How will the convergence of 5G and AR and artificial intelligence lead to the creation of experiences that no one's ever imagined? Join Forbes columnist and author Charlie Fink to find out!

Alan: Hello everybody. Today's guest is one of my good friends and someone I consider a mentor. XR consultant, columnist, speaker, and author, Mr. Charlie Fink. Charlie Fink is a Forbes columnist and an author of two AR-enabled books – Charlie Fink's Metaverse: A Guide to VR and AR, and Convergence: How the World Will Be Painted with Data. Charlie is a former Disney, AOL, and AG Interactive executive, famous for coming up with the idea that turned into The Lion King. Charlie was EVP and COO of VR Pioneer Virtual World Entertainment. He was an SVP of AOL Studios and president of the American Greetings Interactive. Charlie founded and exited to venture-backed startups and has produced over 30 award-winning Broadway musicals. Charlie is leading the way in XR for business by covering and reporting on everything XR-related. With that, let's welcome Charlie Fink.

Charlie:

Wow, I don't know if I can live up to an introduction like that.

Thank you Alan.

Alan:

Oh you're amazing. You're amazing and thank you so much for being on

the show. First of all I want to congratulate you on the launch of your new

book Convergence, an AR-enabled book about AR. Maybe you can tell us a little

bit about the book, and why it came to be.

Charlie:

Well, we were looking at doing a second edition of the first book

which sold very well, but it soon became apparent that the AR topic in

particular had been sort of glossed over in the first book, which was largely

about VR. So, I started to think about the idea of doing a new book, and I got

a lot of support for it in the community. In fact, it is a sponsored book,

meaning I got enough donations that I could afford to write the book and get it

printed. It's printed on premium paper and it's priced high like a textbook at

fifty dollars - of course it's filled with an hour of animation - so it's not a

normal book and it doesn't adhere to book economics. So to make it work I

really needed to build a community of about 100 people around the book, many

providing augmented scenes and many actually contributing thought leadership

and reporting. The topic of the book kind of evolved because I, you know,

originally I was thinking the title would be something like 'the many modes of

AR,' or 'how the world will be painted with data,' which is a phrase I coined,

which suggests a fully-scaleable AR cloud. Which would make the devices we

use a whole lot more useful and interesting than they are today, where we use

something called marker-based AR.

And as I got into the book and editing the

work of my collaborators, it was clear everyone was talking about the same

thing, which is this world of ubiquitous, wearable computing. What the final

form factor will be we can debate, but this idea of a magic-verse based on a

mirror world became the theme of the book, which is essentially the convergence

of 5G and AR and artificial intelligence that would manage all of this data for

you so that it is wanted and contextual. Otherwise, if it's interrupting you, I

don't see how that's possibly a welcome augmentation, right? It can't be showing

you advertising; it has to show you what you want when you want it or where you

need it. You don't need to see the weather in front of your eyes spatially,

although it would be fun from time to time. But the truth is you know what the

weather is.

So that became the title of the book,

Convergence. And if you look at history you know there have been a number of

moments of sort of platform innovation that launched heretofore unconceived

ideas. So

if, for example, look at GPS in a phone, right, there would be no Uber, no

Seamless. There's a whole range of services, a