Get various views. Theyll get various stories. Stories firsthand. Stories from the president s themselves. On the record from barack obama, bill clinton, former first lady rice, host of people. But what theyll find out are some of the things that really happened in the white house when it comes to race and i remember a story one of the most in impacting stories of my life going to the Corporate Art gallery a few feet away from the white house with then First Lady Laura Bush to the visit. These desen taints of slaves from the g plantation of alabama. And ultimately im giving you a synopsis but ultimately at the end of the tour, these black women about five black women, black women who i do not believe were republicans this part of recognition that was sheep. They just embraced first lady in a huddle and just started screaming thank you jesus, at the time and as a descendent of a slave on mothers side this generation moved from a slave. It brought tears to my eyes. So there are a lot of story it is that so many people can relate to in this, and its about you and me. Its not just about black. Its about white and all of us coming together. U now if people go to booktv and type in april ryan theyre going to see this big panel that was held and author panel. What was that ms. Ryan . The panel was a Panel Discussion on race. We had professor karl butler as well he talked about criminal justice. Joy reid an author as well who wrote the book. We have mike an author himself who is writing various books and i was a moderator, and we had a serious decision, civil discussion on issues of race, and from authors who have written about us. Who have researched. Who were experts in their field, and we had a Panel Discussion, we had people from all walks of life very Diverse Group of people who actually were in the audience and asked about it asked questions, it was a great discussion. It was like the beginning of a discussion that needs to happen in this nation and were going to have booktv thank you, of tv, and politics imposed, err were going to do this again in february. I hope booktv will be there, but we had a discussion, a discussion that is needed. Were going it keep this discussion going. April ryan, from the white house and the presidency in black and white. Youre watching booktv. Television for serious readers, watch any program you see here onlionel at booktv. Org. Pleasure to welcome you all to my Microsoft Research series. Im Senior Researcher here at mikes research. I do a lot of research in Virtual Reality for a long time ive been fascinated with both to really change the way that we perceive the environment. Change the way that we think about our our body. Our experiences, and how we can actually mess with people. How we can change the way that that we experience the world. So its my great pleasure to today welcome you and to announce tara who is visiting us. Shes going to be talking to us about her new book called we have the technology that is hacking about all of the fences. Its really about what other people in the world are doing to enhance our abilities. I will put many spoilers to you. Ill leave that to kara. But i just want to give you a brief a brief biography of her. She is a journalist, and currently teaches at Uc Berkeley School of journalism. So without much further adieu heres kara. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you everybody. All right. Thank you so much for coming out to see a knew newbie author to talk about her book. This lecture is first i made it just for you. I thought since im coming to microsoft i know some people are here working in augmented virtuality that is something you would want to talk about. Wherever i give a talk there are two questions that people want to know once they see my giant head which is who are you, and how did you report this book . I thought i can do this for you and basically in two minutes and then we can get on to the good stuff. So i am a science reporter i teacher at uc berkeley. I took one year off from teaching, and i basically went through eight states and four countries by posting where i wanted to go on facebook and seeing if people would put me up which was a really cheap way of reporting, and my goal was to write about people hacking sensory and cutting edge research. But to make sure it wasnt people who were in university so i wanted to see people who were doing science and show row that effect in real world at clock makers and transhumannist and body piecers and performers and robot and perfumers and to giveout short version, i went here, here, anybody know what that is . They keep the atomic clock. I went here, and here, and here, and here thats marilyn monroe, and here and here, thats london you can see in the famous toasters theres the word tea. Here, and i smelled these things and those things and i drank that stuff and i wore those things and i met this robot and i met this thing bob that helps that robot and then this ancient computer anybody know what it is . The difference engine, first model. Because i wanted to understand this very, very modern computer which is part of clock now built as slowest computer built to last 10,000 years. I got these tattoos augmented thattage mate when you hold them up to a certain mirror. They were unfortunately temporary. I got a lot of shots. I turned a lot of stuff that looks like this into stuff that looks like that, and i turned td these into those and that, and i did that to my laptop those keys i dont know if you can see theyre cratered, and worn off. I did that to my wrist. I did that to my couch. Along the way my students sent me this care package finally this happens and this is where we meet a giant head. Gally proof of the book finally this is happening. [laughter] so i think we did it in two minutes. So i know you havent had a chance to read the bock yet because it just came out. So ill give you a quick overview of what its about. So this is a book about Sensory Perception how you experience the world through your five senses which is taste, smell, vision, hear hadding and touch. And how you can hack them, and the starting point for this book is that there is no one reality. Right, once you get over that rest is an easy ride. What i mean is theres no one single experience of the world. Instead, whats happening is your brain is constructing and spurnes experience for you to have and what you perceive is something that is different than what everybody else perceives part is because were all genetically different. Your brain and body are different than anybody elses. Part of it is because perception is really malluable. Theres a huge amount of information and you have to filter and screen it to construct a coherent experience for yourself. And the way you attend to learn to discard rest is different. Everybody is filtering is different. Most of all, your senses are limited. We only have these five sensory portals but there are other animals that can sense more. But like sharks can sense electricity. And snakes like the fit can incense infrared. Bees can see into ultraviolet. A lot of animals like backwards, bacteria that can sense a electromagnetic field. When i started this research with this collector, and they were real mad about this. They were really frustrated, right. Why cant we see where the wear is and sunset in infrared and surpassed by stupid but the or flies so, they and other grinders like them were building implants in an effort in a bid to give themselves a new sensory experience. At the end of this talk ill show you a little bit about what they were doing, while they were kind of in extreme, therm actually part of this much Bigger Community of people working to push the boundaries of Sensory Perception. Some people that i met are doing it for medical purposes. Theyre trying to help people who have a million need. And some people are doing it to expand or enhance what we can sense. So this book is like baskinrobbins even will have a flavor that they like. Just to give you an idea of some of the things that are in this book, the chapter on vision is one of the first people on planet who ever has relearned how to see. It is about one of the first people who get a retinal implant. So its about dean lloyd born with normal vision lost as an adult a genetic disorder and then he volunteered to become wufnts first people to get the second sight two an inplant ideas his eye and wears spectacles with a camera over bridge of his nose and that translates image of two electronic impulses that stimulate receptors at the back of his eye and travels up to the brain and he perceives a form of vision that is not what he remembers from when he was a young man he doesnt see three dimensional objects or o colors. What he sees basically is flashes of lights that indicate contrast points between dark areas and light areas. But its enough that he can navigate. He can recognize object when is he was staring at me he said you cant see organic material or biologic material but he said he said i can see your yous. Your eyes are glow well we realize he was seeing reflection off of my glasses. So thats one example. I went to watch a robotic surgery which was an amazing experience and i had to got so many vaccinations. But i went to see dr. Sherry ren who was operating on a patient from across the room. The reason i wanted to do that is because i wanted to understand robotics because right now doctors who are doing tell operate od surgery have to not get touch feedback for patient and that can cause some problems. They dont know how tightly theyre pulling on a suture and takes experienced surgeon judge whats happening when theyre kind of pal mating within body which are robots so i learned at the labs at stanford working on bairvegly how to improve robotic devices to render feed tbak to a surgeon. But what i realize this was leading to is actually not for surgery but for development of a better generation of neuropros thet tick of robotic limb it is that would not only be able to mauve and controlled by thought but able to render touch feedback so that a person twails know it is how tightly theyre gripping an october so they know if something is about to fall from their grasp. One of the things that the researchers told me is that people with prosthetics want to feel a love ones hand. Touch is important. I learned about building of the 10,000 year clock is ewhich is a prohibit in the foundation in san San Francisco to reframe idea of how we think about time to build a clock to last 10,000 years without a human guardian and you can imagine the engineering problems involved in doing that. So this book has a lot of a lot of plans that deal with electronic and computers, by i also make the argument that technology isnt just gadgets. It is anything that we can built to help ourselves to augment our experience. So i make the argument that language is a technology and first chapter of this book is about search for a six. So if you went to high school in the last century like you learned forte salty, sweet, sour bitter and then along came mommy or savory so a concept in japan for 100 years but not accepted in the west until scientists covered receptors on the tongue that is within msg that makes things taste savory right. All of the people in the west learned how to taste this taste. That unleashed this search for other candidates. So i went kind of on a quest all around to taste candidates, and if anybody comes to town hall tonight i will give that talk and talk about how language affect ours ability to perceive what we taste. It is about a Chemical Technology that is about perfume. Its about a group of volunteers who are working at a hospital in france who use scent as with a o recall memory. Because as i learned loss of mel is first clinical symptom of alzheimers disease. Smelling memory are very, very deeply connected in the brain. So since im here with microsoft immaterialed to show you about virtually and not this is not a technical talk but i wanted to show you one of really cool applications that i got to witness while i was reporting and just to talk to you about immersiveness about how immersive these technologies can be, and what it was like to meet you a user. So my First Experience of Virtual Technology was in 2008 when i went to Virtual Human Interaction Lab at stamford, university and First Experience he put me informs the pit. Has anybody been in a pit simulation before . So the idea is floor rolls back, and theres like a little board and you have to walk over the pit. Right . And its it is an immediate experiment in presence. How much you feel like youre in that world and test, of course, is if you react to pit as if its a real pit. I did immediately. Right. I started to do this, and jeremy said what are you doing with your arms . I said, oh, yeah, no need to balance but i was really in the pit he said people have the worst experiences in this simulation they scream. They run across the board. I had another journal whois did a story and she couldnt to it. It was too real. Right. But i got out in the middle i said what happens if i jump off . And jeremy said try it. I fell and it was amazing thats when i realized yeah, i really like it. So i remember thinking it was like falling down in like falling over the cliff in roadrunner cartoon like the same brick went by over and over, i fell you know standing up like wow, falls like this. And so when i went back to research this book, i wanted to see if Virtual Reality it changed. I researched this book between 2013 and 2015. To make the experience more realistic, and what i saw wases amazingly real. Soty ended up spending time with jeremys lab at stamford and i also went to i had this amazing experience at Berkeley Air Force base in colorado where i spent time with National Guard unit that was about to deploy to afghanistan. So they were participating in a Clinical Trial of a program called strive that stand for stress resilience in a virtual environment, and the idea was to see if they could be made more resilient to developing posttraumatic stress disorder by pretreating them by exposing them in advance to stressful decisions that they might experience while in a war zone. And this project is run by dr. Albert skip a psychologist from usc hes part of this group called institute for creative technologies, and he had spent already about a decade using virtual raiment reality to treat those deployed and come back with symptoms. So he created virtual iraq and virtual afghanistan to use to simulate stressful situations that soldiers might have encountered. Idea is sol swrers go into these virtual scenarios while theyre there with their therapist who is person who is guiding their vr simulation and then they recall memories. Therapist tell me what happened to you and therapist makes that thing happen so if they say i remember gun fire, she can make sound of gunfire if they say, i can remember a sand storm she can make there be a sand storm is i wanted to show image of courtesy of dr. Rizzo in his lab so these are some of the images from virtual iraq so they modeled all of these common scenarios this is a check point. This is a much more stressful check point with a sand storm. This is an id explosion in a market. They do a lot of them that youre in a vehicle because thats a very common situation heres one inside of a humvee. Heres one that is kind of in amber situation. Heres one of being inside a hum vow sorry a little dark. But being inside a humvee and actually being hit by an explosive, and these when hes doing this in his own lab, he doesnt only use vision and sound. He actually, he has sub woofers built into the floor which vibrate to create the vibration of the motor as well as shock of the explosion. He pumps smells into the rooming. So like diesel, garbage, sweat because smell is so e he walks through simulation carrying prop rifle doesnt do anything. But just fur the weight and for that feeling of carrying it. He was thinking about using a heat lamp, to him pick the heat of the desert. Only thing he keact figure out is taste. Maybe make everybody eat a spoonful of sand thats all he had gotten. So this experience is meant to be hyperreality so faced a thing that scares you and it stops, it stops being scary, and this idea had actually been around in Virtual Reality since the midout. There was a team led by dr. Barbra at Emory University who started using it to treat garden variety. They had don things like they had built virtual airplane and high scary bridges for people with fear of heights. And they found that it worked who could stay calm on virtual airplane could later ride a real airplane and virtual all right could get on a elevator so they have the idea of using this for vietnam war veterans and bit mid90s people who had served in the vietnam war and had posttraumatic stress disorder were considered e treatment resistant. They were hardest to treat. They hadnt been helped by anybody. Soldiers were willing to try this novel form of therapy. But there was a big difference she told me. Between using ptsd and fear of spied wheres youre afraid of being stuck in a elevator or crossing a bridge youre afraid of what might happen. When youve been to war that has already happened Worst Nightmare has happened you have to resurface an actual memory. So there werent they werent sure if it would work or how hard it would be on people who were doing it so they did their First Experience in a veteran hospital. And they incase anybody basically had a psychiatric emergency and needed immediate help they created two scenarios one was a land about strip and one was inside of a huey chopper so worried at one point in the chopper scenario move out, move out theyre so worried that people rip off the fantastically helmet and chuck it aside. They tethered it to the ceiling but it worked. Nobody threw the helmet. Nobody had psychiatric emergencies, an everybody got better when they did followup screenings everybody got. Everybody got better. So i wanted to just read you a little thing this is my favorite favorite quotes in the book about how powerful this virtual scenario was. So soldiers had detail from their memories. Somebody said they saw tanks. We didnt have tanks in it he said. Somebody said they saw the enemy. We didnt have the enemy it n it. Somebody saw water buffalo in it. They didnt