Aaron Frank of Singularity University on the Ian Khan Show
In this episode, i speak with Aaron Frank, co-contributor to the book After Shock.
Aaron Frank is a researcher, writer, and consultant who has spent nearly a decade working in Silicon Valley. He was one of the earliest employees at Singularity University, technology education and innovation center based in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he most recently served as Principal Faculty.
As a writer, his articles have appeared in Vice, Wired UK, Forbes, Venturebeat, and Singularity Hub.
As a speaker, Aaron has lectured for audiences and organizations including The Coca-Cola Company, Under Armour, the CIA and Department of Defense, FC Barcelona, the NBA and many others.
He routinely advises large companies, startups, and government organizations on trends related to a broad set of emerging technologies, with a focus on augmented and virtual reality.
Aaron began his work with Singularity University on the business side of the organization while it was a startup with fewer than 15 employees. He was a core part of the team responsible for the early stage growth of the company where he managed business development and strategic partnerships.
Prior to joining SU, Aaron worked at a Washington DC-based life science consulting firm.
Aaron is also a founding board member of Community Carrot, a 501c3 non-profit organization with a mission of breaking the cycle of poverty for Washington D.C.’s opportunity youth, now also operating in Seattle Washington. With funding from the local D.C. government, the organization provides entrepreneurship training and access to capital for young adults who grow up in poverty.
Originally from Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, Aaron has a degree in Communications and minor in Philosophy from the University of Maryland, and currently enrolled in an MBA program at the University of Oxford.
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About After Shock
The world’s foremost futurists reflect on 50 years of Future Shock—and look ahead to the next 50
Contributors include:
Alan Kay
Aaron Frank
Adrienne Mayor
Alexander Mankowsky
Alexandra Ivanovitch
Alisha Bhagat
Amy Zalman
Anders Sorman-Nilsson
Andra Keay
Andrew Curry
Andy Hines
Anita Sengupta
Anne Lise Kjaer
Aris Persidis
Aubrey de Grey
Barry O’Reilly
Barry Vacker
Bill Davidow
Bill Diamond
Bryan Alexander
Byron Reese
Carlos Osorio
Carver Mead
Cat Tully
Cindy Frewen
Clem Bezold
Daniel Burrus
Daniel Levine
David Brin
David Guston
David Krakauer
David J. Staley
David Weinberger
Deb Westphal
Diane M. Francis
Donna Dupont
Eleanor “Nell” Watson
Eric Daimler
Erica Bol
Erik Qualman
Fotis Sotiropoulos
George Gilder
Grady Booch
Gray Scott
Hannes Sjoblad
Harish Natarajan
Hazel Henderson
Helen Messier
Ian Khan
Ignacio Pena
Jack Uldrich
James Canton
Jane McGonigal
Jason Jackson
Jason Schenker
Jay Gambetta
Jeff Eisenach
Jeffrey C. Bauer
Jerome Glenn
Jerry Fishenden
Joe Dispenza
Joe Tankersley
Joel Garreau
John L. Petersen
John M. Smart
John Sack
John Sanei
John Schroeter
Jonathan Venn
José Morey
Kaitlyn Sadtler
Kirk Borne
Klee Irwin
Kris Østergaard
Lisa Bodell
Maciej Kranz
Martin Guigui
Martin Rees
Maggie Greyson
Michael Tomczyk
Michel Laberge
Mick Ebeling
Moon Ribas
Naveen Jain
Neil Jacobstein
Newt Gingrich
Patricia Lustig & Gill Ringland
Paul Saffo
Paul Stimers
Po Bronson & Arvind Gupta
Ray Kurzweil
Rebecca Costa
Richard Browning
Richard Slaughter
Richard Watson
Richard Yonck
Rodrigo Nieto Gómez
Rohit Bhargava
Ross Dawson
Ruth Miller
Sanjiv Chopra & Pankaj K Vij
Sohail Inayatullah
Sridhar Mahadevan
Stan Rosen
Stephanie Mehta
Steve Waite
Tanya Accone
Terrence (Terry) Sejnowski
Teun Koetsier
Theodore Jay Gordon
Thomas Frey
Timothy Chou
Vikram Mansharamani
Wolfgang Fengler
Zoltan Istvan
Publication Details
ISBN Print: 978-0-9997364-4-9
ISBN eBook: 978-0-9997364-5-6
Full Transcript : Hi friends this is Ian Khan and you’re listening to the Ian Khan show. In today’s episode, we’re talking to somebody who’s a contributor to the book aftershock. So this is an aftershock special episode. Today I’m speaking with Aaron Frank who is a researcher, writer and lecturer based at Singularity University as full time principal faculty. His work has been published in devices motherboard, you’ve wired, UK, Forbes and VentureBeat and as a speaker, he’s addressed many audiences across business and governments, including the CIA, the Department of Defense and Under Armour, and many others. Let’s speak with Aaron Frank.
