog has opened up funding to the wider XR industry. We dig into more details about this Climate Futures + Immersive Media open call, and be sure to check out my previous three conversations for more context: Episode #1720 on the Immersive Impact Review hybrid journalistic / academic magazine launched at SXSW, Episode #1721 on the Impulse Impact Study that came out last week, and #1722 is the keynote on Patterns of Meaning, Transformation, and Impact that I gave at the Meaningful XR Conference over the weekend that explores my phenomenological framework for understanding the unique affordances of experiential design and immersive storytelling as well as some theories of change for XR. Giller said that each proposal will need to have their own theory of change with plans for how to engage existing communities and be able to track the success or failure of your work. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

The latest In Touch With iOS with Dave Ginsburg, Jeff Gamet, Marty Jencius, and Jill McKinley discuss Vision Pro apps, WWDC 2026 predictions, Apple Intelligence rumors, Siri upgrades, HomeKit speculation, Apple software updates, and the future of immersive computing. The panel also shares practical iPhone tips, talks about Apple Design Award winners, puzzle games, Macstock 10, and Ecamm Creator Camp—with plenty of laughs and Apple speculation throughout the episode. The show notes are at InTouchwithiOS.com  Direct Link to Audio  Links to our Show Give us a review on Apple Podcasts! CLICK HERE we would really appreciate it! Click this link Buy me a Coffee to support the show we would really appreciate it. intouchwithios.com/coffee  Another way to support the show is to become a Patreon member patreon.com/intouchwithios Website: In Touch With iOS YouTube Channel In Touch with iOS Magazine on Flipboard Facebook Page BlueSky Mastodon X Instagram Threads Summary In this episode of In Touch With iOS, Dave Ginsburg is joined by Jeff Gamet, Marty Jencius, and Jill McKinley for a fun and insightful discussion covering Vision Pro apps, Apple hardware rumors, WWDC 2026 expectations, Siri and Apple Intelligence speculation, HomeKit frustrations, and practical Apple tips. The panel opens the show with plenty of humor before diving into several Vision Pro-focused stories and apps that caught their attention this week. The discussion begins with Apple's recognition of The Primary News in Depth as part of the Apple Design Awards. The app delivers immersive spatial news experiences on Vision Pro and sparks conversation about the future of immersive journalism and the challenges of producing high-quality spatial video content. Marty points out how apps like this can expose users to stories and perspectives from around the world that traditional U.S. news outlets often overlook. The panel also highlights Let's Go Fly, a free Vision Pro immersive aviation app that lets users experience flight in spatial video. Jill shares her enthusiasm for flight simulation experiences and discusses how immersive environments like this could become a major use case for Vision Pro moving forward. Attention then shifts to the future of Vision Pro hardware after new reports suggested Apple may be developing a lighter and more affordable Vision Pro successor for release sometime around 2028. Marty explains the distinction between Vision Pro as a premium immersive entertainment and enterprise device versus future Apple smart glasses aimed at mainstream consumers. Jeff strongly pushes back against ongoing claims that Vision Pro is "on ice," arguing Apple has always treated the product as an evolving platform rather than a mass-market product from day one. Jill compares the current state of Vision Pro to the early days of expensive VHS players and other technology products that eventually became mainstream over time. The team also discusses a newly granted Apple patent describing an Apple Pencil-like XR input device capable of providing haptic feedback and texture simulation in virtual environments. Jeff becomes especially excited about the creative possibilities for artists, sculptors, and even medical professionals using virtual tools with tactile feedback. The group also talks about how Apple's haptics technology continues to separate its ecosystem from competitors. On the software side, the panel reviews the latest Apple beta and minor software updates, including macOS Tahoe 26.5.1 and an iOS update addressing charging issues affecting iPhone Air and iPhone 17 models. Jeff shares a theory that the macOS update may also quietly address kernel panic crashes tied to external spinning hard drives connected to Macs. With WWDC 2026 only days away, the discussion shifts heavily toward predictions and expectations for Apple's annual