Are Video Calls the Best We Can Do in the Age of the Metaverse? | Josephine Eyre | TED

We all have questions that keep us up at night. Here are two of mine. The first is: What makes us human? In a world where human beings and technology are increasingly converging and where with the power of virtual reality we can embody anything we want, what is it that continues to keep us human? Now there's loads of different answers to this, but the social anthropologist in me hangs on to the human power of forethought. That's our ability to predict and prepare for what might happen. Of all the things that make us uniquely human, forethought has got to be one of the most interesting because it enables us to imagine and create our futures. It gives us the ability to be deeply creative. My next question is: Are we living in reality?

I'm not channeling my inner Morpheus here. This is honestly something I think about a lot. I think about how we’re moving towards, or perhaps have always been, living in multiple levels of existence. After all, simulations aside, reality is really just the stories we tell ourselves about what we think we see around us and may be influenced by other people’s stories. And so every story that you have ever heard or ever will, including the one I'm about to tell you now, will influence your version of reality. When I was five years old, I was obsessed with "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll. I loved how impossible it was, and yet real at the same time. Back then, this was my virtual reality. And there's an exchange in the book between Alice and the White Queen, where the queen is saying that if you try hard enough, you can believe in anything, whether it's possible or not. So now, even though I consider myself a pretty pragmatic person, I too try to believe in six impossible things before breakfast. And with the power of virtual reality, VR, I can often make them a reality. But as you get older, your imagination takes a bit of a knock and you lose that childlike wonder. There's bills to pay and kids to keep alive and work to be done. And then there's the monotony of boardrooms and PowerPoint presentations and video calls. Hmm. Now, I've been lucky to work remotely for a lot of my career, and it is amazing for so many different reasons. Without all of the technology we have today, remote work would be impossible. But our overreliance on video calls is hurting our ability to be creative as a team. And this is a big problem because creativity isn't just for artists and musicians. It's what drives innovation in our workplaces. And without it, we can't solve the many problems we face as humanity. Now you may have been told to turn your camera on during video calls so that people can more easily connect with you. This makes a lot of sense on the surface level because nobody likes speaking to a blank screen. But research done by Carnegie Mellon University has found that turning our cameras on during video calls impacts our ability to do creative teamwork. Now if you're anything like me on a video call, your attention is very divided. You're trying to look at people's facial expressions, usually, which you can't quite make out. You're trying to listen to what people are saying, but you're also looking at yourself and making sure you've got no food on your face. And it just doesn't feel like a very natural way to communicate. And it's not. For millennia, our human ancestors, who have evolved to be creative just in order to survive, have done so in 3D environments. That's just how our brains are wired. It's only been relatively recently that we've been distracted by these glowing 2D screens. And these screens are designed to display things. It's called display technology for a reason. We were never meant to communicate through them.

So if video calls are confusing and they hurt our creativity, then why are we still using them? And when I asked this question, the answer I get is usually the same. People say it's the best we have or it's the closest thing we can get to real life. So this got me thinking. Are video calls really the best we can do with all of the technology of today? And what's so good about real life anyway? What if, rather than trying to recreate reality, we aimed for something better? Now there's already a multibillion-dollar industry devoted to just this, instantly transporting you somewhere else and enabling you to be present and creative with people from around the world. And that is the games industry. Many games are laying the foundation for the metaverse, and we've heard quite a lot about this metaverse recently. I like to think of it as an evolved 3D and experiential version of the internet. To give you an example. Brands currently have websites and social media pages. In the metaverse, these brands may also have experiential immersive spaces that you can visit and engage directly with whatever they're selling. So the metaverse is providing these new social creative spaces. So if you find yourself worrying that your child is playing too much Minecraft or Roblox or Fortnite, you can remind yourself that these are not just games.

