Katarina Gospic - Social VR
She joined MTF’s guest interviewer Andy Swann live on stage at Music Tech Fest Stockholm to talk about how we can inhabit virtual worlds and how that immersive sociality can affect our perception and our brains.
Andy Swann is an author and public speaker and host of the LifeWork podcast.
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Music:
Broken Radios by Stanley Gurvich, used under licence from Artlist.io
reCreation by airtone (c) copyright 2019
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
AI Transcription
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, mtf, vr, world, catarina, technology, podcast, removes, absolutely, brain, virtual reality, music, space, balance, sweden, virtual, specialist, guess, neuroscientist, called
SPEAKERS
Andy Swann, Andrew Dubber, Katarina Gospic
Andrew Dubber
Hi, I’m Dubber. I’m the director of Music Tech Fest, and this is the MTF podcast, slight change of gear. This week, I’m going to take you back to the interview stage at MTF Stockholm. Katarina Gospic is a virtual reality brain specialist. She’s an author, a medical doctor, brain researcher and the director of neuroscience at VR and AR company spin view global. Katarina is a champion of manufactured realities. And you could say she’s something of an optimist, with some caveats about the future that we can create. Now that it’s possible to construct and share entirely immersive experiences. Katarina joined Andy Swann, host of the life work podcast, and one of our guests interviewers at Music Tech fest.com in September 2018. And while that might seem like a good while ago, most of us are still catching up with the state of what’s possible in virtual worlds. So to explain it all from MTF labs.com here’s Andy swans interview with Dr. Katarina Gospic. Enjoy.
Andy Swann
Hi, Katarina. Hi. Hi, how are you?
Katarina Gospic
I’m great. How are you?
Andy Swann
I’m very well. Thank you. So so I was browsing your website this morning? Yeah. To do a bit of research, and I don’t know where to start full time author, list of professions, that blows my mind. But But you’re here today to particularly talk about the use of social VR.
Katarina Gospic
Yeah, so that’s actually what I do. So my road here, has not been straight, as it usually is, I started to study physiology, then I went to med school, then I did a study. And then I started my own business did lots of different things. And today, I’m working with a company called spin view global. And I’m the director of neuroscience there. So it’s really about finding new applications for VR and how we can use it. For example, if you’re in London, you’re in Las Vegas, and you’re in Stockholm, you can just put on your glasses, and you will meet in the same virtual space. So it kind of removes distances. But it also kind of how to say removes who you are. So in VR, you can be whoever you want to be.
Andy Swann
Absolutely, I mean, that that has a clear link with neuroscience. So it’s the kind of thing I mean, I guess there must be positive and negative angles that you know, with a full immersion that you have to you have to look at.
Katarina Gospic
Yeah. And it’s like with everything right, and some things are good, some things are bad. And then my new book that actually came out now in Swedish is about Brain Balance. So it goes into the topic, how we should balance our life in relation to technology. But that doesn’t mean that all technology is bad, or that we shouldn’t use it or kind of prevent the development that’s going on, right? It’s just about using it in a smart way. And when it comes to the good things, it’s really like you can scale yourself. For example, I’ve been working as a keynote speaker for lots of years giving lots of lectures. But sometimes people can’t attend lectures, or people can’t attend this talk. Because they are on the other side of the world. But then for example, you can livestream this lecture into the virtual world. And then you can actually hang out with some friends in there, you know, that couldn’t attend, either. So you can still talk about what’s going on during the lecture. But you’re somewhere else.
Andy Swann
Absolutely. And funnily enough, the last interview I did on stage a while ago, we were talking about how innovation is diversity of perspective. And I guess when you’re creating their, you know, a virtual environment, you can bring in the greatest diversity, because it doesn’t actually matter where people physically are.
Katarina Gospic
Exactly. And it also becomes diverse in the sense that how to say you don’t know which sex someone is, or what race or if you have some sort of disability IRL, or whatever, you’re just your avatar, and you can become as you know, handsome as you want. Everyone can be a rock star.