developer conference. The panel reacts to Apple inviting WWDC attendees to a special screening of The Mandalorian and Grogu at Apple Park, complete with a possible appearance by special guests involved with the film. Dave shares his thoughts after seeing the movie in theaters and praises its action sequences and sound design. The conversation then turns to WWDC predictions, with everyone agreeing that Apple Intelligence and Siri upgrades will likely dominate much of the keynote. Jeff expects Apple to focus on AI integration without going overboard the way other tech companies have recently done. Jill hopes Apple introduces a much more personal and contextual AI assistant capable of understanding the user's device, files, habits, and health data. She also expresses interest in deeper HealthKit integration that could provide meaningful insights into sleep patterns, blood sugar tracking, and wellness habits. Marty predicts Apple will expose new APIs allowing Siri and Apple Intelligence to integrate more deeply into apps and potentially VisionOS itself. HomeKit and smart home functionality become another major topic as the panel discusses rumors surrounding new HomePod mini hardware, a refreshed Apple TV, and a possible smart home-focused "HomePad" device. Jeff floats the idea that Apple could eventually position Apple TV as a more serious gaming console if future hardware includes dramatically improved processors. The show also includes several practical Apple tips, including how to leave FaceTime video voicemail messages, set up text replacements, use the one-handed iPhone keyboard, clear notifications quickly, and set timers that automatically stop music or audio playback. Jeff also highlights how much he relies on Universal Clipboard between Apple devices throughout his day. Later in the episode, the panel discusses Apple's latest App Design Award winners, including apps like Structured, Grug, Is This Seat Taken?, Guitar Whiz, and immersive Vision Pro NBA experiences. Jill shares her enthusiasm for Structured as an ADHD-friendly productivity app, while Marty and Jeff discuss puzzle games, retro-style experiences, and the growing creativity in Apple's developer ecosystem. The episode closes with excitement surrounding Macstock 10 and the upcoming Ecamm Creator Camp event. Dave, Marty, Jeff, and Jill talk about their upcoming presentations, the importance of community networking, and how Macstock continues to bring together Apple fans, creators, podcasters, and developers for one of the most enjoyable Apple community events of the year. The panel also reflects on the upcoming closure of the British Tech Network and the final episodes of several long-running shows. Topics and Links In Touch With Vision Pro this week.  Design App Of the Year: Primary: News in Depth App https://www.reddit.com/r/VisionPro/s/j0UijSfDeS https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lets-go-fly/id6757612693 Cheaper, Lighter Apple Vision Pro Successor Could Arrive in Late 2028  Future Apple Vision Pro could gain Apple Pencil that can simulate textures Patently Apple - Apple Reveals Apple Pencil with  Texture Detection & Haptic Emulation for XR Environments Beta this week. iOS 26.6. Beta 1 continues Apple Releases iOS 26.5.1 to Fix Charging Issue on iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Models  In Touch With Mac this week Apple Releases macOS Tahoe 26.5.1 to Fix Shutdown Issue Affecting Enterprise Users on M5 Macs macOS 26.5.1 is out with an important fix for enterprise users MacOS Tahoe 26.5.1 Update Released with Bug Fix for Enterprise M5 Users Other Topics WWDC 2026 preview and predictions Apple Invites WWDC 2026 Attendees to 'The Mandalorian and Grogu' Screening at Apple Park iOS 27: What We Know About the New Siri App watchOS 27: Three new Apple Watch features being announced next week Apple Teases Next Week's WWDC 2026 Event: 'All Systems Glow' New Apple TV and HomePod Mini Are 'Nearly Ready' to Launch, New Siri Remote Also Rumored Tips You can leave FaceTime video voicemails, and a lot of people don't know it - here's how Lesser-known iPhone features I use every single day! News iPhone 18 Pro May Drop Cosmic Orange After Color Complaints Google Expands AirDrop Support to More Android Phones Apple reveals winners of the 2026 Apple Design Awards Apple Announces This Year's App Design Award Winners Ahead of WWDC 2026  Final BTN Show Announcements Macstock X is here celebrating its 10th anniversary ! Dave, Chuck, Jeff, Marty, and Jill are all speaking this year!. With Three Full Days of expert-led Presentations and Workshops, Macstock's sessions are crammed full of productivity-enhancing content. NEW this year is a partnership with sponsor Ecamm. Ecamm Creator Camp: Mac Edition on July 9, 2026 