Aaron, welcome to the Ian Khan show. It’s such a pleasure to connect with you, you and I are now bound together by aftershock. This amazing book that our friend, john shorter has put together and I say this every time every time I mentioned john shorter, he needs to pay me $1 I’m going to be a millionaire. Aaron, how are you? I’m doing well considered, how are you? I’m doing well. You know what I’m trying to keep busy. There’s so much to do. And it’s just changed the way I do things. That’s the only thing that has changed posting a lot of leadership live streams. Every Wednesday, we’re doing leadership live streams, we get three, four or 500 people online and they’re talking about stuff, you get people together leaders talking about talking to people. So there’s a lot happening with us keeping me busy. We’re doing podcast recordings, they’re keeping busy. And there’s plus other work as usual, power things over at urine, you’re in San Francisco. Yeah, we’ll check a life what’s happening. Things are a bit volatile at the moment, as you can imagine, but I am in San Francisco, we’ve been in a shelter at home directive now for about a month, I think it’s actually almost exactly one month tomorrow. And we’ve just had it extended out another month at a minimum. So another month of it, I’m continuing to live my life pretty much as it was before I worked from home, I had been working from home primarily a lot before that. And actually, so I’m affiliated with Singularity University as a full time faculty member there. But really my my core research at the moment, actually, for a while looks at the use of online virtual worlds as a way to do remote social experiences, both for learning and development, education, you know, just recreational. And so obviously, that topic has become, you know, far more relevant in the context of, you know, the pandemic, so, yeah, so I have a lot to do a lot of things keeping me busy. You know, it sounds like you’re keeping busy with a lot of online engagements as well, which is, you know, I think that’s gonna be the way the world for a bit. Absolutely. I think there’s, you know, the digital transformation has been put on steroids, and it’s just on such a curveball right now, I’ve been having so many different conversations, one part of which is that it vendors are over flooded with requests, everybody wants to go online, zoom, whatever, name it there, and it’s just changing the way we work. But there’s some industries that are struggling, there’s places where things need to be done physically, and they cannot be done. But and that’s something coming out of my leadership livestream that I’m doing is how’s industry transforming? And what’s happening? Let’s talk about aftershock. You’re very young, generally speaking, I read your essay. And that makes me super qualified, by the way, because I read everybody’s essay before I speak to them. So I am one of those rare people who have read a majority of the book and you weren’t born, you’re a millennial categorization wise. Correct. And you’re in your early 30s, which makes you a young adult. You’re out of university A few years ago, I’m assuming, right? You’re much younger than I am. You’re an amazing generation. I love your generation, right? Because I feel millennials have such a huge potential and they do things in such a great way. And I hate tagging labeling people like a millennial and, but just for the sake of categorization, let’s talk about Toffler. Toffler wrote this book 50 years ago, not this one, Future Shock 50 years ago, and then I was even born then, right, whenever he conjured up whatever you wrote, whatever you thought, My mind is blown, how could he even think and perceive those things? How do you see that book? When you read it? What were your thoughts growing up in an era of technology? Right. But yeah, I mean, it’s interesting, because I always had this number being quite fascinated by this idea that, you know, most of what we refer to as science or technology, or, you know, modern infrastructure, or things that, you know, largely haven’t existed for very long, you know, the, it was almost like for, you know, however long you want to measure it 1000s of years, if you were hungry, you had to go out into the woods and, you know, stab something and then now we have, you know, modern supply chains, and you know, everything has blinking lights in it. And I think what Toffler his book does a really fascinating job of doing is, it does look at very specific anecdotes, but it’s not anecdote based. what he’s done is he’s captured a lot of sort of almost longer trends or themes that sort of help. Explain the nature of change and how change unfolds. In a world where, you know, at our current moment in human history, it’s a lot easier now to perceive this rapid speed that seems to be occurring, especially in science and technology, and engineering, and innovation and all of these things. And so I think when you read a book, like Toffler, it’s really interesting, even though it’s a 50 year old, you know, work, it’s still