Andy Swann
So, which is perfect, because, you know, particularly when we’re talking about the tech world and the music industry, yeah, to two industries that are clashing together here, but have traditionally and are not in here at all. This is the most diverse group of people I’ve ever met. But, but in in kind of wider terms. I’ve always been known for being slightly misogynistic or male first. Yeah. And actually something like this. Actually, if you’re removing that kind of identifier, I guess that removes some of the barriers to participation that have have gone with it.
Katarina Gospic
Yeah, exactly. And I actually had a meeting yesterday with two very intelligent women. And then one of them said, Wow, it would be great entering this world as a man because no one would know right? And kind of how to say, feel the benefits sometimes or remove them. Disadvantages that that you can experience as a woman so you never really know who someone is in the virtual world. And I think the positive thing with that is that you can actually focus on someone’s knowledge and kind of boost their meritocracy like where you actually started. listening to what someone has to say, instead of just judging them for these more shallow things.
Andy Swann
Absolutely. I saw I have plenty more questions, but I think I see the videos ready to go. See what we’re what we’re talking about.
Katarina Gospic
Okay, I can just show you so this video will illustrate how it can look in this space and you will meet my colleague Chris. Welcome to a Gorriti your ticket to securely connecting near coworkers, sales leads or students in virtual reality. My name is Chris, let me show you around the space. You can do everything you need from the control panel. But to have a look, start with inviting a friend, just click the invite. Select your friend. There you are. Hi, Virginie. Hi, Chris. Once you’re with your friends, you can do things like watch movies together just like at home or in a theatre, or meet in 360 worlds for a change of scenery. Research shows that learning in virtual reality improves focus and memory recall, which means your students will learn better, customers will remember you better, and teammates will be more focused in meetings. For these reasons. We have built a Gordie as a platform with tonnes of features to empower your business, including the ability to survey your enrolled friends, show presentations to groups of people like in the real world, view 360 objects in space, go to private spaces to have discussions, record special metrics around voice and even live measurement of heart rate variability and stress to allow you to check the effectiveness of your mindfulness practice. The space can be customised to your needs, whether that be in an enchanted forest or even an outer space. Most importantly, we custom built spaces such that your data is secure, and can even run on your own internal servers.
Andy Swann
As they say, so I want to just bring it bring it out to you guys out there at the moment who who saw that and thought, wow, this is super exciting. Who saw that and thought they were terrified? And who’s who’s unsure of their feelings on on this kind of virtual reality? Okay, actually, I think that’s probably representative of where we are with VR as a whole. So, so I was at a conference earlier this week where we were talking a lot about about immersion. And, and there was an expert on virtual reality. And he was talking about the the barriers to adoption of it. And it is this kind of kind of confusion of is it really useful? Yeah, how do I know it’s the right thing to do? And people are scared of this idea of kind of switching off one reality and fully immersing in another Yes. neuroscientist? How do you get past that? That kind of barrier to adoption?