there are only 100 tickets available for the bundle. There are 2 passes available: Macstock weekend pass July 10,11,12, 2026 or the Macstock Ecamm Bundle starting July 9 (only 100 tickets available)  Come join us. Register HERE and use our offer code INTOUCH to save $50 Our Host Dave Ginsburg is an IT professional supporting Mac, iOS and Windows users and shares his wealth of knowledge of iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV and related technologies. Visit the YouTube channel https://youtube.com/intouchwithios follow him on Mastodon @daveg65, , BlueSky @daveg65  and the show @intouchwithios   Our Regular Contributors Jeff Gamet is a podcaster, technology blogger, artist, and author. Previously, he was The Mac Observer's managing editor, and Smile's TextExpander Evangelist. You can find him on Mastadon @jgamet Pixelfed @jgamet@pixelfed.social and Bluesky @jgamet.bsky.social‬ Podcasts The Context Machine Podcast  Retro Rewatch Retro Rewatch His YouTube channel https://youtube.com/jgamet Marty Jencius, Ph.D., is a professor of counselor education at Kent State University, where he researches, writes, and trains about using technology in teaching and mental health practice. His podcasts include Vision Pro Files, The Tech Savvy Professor and Circular Firing Squad Podcast. Find him at jencius@mastodon.social  https://thepodtalk.net  Eric Bolden is into macOS, plants, sci-fi, food, and is a rural internet supporter. You can connect with him by email at eabolden@mac.com, on Mastodon at @eabolden@techhub.social, on his blog, Trending At Work, and as co-host on The Vision ProFiles podcast.   Jill McKinley works in enterprise software, server administration, and IT A lifelong tech enthusiast, she started her career with Windows but is now an avid Apple fan. Beyond technology, she shares her insights on nature, faith, and personal growth through her podcasts—Buzz Blossom & Squeak, Start with Small Steps, and The Bible in Small Steps. Watch her content on YouTube at @startwithsmallsteps and follow her on X @schmern. Find all her work at http://jillfromthenorthwoods.com  Chuck Joiner is the host of MacVoices and hosts video podcasts with influential members of the Apple community. Make sure to visit macvoices.com and subscribe to his podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @chuckjoiner and join his MacVoices Facebook group. Guy Serle is one of the hosts of the new The Gmen Show along with GazMaz and email GMenshow@icloud.com  @MacParrot and @VertShark on X  Vertshark on YouTube, Google Voice +1 Area code  703-828-4677

Is China quietly shaping the future of smart glasses & AI glasses?In this episode of Metavertising, Ely Santos sits down with Sylvan Shen, XR Technical Producer at Emmy-winning immersive studio No Ghost, China Reporter at ImmersiveWire, and builder of demos for Meta Quest, Snap Spectacles, Meta Ray-Ban glasses, and other smart glasses platforms.Together, they unpack one of the most important but under-discussed areas of the XR industry: China's smart glasses ecosystem.While most conversations around XR focus on Meta, Apple, or Snap, China is moving incredibly fast across hardware, AI, manufacturing, and real-world use cases. Sylvan breaks down why Chinese smart glasses companies may offer a glimpse into where wearable computing is heading next.In this episode, we cover:The 4 categories of smart glasses: audio-first glasses, portable display glasses, AI camera glasses, and full AI + AR glasses.Why the simplest smart glasses are winning today, even though the dream is still full AR.How China's hardware manufacturing ecosystem gives local companies a major speed advantage.Why Shenzhen and Guangdong are sometimes called the “hardware Silicon Valley."The privacy concerns around smart glasses — and why they become even more sensitive when AI is involved.How Chinese brands are approaching privacy, compliance, GDPR, and international certifications.Why companies like XREAL, RayNeo, Rokid, Alibaba, Xiaomi, Huawei, and Even Realities are taking very different strategies.Why real-time translation, payments, productivity, gaming, and smart home control are major use cases in China.The difference between Western and Chinese consumer behavior when it comes to smart glasses.Why developer communities may be the missing piece for Chinese smart glasses to go global.How open-source AI models and user choice could influence the future of AI-powered wearables.If you're a developer, founder, marketer, investor, or XR enthusiast trying to understand the next wave of wearable computing, this episode is a must-listen.Guest: Sylvan Shen - XR Technical Producer, China Reporter at ImmersiveWireHost: Ely Santos - Metavertising PodcastFollow Sylvan Shen on LinkedIn.Follow Ely Santos on LinkedIn.