done a nice job of capturing the themes related to understanding how to make sense of change as they occurred in a world where change is happening faster and faster. I really believe that for any generation to live successfully, they need to know what’s happening around them, right, and Toffler, whether you read the third wave, or you read the Future Shock, it’s a really nice read whether you understand 5% of that 10% of the book, or 100%, I really recommend everyone read books and try and understand different perspectives. Now, you grew up in an era where you mentioned in your essay, and here’s a proof that I actually read it that when you were growing up, your brothers and sisters and siblings had these large Disc players, and you know, they would carry them. And that was the era that you grew up. And we don’t even have CD players anymore, right? We don’t even have iPods anymore, because we do. But they’re done because everything is just on one device, or iPods also make phone calls now. Right? That just makes phone calls. Yeah, life has changed a lot. How do you envision this rapid pace of this accelerated change? Do you have you personally seen change accelerating faster? Since since you have been seeing things around you? Yeah, it’s a good question. I actually, I think about it, I think what what’s interesting is perceiving the rate of change in your own personal life doesn’t happen in a uniform speed, where and I think the easiest way to I love thinking about this, because, you know, parts of my life, I live in, like the most rapid, fast changing, you know, 21st century. And and I would say that a good example of that is anytime I’m using my, you know, my mobile phone, you know, I have a, I have an iPhone, you know, it’s, I can download new apps, it’s, you know, software updates. But when I drive to the office, or if I go to work, I’m driving a 20 year old Honda Accord, right. So this is a, my parents gave me this car, and I still drive it, you know, I’m gonna drive it forever, until it disintegrates into dust, it’s a great car. So during my commute, or anytime I’m in the car, I’m living 20 years in the past. So I think what’s interesting is that it really depends on what part of your life you’re living, and perceiving, the rapid pace of change that’s swirling around us in society happens in sort of tachy moments of, you know, because I’m going to need a new car at some point. And that experience will be like this mind blowing, you know, I won’t know all the bells and whistles and Bluetooth enabled internet connected cars, you know, being in a Tesla, for me is like, driving around in a spaceship. You know, I’ve, you know, I’ve got some co workers that have, it’s interesting to note that change happens, but it doesn’t happen, you know, it happens in like spurts and growth at different points in your life. And I think, you know, just consumer technology is probably the easiest one to see, just, you know, I remember the cell phone I had, you know, even five years ago is nothing compared to what you know, the device that I currently own, can do and does do, and the fact that I can just sit on a train and watch, you know, European soccer that wouldn’t even have been broadcast into my living room. Growing up in the United States, I can watch, you know, anywhere in the world, from a device in my pocket, these kinds of things. You know, if you really step back and perceive them, you’ll reflect on them. They’re pretty incredible. Yeah, completely different parts of your life where they happen slowly. And there’s many things that are changing. There’s bigger technologies, when we talk about them, okay? The cloud technologies are changing something or social media is changing a lot of things and you have a lot about, and you mentioned, virtual reality, augmented reality. Let’s talk about that. What is the world of augmented reality? What is virtual reality? Is it just these big headsets that we can put on our, what do these devices do? Yeah, I mean, it’s a good question. Actually, one of my favorite aspects of this conversation is and I think you’re just kind of touched on it, are the terms like what are the terms mean? Because in the world that I live in, it’s such a new paradigm that no one really agrees on what the terms are yet so usually, augmented reality is referring to a concept where you know, most people are familiar with Google Glass you can enhance your experience of the world with you know, visual or it can be audio you know, if you if you’re listening to Google Maps, in your headphones walking around the city, that that is a form of augmented reality computer, eating your experience of the world with additional information. Virtual Reality, on the other hand, typically refers to you know, the fully immersive headsets that you’re wearing, where you’re completely shut off from, you know, the real world but your digital device But the point that I think is important to note about like, so what are these technologies, the key ingredients, all of these kinds of technologies. And this is