Katarina Gospic
So I would say you just need to try it up. So maybe that’s a question as well, how many of you have tried it? Yeah. Yeah, something like this meeting people in there talking to people. So that’s kind of the thing, right? And if we look at these hooks, a traditional curve, so it’s early adopters, and such, it requires had say, a huge amount of curiosity. And we heard it or insult a CEO, right? Who said she was very curious. And I think those people drives the development, they try it and they kind of seed in new applications. And then how to say once everyone starts trying a then it becomes super cool. Everyone else wants to try it out as well. And I just think that if you have a very cool experience in VR, which is actually hard to say, rather easy to fix, because it is super fun. It It is super cool. Like get this summer, our CTO came to Sweden, he spaced in Los Angeles, and he has worked a lot with Hollywood and such. And in the beginning of this summer, you actually recorded a movie with Keanu Reeves and a movie called john wick three. So they had made like 15 minutes for commercial purposes to Yeah, show off this movie in VR. And then when he put the foot on the goggles on us, and we saw the scenes that were from like a warehouse, and he was coming as this cool guy, and you know, doing all these cool things. I mean, you were just standing then everyone was like dropping their jobs and being like, wow, this is super cool. So it’s really like being this fly on the wall observing something, and it activates you in so many more dimensions than just how to say looking at the screen. Because today, if we talk about technology on the downside, we are so distracted today. And when I started to how to say talk about this topic, it was said that we are disturbed every 11th Minute. And today that sounded like two three minutes. And it’s also said that it takes up to 25 minutes to regain focus. And so when we working with our phones or our computers we have like so many things going on there bit like in here, right? And it’s very distractive but in VR once you actually put on the goggles, you can’t watch your Facebook or having 20 tabs open
Andy Swann
Yeah, you’re fully immersed. And it’s it, I guess, part of understanding it is actually doing it with purpose, rather than just doing it as a gimmick, just instead of saying, Yeah, well, here’s what VR does, like, look at the purpose. I mean, when we first started speaking, yeah, five minutes ago, when you mentioned the idea of having a virtual conference that anyone in the world could plug into. And actually, all of a sudden, it removes that kind of identifier and the bias where people get judged for their gender or any other factor, except immediately, I was like, Oh, shit, yeah, there’s something that Yeah, so yeah, I get that,
Katarina Gospic
just like that. And, for example, yesterday, I met this house, a medical company, and they are discussing how to say how drugs work, but also as collecting information from different cases, concerning patients and stuff like that. And sometimes they want like the top specialist in a very particular disease to meet. But these specialists are usually spread around the whole world, right? And so if they’re going to show pictures and stuff like that, they’re usually a bit distracted when they have their video conferences. But if they can go into this space, and everyone is kind of in a circle, and they can just, you know, look at their pictures of this disease, or documents or presentations. It’s a totally different experience.
Andy Swann
Absolutely. And I’ve had I’ve had a similar thing this week, actually, there’s some guys here from from the town or shopping. They’re up in the playground, and they have this this visualisation board, which is a 3d rendering of a city, I think they call it urban planner or something. Yeah, actually, in their town, they have a version of the universe live rendered in data that’s pulled from all the servers and all the satellite information in the world. So they have like, absolutely everything. And they render up and they put stereoscopic goggles on you, actually, you’re in the universe, and you’re going everywhere, wow, incredible. But again, you know, they bring, because it’s virtual, they can bring NASA in, and they can bring, you know, astronauts around the world and other academics in and they bring them all literally focused on this one bank of service they have in in a small town in Sweden, and all of a sudden, the world’s best minds can converge and do some really powerful work. Yeah. And I guess that’s, that’s the application for this kind of technology.
Katarina Gospic
Exactly. And also how to say how you can scale yourself. Because if I give a lecture like this, I mean, there is no amount of people that can watch it. But if I record myself as an avatar, giving a lecture, and then I control it with artificial intelligence, it means that I can scale myself and I can clone myself. So I can teach as many people as you want dried, and I can work as I’m sleeping. And, and I mean, that’s also a way to convey information to a huge amount of people and that we can kind of get this information from specialists no matter what you’re good at.
Andy Swann
Absolutely. So So as a neuroscientist, I want to bring this back to you. Now and your thoughts as a neuroscientists, you know, you’re clearly in favour of this technology, you see any, any potential downsides or obstacles that we need to avoid?
Katarina Gospic
Yeah, I mean, I really think it’s about I’d say, doing too much of something. I mean, the basic principle for the brain, and the body is always balance. And I mean, that’s kind of what we see if we take the technology, that’s how to say, used a lot today, like cell phones or computers. I mean, we know that it’s not good to spend too much time with this, because we become like, I’d say, we’ve become more rude. And we can lose our empathy. And, you know, we lose the skills concerning social interactions and such. So yeah, of course, there are downsides with this as well.