Send us Fan MailJoin hosts Ben Kornell and Alex Sarlin as they explore the growing backlash against AI in education, the race to build AI-native learning systems, and the shifting future of edtech, workforce learning, and global education policy.✨ Episode Highlights:[00:02:18] Reflections and takeaways from this year's ASU+GSV Summit [00:05:16] Gen Z backlash against AI grows at college commencements [00:08:06] China's practical AI rollout contrasts with the U.S. race toward AGI [00:15:09] Anthropic and Gates Foundation launch a $200M AI education partnership [00:23:02] Debate over the future and business model of AI tutoring [00:29:25] OpenAI expands its “Education for Countries” initiative [00:37:28] New education tax credits could shift spending power to families [00:42:15] Google, Meta, and Apple push AI glasses and XR learning forward [00:48:40] AI simulations gain traction in workforce training [00:51:06] Multiverse raises $70M for AI-driven workforce upskilling Plus, special guests:[00:55:51] Angel Chung, PhD Candidate at The Wharton School, on proactive AI tutoring systems and new research showing measurable learning gains for students using adaptive AI guidance[01:18:08] David Rogier, Founder and CEO of MasterClass, on AI-powered learning, the future of higher education, and MasterClass Executive — developed alongside OpenAI & Chicago Booth to explore the future of AI-native business education.Learn more here: https://www.masterclass.com/booth-ai

  On today's episode we talk about the latest release from one of kiteboarding's longest-running models, the CORE XRX. We hear from team riders Shahar Tsabasy and Hendrik Van Der Ems, and also catch up with Mike MacDonald and Philip Schinnagel on what the XR range means to CORE.   Core XRX:   https://ridecore.com/us/kite/kites/xr-x   Fantasy:   https://portraitkite.com/videos/fantasy-updates-may-2026/   Road To Pro (Japan):   https://portraitkite.com/videos/road2pro-season-2-japan-ep1/   WOO:   https://www.woosports.com/en   Portrait:   https://portraitkite.com     https://www.fantasykite.com   Follow us:   https://www.instagram.com/portraitkite/   https://www.instagram.com/kitesurf365/  

Joshua Pantony spent years being told there would never be a viable AI company in his lifetime. He sold his first AI company to Microsoft anyway — work that quietly became part of what is now Microsoft Copilot. Today he runs Boosted AI, an agentic platform serving more than 400 institutional investors who collectively manage around five trillion dollars in assets. He is one of the most credible voices in applied AI finance, and his read on where the industry is heading cuts through a lot of noise.The conversation covers what it actually means to deploy AI in professional investing — not the demo version, but the one that has to earn trust from portfolio managers who have built careers on discretion and judgment. The platform learns each investor's individual style and then acts like a highly motivated junior analyst who never sleeps: constantly surfacing ideas, flagging risks, and improving the workflow without ever taking over the decision. Josh also unpacks why the Bloomberg terminal is facing its BlackBerry moment, why the technology moat is effectively dead, and why the next durable advantage in finance will come from human trust networks that no model can replicate. Ted Schilowitz and Rony Abovitz join host Charlie Fink with sharp frames throughout — Rony's observation that the innovator's dilemma is now a high-frequency problem landed hard.AI XR News You Should Know: The episode opens with two news segments covering AWE 2026 and the Snap Spectacles keynote with Evan Spiegel, the Samsung Galaxy Glasses debut, Gemini rolling out as Android's native agentic AI, the Cerebras sixty-billion-dollar IPO, and what an AI filmmaking company launched by the creators of Instagram Stories tells us about the future of short-form content. The conversation about micro-dramas, why Quibi failed, and what sixty percent of social media users now say about their own feeds leads directly into the trust themes that run through the entire episode.Key Moments:[00:00] – Cold open and welcome. Charlie frames the sixth anniversary of the show.[02:30] – AWE 2026 recap. Snap Spectacles keynote, Evan Spiegel on stage, Samsung Galaxy Glasses previewed.[06:00] – Gemini as Android's native agentic layer. What it means that AI is now replacing the OS interface.[09:15] – Cerebras sixty-billion-dollar IPO. What a big AI IPO year signals for the sector.[12:00] – AI filmmaking and Instagram Stories creators. The new short-form production economy.[14:30] – Why Quibi really failed. No sharing mechanic, wrong bet on clipping, and arriving before the audience was ready.