a term that’s starting to become more popularized being called spatial computing. And what that means is this idea that what’s true of both augmented and virtual reality is that your computing environment now really, for the first time, it exists in three dimensional space, you know, like, right now You and I are talking on it, we’re looking at each other on a two dimensional window, a screen, you know, fairly soon, not too long, we could actually probably do this today, if we wanted, be sitting across from each other in a three dimensional spatial way where I’m interacting with an avatar, or a hologram of you that you know, has facial place, you know, across the table from me. And so it’s that element of three dimensional space, that’s the really key ingredient to these technologies, that makes them a very big deal and makes them what is likely the biggest shift in computing interfaces paradigm that we’ve seen in quite a while. So amazing, I love it. So the future of technology, as it seems now is that maybe potentially, we’ll still have cell phones for some time, but they might change their form, they might become smaller, they might become sleeker, I don’t know, these are some possibilities, we might have holographic devices that you just hold on your hand. And they open up a new world off a 3d immersive, interactive gesture based voice based interactivity. And it does different things for you whether you know, there’s an avatar that pops up and tells you gives you real time 3d directions of where to go next, or, you know, it points you towards somewhere or pops up a document in front of you in 3d, is that really going to be real? Is that where we’re headed? Absolutely. I think if you think about, you know, we’re so used to this era of computing, where if you think about, you know, how clunky it is, as a skill to learn how to move a mouse on a two dimensional screen or type, you know, onto a keyboard, to look at your, you know, the thing that you’re making happen on your computer happens on a two dimensional window, what you’re describing this idea of, you know, seeing documents, you know, pull out in front of you in three dimensional space, or, you know, like Wayfinding, or navigation, you know, walking around the city for the first time. And instead of, you know, trying to abstract from a two dimensional map on Google Maps, that shows you where to go, which is, you know, it’s useful, but actually imagine being able to see in three dimensional space in the real world in context of the real world, you know, where to go, how to navigate, you know, these kinds of concepts are certainly in development at the core technology, infrastructure to support these kinds of tools are being rapidly developed at the moment by a variety of companies. And I think what it’ll do is it’ll make our computing lives far more intuitive, it’ll feel just more like a natural extension, you know, human, the human mind is a, you know, it’s a 3d thinking thing. We’re born into this world, navigating three dimensional space, you know, we we learn by picking things up with our hands and bumping into things in space. And so just what we’re talking about, and what you’ve just described as essentially bringing our digital lives into that three dimensional landscape, which is a far more intuitive way of participating in our digital lives. So the implications of this could be in different industries, we can think about new ways of learning, right, I have a four year old, and he’s got a certain way that he learns that his age and this could completely change the way kids now learn, right? as they go from their kindergarten to their university or whatever not. And now you have a completely a shift in learning. And we’re breaking that 100 year old tradition of sitting in a classroom. And it’s happening right now as well, right now, because of COVID-19. We can look at healthcare, there could be changes there. When it comes to learning, training, doctors accelerating the pace of how fast they learn the future of work. I mean, we’re going to renaissance of a forced Renaissance with respect the future of work right now, because of COVID-19. But what are the implications with, you know, virtual reality or one of these spatial computing devices? Help us understand maybe a couple of different industries, maybe healthcare and education, if you will, that what could be the possibilities? I’ll talk about education because I think that is for two reasons. One, the most immediately relevant aspect that will impact most people’s lives like every every employee, doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. There’s education is a part of everyone’s job, you have to learn what your role is, you have to learn about your company, you have to learn what the tasks are of whatever, you know, role you’re in. And so I think for the other reason I mentioned education is that education seems to be the most useful application area for spatial computing augmented and virtual reality at the moment, there’s probably no, there’s no limit to the