Andy Swann
And so we just need to be careful to avoid them. And and and I guess actually, an even nicer segue is, you know, you talk about in your in your book Brain Balance. Yeah. So tell us is that a similar principle?
Katarina Gospic
For sure. It’s the same thing with everything. I mean, water is really good for you. But if you drink too much, you can die. It’s the same thing with food, or how say whatever we do if you exercise too much, or something. So it’s always about in Sweden, we say lagom, which means that in the middle, in the middle,
Andy Swann
yes, absolutely. So so well, I mean, what what’s your advice, we have a room full of amazing, building full of amazingly passionate people around the areas of music and tech, some people would be working almost 24 hours a day to make this event happen. Yeah, to hack things to do to run the labs. What what’s your what’s your advice to everyone in making sure they can achieve Brain Balance?
Katarina Gospic
So there are actually three very simple advice. They’re not so sexy, because usually people expect me to say that they should buy some sort of berries from the Himalayas or something like that. But it’s really about eating, sleeping and exercising, and then a bit of love. And you come a far away with that.
Andy Swann
Absolutely. I guess everybody’s been getting all of that this weekend. Got it? Yes. So tell us about what else you do. So so you have you have your role with the with the social VR company? Yeah. And how does that fit in into your general work? Because obviously, you know, you’re an author as well. You do talks around the world. How do you how do you find that? That balance?
Katarina Gospic
Yeah, so you mean the Brain Balance or
Andy Swann
any kind of balance any
Katarina Gospic
kind of balance? No, but I would actually say I’m very good at following my own advice. When it comes, comes to sleeping, exercising, and eating and love as well. And I think everyone who likes to achieve, and the previous speaker were also mentioning that she came from sports, and so did I. And then you also learn that you can’t exercise too much your escape the food or not sleep, because you can’t just perform. And it’s the same thing with the brain. And also to reach Brain Balance, you need to get your body to tag along. Because for some weird reason, lots of people think that the brain and the head, this is a separate entity and that the body is something else. But I mean, they’re so in tune with each other. So it’s it’s important to balance both in order to be strong.
Andy Swann
Absolutely. And so so I was just thinking while you’re talking about one of the taglines of Music Tech Fest, yeah, we’re not predicting the future where we’re creating it. Yeah. And and you’re clearly working to create the future. Yeah. Link to neuroscience and link to immersion, and how people learn and how they communicate and how they work. Yeah. So I’m interested to know, your how you see this developing? Yeah. What’s that? What’s like the 510 year outlook on on this this technology? And how it will be adopted? And how will be used?
Katarina Gospic
Yeah, I for sure, I think that we will have more of a virtual self. And I mean, it’s a very philosophical question, what is real, but once you’re in that world, you can’t say it’s not real, right? Because it’s happening. Yeah, so I think that will be a very strong thing to transform into that world. And then I also think we will probably be a bit polarised, so that will be one part of our lives. But also, as technology can start doing all the boring things in life. And we would also have more time to be creative and to be IRL, going to events like this interacting with people and such. So I hope that we will kind of be less stressed and the expression that saying that we have no time will disappear, because technology will kind of help us with all the boring stuff and logistics. And I mean, we’re already seeing it today in terms of how we buy food or clothes, or something like that. And, for example, in the future, I don’t think I will be doing any shopping because my body will be scanned, and you know, a computer will know what fits me and what I like, and then they will be like, Yeah, do you like this outfit? And before I know it, they know that I like it. And you know, it will provide me with the things that I need. In terms of transportation, I hope we will teleport ourselves as well, and the kind of removing that. But before we will have these How to say self driven cars and buses, which were actually already today.