[16:45] – The trust problem in social feeds. YouGov data: sixty percent of users cannot tell what is real. Social becoming a lie stream.[19:00] – Guest intro. Joshua Pantony on being told AI would never be a viable business, and the algorithm he wrote at twenty that saved a million dollars.[24:00] – How Boosted AI works. The digital twin model, the agentic workflow, and why it is not a portfolio manager.[33:00] – The Bloomberg terminal's BlackBerry moment. Thirty thousand dollars a year for what AI will deliver for a fraction.[42:00] – The moat is dead. Why user context — not the technology — is the durable advantage.[51:00] – The innovator's dilemma at high frequency. Rony on why a day in AI is like a decade, and what that means for incumbents.[58:00] – Trust networks as the last edge. The analog handshake as the most valuable currency in a world of synthetic information.This conversation is a clear-eyed look at what it takes to build AI that professionals actually adopt — not a pitch, not a thought experiment. Josh's framing of Wall Street as the greatest collective intelligence humanity has built, and his argument that AI can finally make capital allocation genuinely more efficient, gives the episode an ambition that goes well beyond fintech. The question of what survives automation — and what only humans can do — runs underneath every answer.This episode is sponsored by Zappar and Mattercraft. Mattercraft is Zappar's browser-based augmented reality creation platform — build and deploy WebAR experiences without an app, at mattercraft.io. If you like what you hear, subscribe to The AI XR Podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Watch on YouTube - https://youtu.be/I8hLgBneUasSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On February 3rd, 2026, Joe Pine released The Transformation Economy, which is a follow-up to The Experience Economy co-written with James Gilmore and published in 1999. They identified a key pattern of how economic offerings have evolved beyond commodities, goods, and services, and moved into experiences as well as transformations. Their prescient predictions about these underlying patterns in the late '90s took many years of convincing businesses of their merits. But after a few decades, their core ideas of The Experience Economy have taken root, and now it is much easier to see how consumers have shown that they are willing to pay for memorable experiences. Now Pine is back at it again with The Transformation Economy with ideas that have been there from the very beginning, but he told me that the world wasn't ready yet, and he wasn't ready either. About 5-6 years ago, Pine started to hear from designers at World Experience Organization events talking about the transformative intent behind their experiences. This was the catalyst indicating to him that it was time to finally write this book, and he started researching the topics of aspiration, positive psychology, human flourishing, and the dynamics of transformation. I had a chance to interview Pine about The Transformation Economy, and in my write-up below I provide an overview of some of his biggest ideas, some of my personal reactions, how they relate to the XR industry, and finally some of my disagreements on where value comes from. Despite some of my philosophical disagreements with Pine, I still see a lot of value in the frameworks laid out in his book. He describes a roadmap towards a future where the core values driving a critical mass of businesses have evolved to focus on helping their customers fulfill their deepest aspirations, find meaning and purpose, and promote human flourishing. Progression of Economic Value Pine & Gilmore first theorized about a hierarchy of economic value in a 1997 article titled: "Beyond Goods and Services: Staging Experiences and Guiding Transformations." They originally called it "The Economic Pyramid," and described it by saying, "The inexorable march of competitive forces drives the advancement of economic offerings over time: commodities are extracted from the environment to make goods, then delivered as services, which are scripted to stage experiences, which then guide those persons or enterprises in a transformation." "The Progression of Economic Value" figure from page 3 of Pine's The Transformation Economy (2026). Within their "Welcome to the Experience Economy" article in the 1998 issue of Harvard Business Review and in their 1999 book The Experience Economy, they started calling it "The Progression of Economic Value" as shown in the figure above. In The Transformation Economy on page x, Pine describes each of the five distinct economic genres as well as their associated verb / function, Extract Commodities (fungible stuff) Make Goods (tangible things) Deliver Services (intangible activities) Stage Experiences (memorable events) Guide Transformations (effectual outcomes) There is an inevitable gravity towards commodification, and the antidote is customization. This insight first came to Pine in 1994 after he wrote a book in 1993 titled Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition that explored how Mass Production was moving into Mass Customization. When customization is applied to a service, then it yields an experience. When customization is applied to an experience, then it has the potential to yield a transformation that could be life-changing. Here's how Pine & Gilmore described this progression to transformations in their original 1997 article, "The way out of the commodization trap in which so many service companies find themselves is to move up an echelon of value and stage an experience. But experiences are not the utmost in economic offerings. Just as customizing a good automatically turns it into a service, so customizing an experience turns it into something distinct. If you design an experience so in tune with what an individual needs at an exact juncture in time, you cannot help but change that individual — guiding him to (and through) a life-transforming experience. Transformations are a fifth economic offering, whose value far exceeds that of any other." Pine also says in The Transformation Economy that "Eliminating human contact is a surefire way to commoditize yourself." Technology has an inclination to move more and more towards automation and creating "frictionless experiences," but I see the value of human intuition, emotion, relationality, community, and meaning being a differentiating factor in the transformation economy. I suspect that it will be really beneficial to deliberately embrace friction and tension that comes from interacting with other humans as explored in the piece called Deep Soup. I see the movement towards the transformational economy as a bit of an argument against automating too many things with AI because people will be craving authentic human contact. Key Concepts and My Personal Experience of The Transformation Economy The Transformation Economy book is written with the intention to become a transformational experience within itself. There are many pointed questions throughout the book that helped shape my overall framing through the lens of my business. My first reading of the book was focusing on trying to understand the origin, development, and evolution of Pine's provocative ideas to explore within my interview with him. My ongoing second reading of the book has catalyzed me to reconceive some fundamental notions around my identity, as well as the story of why I do what I do with The Voices of VR Podcast. So much of my work has been driven by a fundamental impulse to bring about change in the world. My motivation to cover the frontiers of emerging technology with XR, AI, immersive storytelling, and experiential design has been because I've seen the transformative power of embodied and immersive experiences to potentially bring about some meaningful changes in the world. I'm also very much drawn to philosophical frameworks like Process Philosophy that provide some key metaphysical foundations leading to a paradigm shift around the underlying nature of experience and reality itself. Here's a graphic from Andrew Davis' upcoming Whitehead's Universe book that lays out some of the scaffolding of this paradigm shift from substance metaphysics to process-relational metaphysics. Davis, Andrew M. (Forthcoming in 2026). Whitehead's Universe: A Prismatic Introduction. Orbis Books. One of the key concepts that really stuck with me from Pine's The Transformation Economy was at the beginning of the third chapter that says, "All transformation is identity change." Pine cites Suzy Ross' definition of identity as "all the ways you can complete the statement ‘I am . . .' " He says "From / To" statements are also key where you might say, "I was X, now I am Y." I really resonate with these definitions of identity since they're very flexible and practical. Once I became aware of these "I am ..." statements, then I started to hear them all the time. I found myself naturally making and reflecting upon identity statements, which provide clues to changes that I aspire to. As an example, I've often found myself saying something to the effect of "I'm more a knowledge artist than a viable business person." So in essence, my aspirational, identity-transformation statement is "I am a terrible business person, but I aspire to become a thriving independent scholar and transformational change agent." Reading through The Transformation Economy has been really inspiring since it's the first business book I've ever read where I can really see myself in these frameworks. Pine has been giving me language