kinds of, you know, tools. Let’s take as an example, probably the most well known is Walmart. So Walmart, for example. So they have around the United States, I don’t know the number, but they have a number of training academies, where if you’re a manager hired by Walmart, you go to, you know, a several day course, where you learn all of the different things like you know, how to stock shelves, so that their fire compliance, how to deal with shoplifters, how to ensure you know, your deli counter is hygenic compliant, all of these things. And so the traditional way of learning all of these skills is you learn in a classroom, you’re sitting, you know, watching PowerPoint presentations. But now what Walmart has done, and they were really one of the first to invest in, you know, developing immersive simulated environments, they put all of their, you know, high potential managers into a virtual environment inside of a virtual reality headset, and they’re actually experientially shown all of these scenarios, here’s how to make sure your shelves are fire compliant, here’s how to deal with crowds, on, you know, a busy shopping day. And what they’re able to do with that is measure the performance outcomes, the learning outcomes, engagement, so they can actually measure how engaged a learner is inside one of these environments based on things like eye tracking, and gaze tracking, performance metrics, you know, sort of like in a gamified way. And so, you know, that’s Walmart, if you can do that. And part of, you know, part of the learning is like very tactical, you know, here’s a skill, here’s how to do something. And part of it is more soft skills. Here’s more like social interaction, here’s what it’s like to experience interacting with a customer in this environment. And so you can, you know, whether it’s a hard skill, like, you know, I’ve been in music simulator, where you learn how to run a DJ control a DJ controller, so if you’re like electronic music artists, never you know, if you ever wondered what those big, you know, Niles dials and knobs are, you know, for you can learn not by watching a YouTube video, but by actually using your own hands how to manipulate these things. And so, basically, I think what I’ll sort of end by this, making this point that what these tools like augmented and virtual reality, whether it’s teaching, you know, surgeons in healthcare, or nurses or salespeople or, you know, doing HR training, these technologies are the closest thing we have to the scene from, let’s say, the matrix where Neo says, I know kung fu, or they just download it directly into your brain. It’s the fastest way of learning and acquiring a new skill, because you’re not just watching it on a screen, you’re actually doing it and experiencing it, and performing it yourself inside of a simulated environment. And that, I think, is one of the biggest reasons that these technologies are a big deal going forward. Thank you. So when we talk about this entire world that you just opened up for us, there’s many different technologies that are available today from the end, the first one was supposed to Google lens, google glasses, which I don’t know if they’re manufacturing right or not, I don’t think so. But you’ve got many different providers that have come Oculus Rift, and a ton of others who are many of them in Asia, there’s the form factor as is incredibly different. When you go to CES, you see all these new gadgets and devices, help us understand that if I were, let’s say an organization, I was, I was talking to a bunch of manufacturing leaders in the morning. So let’s take manufacturing as an example. And as a manufacturing, industry, CEO, leader, whoever I want to start getting dip my toes into virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and see how I can use that to train my employees or do something with it. health and safety training or product training, how do we get started? What devices or what headsets? Should we look at what tech because there’s so many of them? Like, where’s the starting point of saying, Okay, let me break this down into, you know, three stages, initially, we’ll get our people to just interact second stage will get them to do detailed things, or maybe different types of, you know, levels of this technology help us understand. Yeah, well, I’ll take the manufacturing industry as an example. But I think it might be this is where you start to speciate into different strategies and approaches based on your industry for manufacturing is actually one of the sort of most developed when it comes to deploying these kinds of tools like heads up displays, or you know, using, you know, hands free systems like the Microsoft HoloLens to do maintenance or repair, you know, one of the earliest examples so there’s really two approaches you could either, you know, put a team together to develop and build your own in house capacity or capabilities. So there’s a company in Germany placement group who do elevator manufacturing, repair and maintenance and so they in house put a team together