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The Age of Smart Information is Now, with Microsoft Garage Envisioneer Mike Pell
It wasn't long ago that the concept
of having a personal relationship with computers was the stuff of
science fiction -- everything from HAL 9000 to V'Ger posited a
far-out future when that would start to happen. Well, according to
Mike Pell -- author of THE AGE OF SMART INFORMATION -- that time is
now.
Alan: Welcome to the XR for
Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today's guest is
somebody absolutely spectacular. Mr. Mike Powell, he is the head of
the Microsoft Garage and the author of "Age of Smart
Information," a new book about how artificial intelligence and
spatial computing will transform the way we communicate forever. Find
the latest on Mike at futuristic.com and excerpts from his new book,
at theageofsmartinformation.com.
Mike, welcome to the show.
Mike: Thank you, Alan. My
pleasure to be here.
Alan: It's so exciting. I was
gifted your book actually by a good friend of mine, John Bizzell. And
we had lunch and he's "Oh, you haven't read this book." And
I guess he sent it to me on Amazon. I got it the next day, and I've
been just voraciously reading this book since, I'm about halfway
through. But man, your book has really opened my eyes to how
everything around us will not only have the data available, but it'll
be in context to our personal needs. And it's really incredible. So
how did you-- just kind of walk us through your journey of how you
went from inventing PDFs, to writing books on smart information?
Mike: It's a long story, but
I'll try to keep it really short. You're right, a lot of this did
sort of form when I was back in the early 90s when I was working on
Acrobat with some of my friends at Adobe. Back then, when we were
working on the very first electronic documents for interchange, it
was very apparent that people were not going to enjoy reading these
things like sitting upright and being uncomfortable. You really
needed some hardware and software that didn't exist at that point to
enjoy the information, right. To enjoy whether it was book or
documents or reports, whatever it is you were reading. And so at that
time, I started to think a lot about how the information itself --
you know, the thing that we were reading -- was so dead and lifeless.
I guess it was amazing that you could now transfer to other places
when people around the world could see exactly what you were trying
to say. But the thoughts about how there was always more to it
started to percolate back then. And over my career, I've always had
the good fortune of working on the leading edge of technology. So I
was very early into 3D and interactive graphics and visualization,
and I started to do a lot of experiments with bringing information to
life. I've always been fascinated with communications, helping people
communicate as clearly as they can. And so that was really the start
of a lot of this, was trying to see what we can do to help people be
able to understand and communicate better by using the information,
the things that we create every day, whether that's tweets or emails
or books or movies or music, doesn't matter. Whatever the medium is
that you're communicating in, there's always so much more that can be
brought out that we as people understand inherently, but yet are
never reflected in that final form, that piece of communication comes
in. So that's where we started.
Alan: So let's unpack that. So,
you know, I'm reading a PDF, then you guys probably added the ability
to have hyperlinks and then what else can you add. Now you're looking
at, "OK, what does the world look like when the computers are no
longer bound by the 16 by 9 rectangular shape?"
Mike: Yeah, exactly. That was
part of that original thought. You need to be able to enjoy, or
absorb whatever it is, or create whatever it is in the current
context of what you're do
View all episodes
By Alan Smithson from MetaVRse
4.5
1212 ratings
It wasn't long ago that the concept
of having a personal relationship with computers was the stuff of
science fiction -- everything from HAL 9000 to V'Ger posited a
far-out future when that would start to happen. Well, according to
Mike Pell -- author of THE AGE OF SMART INFORMATION -- that time is
now.
Alan: Welcome to the XR for
Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today's guest is
somebody absolutely spectacular. Mr. Mike Powell, he is the head of
the Microsoft Garage and the author of "Age of Smart
Information," a new book about how artificial intelligence and
spatial computing will transform the way we communicate forever. Find
the latest on Mike at futuristic.com and excerpts from his new book,
at theageofsmartinformation.com.
Mike, welcome to the show.
Mike: Thank you, Alan. My
pleasure to be here.
Alan: It's so exciting. I was
gifted your book actually by a good friend of mine, John Bizzell. And
we had lunch and he's "Oh, you haven't read this book." And
I guess he sent it to me on Amazon. I got it the next day, and I've
been just voraciously reading this book since, I'm about halfway
through. But man, your book has really opened my eyes to how
everything around us will not only have the data available, but it'll
be in context to our personal needs. And it's really incredible. So
how did you-- just kind of walk us through your journey of how you
went from inventing PDFs, to writing books on smart information?
Mike: It's a long story, but
I'll try to keep it really short. You're right, a lot of this did
sort of form when I was back in the early 90s when I was working on
Acrobat with some of my friends at Adobe. Back then, when we were
working on the very first electronic documents for interchange, it
was very apparent that people were not going to enjoy reading these
things like sitting upright and being uncomfortable. You really
needed some hardware and software that didn't exist at that point to
enjoy the information, right. To enjoy whether it was book or
documents or reports, whatever it is you were reading. And so at that
time, I started to think a lot about how the information itself --
you know, the thing that we were reading -- was so dead and lifeless.
I guess it was amazing that you could now transfer to other places
when people around the world could see exactly what you were trying
to say. But the thoughts about how there was always more to it
started to percolate back then. And over my career, I've always had
the good fortune of working on the leading edge of technology. So I
was very early into 3D and interactive graphics and visualization,
and I started to do a lot of experiments with bringing information to
life. I've always been fascinated with communications, helping people
communicate as clearly as they can. And so that was really the start
of a lot of this, was trying to see what we can do to help people be
able to understand and communicate better by using the information,
the things that we create every day, whether that's tweets or emails
or books or movies or music, doesn't matter. Whatever the medium is
that you're communicating in, there's always so much more that can be
brought out that we as people understand inherently, but yet are
never reflected in that final form, that piece of communication comes
in. So that's where we started.
Alan: So let's unpack that. So,
you know, I'm reading a PDF, then you guys probably added the ability
to have hyperlinks and then what else can you add. Now you're looking
at, "OK, what does the world look like when the computers are no
longer bound by the 16 by 9 rectangular shape?"
Mike: Yeah, exactly. That was
part of that original thought. You need to be able to enjoy, or
absorb whatever it is, or create whatever it is in the current
context of what you're do