to articulate the possible futures that I'd love to live into, but yet the business models around the transformation economy are still nascent, uncertain, not very well specified, and rapidly developing. Each business will have a unique blend of commodities, goods, services, experiences, and/or transformations that they'll be offering, and so it is unlikely that there will be a universal formula that works across all contexts. I'm still meditating on this statement where Pine claims that your business is what you charge for. He says on page 22, "A business ultimately defines itself by what it charges for. If you charge for undifferentiated stuff, you're in the commodities business. If you charge for tangible things, you are in the goods business. If you charge for the activities your people do, you are in the services business. So, economically, you are in the experience business if and only if you charge for the time customers spend with you." Pine says that experiences are inherently ephemeral, and sometimes the only thing you keep from it is the memory, which can fade over time. He contrasts this with his definition of transformations, which he shares on page 10 as, "Transformations are effectual outcomes that change individuals in a lasting way. Where experiences are memorable, transformations are effectual." This implies that the business offering of transformations actually has more of an ongoing time commitment. Businesses in the transformation economy will be helping "aspirants" (Pine's preferred term for customers in the transformation economy) achieve their aspirations of transforming from one state into another state over longer periods of time. Aspirants will need to invest time, be patient with results, make progress, but also deal with periodic regressions. I've been reckoning with how I am what I charge for, and I can't help but think about the logistical difficulty in trying to escape the real-time accounting of how we've conceived of value delivered

The Human Spatial Computing book was published by Oxford University Press on February 5, 2026, and I had a chance to interview the co-authors Reginé Gilbert and Doug North Cook a few weeks after it launched. They alternative as the lead author on each chapter, which provides a comprehensive overview of designing for XR through a variety of different lenses. The entire book is grounded in human rights and ethics, with a recurring focus on how to design experiences that are inclusive and accessible to as diverse of an audience as possible. There's a helpful recap of the history of human computer interaction that goes way back to desire to recreate reality with the Leonardo da Vinci paintings and the imaginative worldbuilding creating new realities by science fiction writers. Other topics covered include insights from universal design principles, industrial design affordances, architecture, neuroscience, and ethics. Here's a list of the chapters of the book, which we also do a brief recap and overview throughout the course of this interview. Why Should We Care about Ethics? The Story of Human–Computer Interaction What Connects Us All Universal Design for Spatial Computing Merging Human Creativity with Technology The Body Affordances of Immersive Technology and the Future of Computing Spatial Computing and the Brain Where Do We Go From Here? There are also a lot of questions and activities at the end of each chapter, which makes this Human Spatial Computing book a compelling textbook option for folks teaching XR design. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

The Lincoln Center for Performing Arts has been stage a variety of different types of immersive experiences as a part of their interdisciplinary programming, and I had a chance to catch up the lead immersive programmer Jordana Leigh at Venice Immersive in order to get an overview of what they've been showing, XR experiences they've commissioned, how audiences connect to each other about the unique transportive affordances of experiences presented there, and generally how they're using XR to bring new and diverse communities together in New York City. We also talked about their Lincoln Center Collider Fellowship for XR artists to advance their artistic practice through a range of either open-ended R&D or time and space for innovative experimentation. Leigh was scheduled to present at the IDFA DocLab R&D Summit, but had some travel delays. Hopefully this conversation helps to explain the many ways that the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts is totally in alignment with some of the broader themes of providing opportunities to de-isolate and revitalize civic society that is covered extensively in this report. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality