AI, AR, VR and Grumpy Old Men

0:18S1

Hello everyone! Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from February the 13th, 2024. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have you with us listening maybe through Virgin Australia Radio, Associated Stations of Australia or perhaps the Community Radio Network. There is also the podcast. All you need to do is search for those two words talking tech and down can come the program usually on a Tuesday afternoon just after it's been produced. Another option is to ask your Siri device or smart speaker to play Vision Australia Radio talking tech podcast, Vision Australia Radio Talking Tech podcast.

With me, someone who can explain all this tech stuff really well: Vision Australia's national advisor on access technology, David Woodbridge. David, we've been talking a lot about AI, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality. Perhaps it's time, as you suggest, to step back a bit and look at other developments that are going to be happening over the coming period of time, 6 to 12 months or so. And certainly they're all well on the way. But before that, even why don't we have another in that series of product minutes? We've got something else from the Vision store to tell us about.

01:38S2

Yes, indeed. So this one is called the All Terrain Cane. So as the name implies, it's a white cane for mobility and orientation. And in this case, the all terrain bit comes into the fact that you can go quite bush with it. So you can go and have a walk in a forest, a park, or anywhere else you might do, because it's actually designed to not only be a cane, uh, with a rollerball type tip. Uh, it's also designed to work as a walking stuff. And what that means is that if you're going down a very steep trail and you need to, you know, balance a bit more, you can actually extend the cane out at the top of it up to in all measurements, round about six feet. And it's got a proper grip so you can put your hand around the grip. 

So normally on a cane you've got like a golf club style handle. This one's also got a round part on it where you can grip it like a normal walking stick. So you can have it both for balance and stability. And then you can put it back into, if you like, your normal size length and use it as a white cane. It's really good when you're out and about because it's made of titanium and the ball is fairly heavy. I probably wouldn't suggest it for urban use. So every day traveling to and from work and school and so on. But that's a bit of a bush basher. It's great for getting around in those areas where you need a bit of extra strength on your cane for normal cane use, but like I also said, almost use it as a walking staff as well.

03:10S1

More expensive than the standard canes it is.

03:13S2

Yeah, I think remember it's round about $180 ish. But then again, some of the kinds that are coming at these days, um, like the no jab cane is also fairly pricey, but it's because it's built so sturdily, and the fact it's almost like a two canes in one, as in a walking staff in a in a white cane for mobility. I guess that's why it's a bit more pricey.

03:35S1

Where are they made?

03:36S2

They're actually made in the United States. I think specifically it's from Utah, but I know it's definitely developed in the United States.

03:45S1

Terrific. There you go. So that's the all terrain cane available from the vision store at Vision Australia. Shop - dot - Vision Australia - dot - org....  shop.visionaustralia.org. Now let's get into some of these areas of computing. The 5G network has been out around Australia for quite some time, growing over recent years. You're anticipating a lot more expansion and adoption.

04:15S2

Particularly when you come down to it's all about how all the internet stuff gets connected. So the first one I've got on my list is about 5G. And when you think about 5G is you want fast connectivity between a device and the rest of the internet or smart city infrastructure. And then guess where that comes up? Important is when you start talking about autonomous cars. And I don't mean fully self-driving ones, although that may be thinking maybe a decade, but even just general autonomous things like autonomous trains and all that sort of stuff, they need that type of connectivity to keep working correctly. So that's a development that needs to still keep happening and better connectivity. So you don't want black spots or anything else.

05:03S1

What do you what would you really mean by smart cities. How do you describe that?

05:07S2

Smart cities are things where things are all tied together. So you've got, so smart cities also contain self-driving cars. They also contain information kiosks. They public transport. It's just a way of looking at the way that cities are developing and seeing how giving your own personal device, like your smart device, as in your phone or your watch, can interact with the the city-type-scape around you. Even things like indoor navigation, for example.

05:40S1

Tell us about edge computing and how that could impact on our society.

05:45S2

So edge computing is one of those things we talk with these days about most things being on the cloud, and it's easy to access and so on and so on. Edge computing is where you've got local type sensors. And what I mean by that is that this is the internet of things. So, you might have sensors that are particularly monitoring things, in a business or at home. And it needs to, you know, connect quite quickly because we always talk about latency, how long it takes for a device to sort of go and connect to something and then get an answer back and vice versa. So that's actually really important because if you got a sensor, for example, that's an alarm system. Maybe you don't want it to take 10sec to alert people to an alarm. You want it to be very instant. 

So the other type of things that are constantly being worked on to make sure that when sensors get activated, that there's not a long delay in the response if required from, you know, emergency services and that sort of stuff.

06:44S1

Cyber security has become very much front of mind over the last year or two, with a couple of really bad mishaps in Australia.

06:52S2

That's right. And look, I'm not going to go in this too much because this is like I we've we've been this has been shoved down our throats for the last 6 to 12 months. But uh, for me personally, it's always a good idea to keep reminding yourself that as soon as you get on the internet superhighway, you're fair game for fairly nasty people. And it's always really important to, um, secure your own data and that of your families and so on. Uh, so it's just to be aware of all the hazards you can get involved in, uh, as soon as you, you know, swim in the, the deep internet somewhere.

07:27S1

Planners and designers are being a bit smarter now, and very much in focus is sustainable technology solutions.

07:36S2

And the reason why I bought this one up is because. And Apple goes on about this quite a lot, which is their environmental impact. They're trying to reduce it to what they call carbon zero. And the reason why I was thinking about this, because I didn't realise that data centres can go between 500,000, up to 1,000,000ft² of space. If you can imagine a ten storey building that's got 100,000ft² per floor, or the other adage, which I know we don't like sometimes, [?] is if you can imagine a 1 million square space data center which does exist, by the way, taking up 17 football fields, or for my way of thinking, my local shopping center is about the same size as a data centre. Now, when you think about data centers, they've got servers and control systems, backup systems, air conditioning, water supply, all that sort of stuff. The better you can make that greener, the better off the whole planet is. 

So that's why I was thinking more about sustainability, is because these things are really chewing up, and using power. And we have to have some way of offsetting all that stuff that's using, plus all the carbon stuff. It might be shifting into the atmosphere as well.

08:54S1

Now, what about in the area of health care technology? There's massive changes going to happen there over the coming years, isn't there?

09:01S2

That's right. We've already seen it now with telehealth. You've mentioned that to me before we start the program - scripts, I can get electronic scripts. And the other part, important part about health is all the research behind the scenes that goes into health. And I'm thinking in particular genetics, whether it's genetics to do with some sort of genetic type disease, if you want to put it that way, or you might have a disability that's got a particular gene that's caused it, and there's currently therapy research going on to reduce that genes impact and so on. Then that becomes extremely important. And for some people, you know, if I mentioned, well, if you had a choice between, you know, health slash genetics and let's say, edge computing, I know which one some people would actually taken that would be healthy all the time.

09:52S1

Hmm. Now, we touched on this one a little earlier when we were talking about cyber security. But the whole issue of data privacy is really important, isn't it?

10:02S2

That's right. So I tend to sort of see cyber security - as in, you know, the big picture. One, privacy to me is particularly on you, I guess, these days on your smartphone and your smart speakers. It's what information do you want developers and companies to have? Do they need all your information about your date of birth and who your parents were and where you lived, and all that sort of stuff? So I don't think we need to be more and more aware these days that sometimes people or companies don't need all the information. So again, it's a really good idea to sit back and have a bit of a think before you start giving out your life story, if you like.

10:42S1

Fittingly, you found an article is tech bad or am I getting into Grumpy Old Man status?

10:49S2

Yeah that's right. So this was down my alley. This journalist is apparently only 36 years old, and he was complaining about the fact that, you know, when he gets his Bluetooth headset out, it doesn't always connect when he goes to play a streaming service on his smart speaker, which sometimes doesn't connect properly. And then he said, what about the good old days where you could just grab an old record player out and, you know, put the needle on the record and have it played to you and that sort of stuff. And I thought, you know what? He's got a bit of a point, because I remember the old days that I used to put in this game way back. Now just put a tape in a tape recorder and play some music or a bit more further down the track, you know, CD and a CD player and play some music, a whole album, rather than mucking about with playlists. You know, the oven where you don't have to control it via your smart app, all that sort of stuff. 

And I really do think sometimes taking the smart home stuff or the internet of things, we can go a little bit too far, and I just sometimes think it's nice to have a good old manual backup, which I think, on and off. We've talked for the years anyway.

11:58S1

Tell us about blue Sky. Maybe. Are we seeing the latter days of Twitter or X?

12:05S2

No, I don't think so. So this is an alternative to the Twitter platform. And originally I think it was last year they had this by invitation only. There is an app for it. I'm pretty sure there must be one for Android. I checked it out on my iPhone. It looks very much like an app that's wrapped around a web interface, and it's very messy to go through because you've got like, like and reply and everything else. Per post in blue Sky, it's a bit messy to navigate, so unless I knew there was some specific media organizations or other people using it, I don't think I'm going to be too bothered with it because I tend to use minor and Twitter slash X all the time. So unless blue sky improves dramatically, not, you know, from both things to the content and how easy it is to navigate. I don't think I'll be interested, but I just thought at least I'll let people know that it's now available and you don't need to wait for an invite. You can go in there and and sign up and start using it if you wish.

13:11S1

Tell us what bad is bad.

13:14S2

So bad was the, if you like, the the original I like ChatGPT except Bob was from Google where now Google has transformed Bard into Gemini, and apparently the way you get access to it, at least on iOS, is that you run your Google app and then apparently right at the top of the app. And we don't have this in Australia because I just checked today, you'll have two tabs Search and Gemini. So search is your normal Google search Gemini. Whereas you know you can ask it questions and that sort of stuff like a ChatGPT or a copilot type session. So it's really offering you both Google search and the chat GPT functionality as well. So as soon as we get in Australia, I'll let people know. But just let you know that if you hear people talking about Gemini, it's the new, improved version of the original Google.

14:07S1

But what platforms will that be on?

14:10S2

It'll be on everything.

14:12S1

Well, now, just before we go, a reminder of where people can find details of what we've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program.

14:20S2

You can check out my blog site, which is David Woodbridge - dot - podbean - dot- com.  

14:26S1

davidwoodbridge.podbean.com to write to the program.

14:32S2

You can write to me at Vision Australia where I work, which is David Woodbridge sounds at Vision Australia  - dot- org.

14:39S1

davidwoodbridge@visionaustralia.org ... This has been Talking Tech - with me has been Vision Australia's national advisor on access technology David Woodbridge. I'm Stephen Jolley. Take care. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.