They're hanging out with their friends. They’re practicing important life skills like empathy and teamwork. And they’re often creating and innovating in these spaces, far more, dare I say, than you or I are on our fourth video call of the day. Virtual reality, whilst it's not synonymous with the metaverse, is one of the most powerful technologies we can use to access these spaces. And I believe with the power of VR, the metaverse will reignite workplace creativity and inspire us to achieve the impossible. But let's take a step back here. The three key features of virtual reality can be said to be immersion, interaction and imagination. I like to call them the “three magic I’s.” And the cool thing about the three magic I's is that they're also three key drivers, I believe, of creative collaboration as well. So let's look at these in a bit more detail. The first is immersion. Immersion by this definition is when your senses are isolated from your physical environment and put into an entirely different virtual environment. And technology is coming on so much that we won't just be able to see, hear and feel things in VR, but we'll be able to taste and smell them too. The “internet of senses” is here, and it's completely revolutionizing how we interact with each other in virtual environments. Immersion gives us copresence. That's that feeling of really being there with others. And our brains don't know the difference between virtual reality and reality when it comes to copresence, so we can be together psychologically, even when we're apart. And this enables social creativity to thrive. The second magic I is interaction. And interaction is where you can manipulate things within your environment that isn't really there. So when we design physical products, we imagine them in 3D, we produce them in 3D. And yet traditionally, we've visualized them on 2D screens. By using VR instead, we can do this in real time in 3D whilst being able to cocreate, discuss and manipulate these designs with our teams. The third magic I is imagination, and this is a biggie for me. VR gives us the ability to do anything and be anywhere, regardless of whether it exists in reality or not. Maybe you want to speak to someone in a different language and have that instantly translated above the avatar's head. Perhaps you want to take your brainstorm on top of Kilimanjaro or write your notes in dust on the Moon. And yet, with all of the amazing possibilities afforded to us by VR, lots of our virtual environments still mirror our physical environments. And there's a psychological reason for this. A concept called “structured imagination” means that we tend to rely on existing paradigms when we create things. In fact, let's try something quickly. I want you right now to imagine an animal that doesn't exist and be as creative as you can be. Got something? So even though I told you to be as creative as you can be, structured imagination tells me that most people will have imagined an animal with eyes of some form and legs of some form, perhaps not dissimilar to Leggy McEyeface over here. Maybe that's just me. But we do the same things when we think about our workplaces. We think of an office as a building with a roof and chairs and desks. But we don't need a roof in the metaverse because there's no precipitation. We don't need chairs with legs because the floor isn't really there. In fact, we don't need chairs at all. Do you think that's air you're breathing right now? And the problem with recreating things like traditional boardrooms is that we know that stark corporate spaces aren't conducive to creative collaboration.

So what else do we know about creative collaboration? Thankfully, we know quite a lot. We know that retreats, breaking away from the day-to-day, can help induce creative thinking. We know that some time alone for reflection can help the team be more creative when they come back together. We can speak to color psychologists who will tell you that gray is not a great color if you're trying to encourage creativity. We know that nature, the unexpected and even messiness can help induce divergent thinking. So as we build our metaverse workplaces, we can be inspired by our imaginations but guided by all of this fantastic research that's been done before. Lots of people ask me how far we are away from a true metaverse, and I don’t really have an answer for that. Or I do, but we’d be here all day. But I will say two things. The first thing is that using immersive technology is not the future of workplace communication. It's the present. Organizations, large and small, are already providing VR headsets to their employees the same way that they would traditionally just provide a laptop, to help their teams feel closer together, to encourage trust and to grow relationships. Secondly, and importantly, the impact that the metaverse will have on various areas of our lives will be profound. And as with anything created by humans, there's a potential for it to be incredibly positive or devastatingly negative. Just as social media, in the previous iteration of the internet, gave a voice to the voiceless and created jobs that didn’t exist before, it also laid the foundation for dangerous monopolies and for misinformation campaigns that have destabilized entire democracies. So... We have an incredible opportunity in front of us, an opportunity to completely reimagine work and how we collaborate. But we must use our human power of forethought to create the kind of future we want to see. We must become conscious and deliberate creators of our own destinies. “Alice in Wonderland” symbolized curiosity, imagination and experiencing the impossible. VR allows us to do the same. So here's my ask of every leader today. Let's put on our VR headsets and follow that white rabbit. Let's chase our curiosity to impossible places in the metaverse where anything can happen -- and where we can solve humanity's biggest problems together. Thank you. (Applause)