to build using the Microsoft HoloLens, a way to do hands free maintenance work. So what they were really testing for was, you know, how quickly can we get a maintenance worker through their tasks and what they find is that if you actually have to go through, you know, a two dimensional you know, handbook and then abstract into the three dimensional world, it takes a while so you know, This could you know, work that was taking hours or more was reduced down to, you know, 20 minutes or less just by getting hands free information. Here’s the part, here’s what to check, here are the steps, all of that in their field of vision. The other approach, and this is what I might recommend for most people is there are a variety of I don’t want to call them, they’re like full service providers that will give you both the hardware and the software and the training to just do everything. There’s a couple that I know of one beer in San Francisco that I’m familiar with is called scope AR. And they have competitors, there’s another company called upskill. So I don’t mean to suggest that they’re the only one, if you have viewers in Europe, there’s a company in Milan, the name is escaping me, but they’re also quite big. So there’s a few that do this, but the one I’m most familiar with is called scope AR and what they do, and they work with different hardware manufacturers. So Google Glass, for example, does still exist, but they’re specifically for enterprise like manufacturing. And what scope will do is they will basically build for you all of the infrastructure, you need to, let’s say, and so for example, they worked with Lockheed Martin to help their engineers build one of their space capsules that they have in partnership with NASA. And so these are engineers that routinely before to build this, it’s what’s called the Orion spacecraft, they would have, you know, their user manuals are not just like a few pages, like, you know, like building furniture from IKEA, these are, you know, 10s of pounds of pages, 1000s of pages. And so an engineer would have to look up the right, you know, table, memorize the torque setting, go in, and actually, you know, screw in the right screw. Now, all of that information, and they in particular, use the Microsoft HoloLens, they now get all of that information for how to assemble whatever it is, they’re building, hands free. And so with Lockheed Martin, in particular, they actually have now deployed that same approach across all their manufacturing processes across the company. But the point is, to back to your question, there are places where you can go that will help navigate this with you and for you as a business. And there’s a few, there’s plenty of companies that will help you do this. And they’ll give you the hardware that give you the training. And the outcomes seem to be especially in manufacturing, quite dramatic in reducing costs, reducing errors, and overall, just improving efficiency. Amazing. I think there’s so much application out there that we’re still getting just started with, you know, this entire virtual world, there’s a lot of confusion companies, people need to, you know, be, let’s say informed in many different ways as to what the possibilities are. And I think we’re just getting started, we haven’t the surface hasn’t even been scratched. That’s where we are. I personally do find it very promising. And although Toffler didn’t write about it, but there’s definitely things in the book that help you understand the world of tomorrow will be different, because how people will engage talk me and do all of that. I know we have a limited time today. Aaron, I want you to help us understand where people can look you up, maybe contact you or check out your work. I would say the easiest place I’ll give you my email, but on Twitter, I’m just at Aaron D. Frank, you know, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn by email address affiliated with Singularity University is just Aaron. dot [email protected] o RG people can get in touch with me. That’s probably the easiest way just by email or LinkedIn. And yeah, happy to connect. Amazing. Aaron, thank you so much. And here it is. Where’s your copy of Amazon, grab it. And we’re going to do I’m going to post a picture of this later on. But thank you for being part of Aftershock. And thanks to a friend john shorter for doing this aftershock is available on Amazon. And that’s where you can buy it. But thank you so much. You take care and we’ll catch up again but in the future, and I definitely wish you all the best. Stay safe and let’s come out of this COVID-19 bounce back out of it and do something amazing. Appreciate it. Thanks so much. And thanks so much. You take care, you too. Hey, friend, this is Ian Khan. If you liked what you saw on my video, then please subscribe to my YouTube channel and be inspired every single day with innovative content that keeps you fresh, updated and ready for the future. For more information also visit my website at Ian khan.com
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