Andy Swann
So So who’s ready for teleportation? So genuine question to you guys, though, who hears that kind of projection? Who feels excited about being able to adopt that technology? Is that you think that will be useful? You’re kind of ready for it? Or who thinks it’ll be a challenge to kind of change your your behaviours and adoption. Okay, so a bit a bit of a bit of a balance there again, in the room, I think I think again, we’re background to that fact that there’s this complete kind of kind of mix in people’s kind of approach to VR. But I guess that’s the same with any emerging technology. Yeah.
Katarina Gospic
And that’s kind of how we are wired as well, because we go back to the brain a bit, we have this structure called amygdala, which makes us scared. It has had survival values before. But then we also had a small group of crazy people who were very curious. And if we look at our evolutionary history, there were actually just maybe a few hundred or a few thousand people that crossed from Africa to the Arabian Peninsula. And then from there, we kind of took over the whole world. So thanks to those brave people, we could expand. But the people who stayed they were like, No, I don’t want to cross because you know, I can get eaten or drown or something like that. So again, these early adaptors are the crazy people and they drive development. But the ones who are first are also, of course, the first to die, maybe because they take huge risks. So there’s also benefit being like the 10th or something.
Andy Swann
Absolutely. So so the innovators are creating the future, which is great, because that’s exactly what’s happening in this in this building right now. I don’t if you’ve taken a walk around, but yeah, there’s a lot of kind of immersive technology in here today. So so that’s really exciting. So we’re running out of time now. Yeah, I just have one one question for you. So there’s an academic school of thought that would say that we may already be living in a simulation. We’re not aware of it. Yeah. Do you think we should stop worrying about adopting technology because we have no idea whether we’re already in the matrix or not?
Katarina Gospic
Yeah, I mean, again, that’s a very headstay philosophical question and had to say a long time ago, I was in contact with the gaming industry in Sweden. So then we had these discussions all the time. And yeah, maybe we are in a simulation, but had to say, I just think that we as human beings should not be afraid. And I think we should embrace technology and development and always try to be the best versions of ourselves to drive them development and performance.
Andy Swann
Amazing humans as pioneers. I think that that applies to everybody here. And it certainly certainly applies to you. So I just want to thank you so much for spending some time with us, Katarina. I’ve really appreciated it. It’s been so much fun. I’m sorry for putting you on the spot with a lot of philosophy. But I know your answer has been incredible. Go buy a book, everybody. And in the meantime, make some noise. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.
Andrew Dubber
That’s Katarina Gospic with Andy Swann live from the stage at MTF Stockholm in September 2018. And he’s the host of the life work podcast. He’s an author and a public speaker, you can find out all about Andy at andyswann.io. That’s Swan with two Ns. And that’s the MTF podcast for this week. If you’re interested in things like innovation, new developments in technology, ai accessibility, wearables, IoT, VR, ar gaming, how we can use our intelligence, humanity and ethics and our shared skills to make the world a better place. And especially if you’re interested in those things, as they relate to music, here’s something you need to know. We’re going to be hosting the MTF innovation stage at music mess of Frankfurt on Thursday, second of April, if you haven’t been music master is the single largest music trade fair in Europe. And we’re going to be in the midst of that showcasing some pretty jaw dropping developments from the MTF, community results and ideas that have grown from some of our earlier labs, as well as some brilliant startups that take music tech production and performance to whole new levels. That’s the MTF innovation stage. It’s going to be April 2, that’s a Thursday, and it’s all part of the big Musikmesse Frankfurt. This is the MTF podcast, and I’m Andrew Dubber. If you want to follow me on Twitter, you can find me at Dubber, that is D U B B E R, like rubber with a D. and MTF is at Music Tech Fest all one word. The MTF podcast is out every Friday. So if you haven’t already, you can subscribe on Apple podcasts, overcast Spotify, or whatever your favourite podcast app might be. And if you like what you hear, you can share rate and review us It really helps us and it also helps others to find us who might also be into this sort of thing. In the meantime, have a great week, and we’ll talk soon Cheers.
