027 WTFuture Interview - Greg Panos & Richard Cray - Pioneers in the Virtual Multiverse

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This week we take you on a glorious, high-voltage trip through our very own  multiverse ! Enjoy the whole show, or pick a clip from this episode’s playlist.

We sit down with long-time cyber-pioneers Greg Panos and Richard Cray to reminisce about the wild, wild west of early multimedia.. Not just 8mm, we’re talking ancient Waldo facial motion capture contraptions glued onto your cheeks like mechanical leeches to drive giant Silicon Graphics workstations, and crashing a surreal 1993 SIGGRAPH party at the Nixon Museum and Birthplace, sponsored by Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic! It’s a hyper-energetic reunion tracing the hysterical evolution from retro online virtual reality worlds like The Palace and Active Worlds right up to today’s bleeding-edge world-crafting tools, such as Genie, whole 3D  world building, built from  simply prompts..

And hold onto your earbuds, because we now jump straight into full-blown sci-fi reality overdrive! Greg demonstrates real-time face-swapping with AI tools like Decart Lucy 2.5, instantly turning a regular webcam into a Hollywood VFX studio where you can magically transform yourself into Albert Einstein with rubber duckies in a bathtub! Gregory is happy to demo this to us in realtime on the show, clearly showing some serious ‘writing on the wall’ when it comes to the future of online interactions!

We next zoom through an immersive VR theater,  LA’s new futuristic DataLand museum, complete with biometric wristbands and scent collars, allowing you to smell the anura of the wild Amazon..  Greg shares his  dream of building digital twin avatars so your stories can live on for your great-great-grand-nieces! Between jokes about robot girlfriends, multiverse quantum doorways, and doing jigsaw puzzles to reclaim human sanity, it’s a funny, brilliant reminder that even with super-intelligent machines, soulful human  connections are the gold standard for accepting any future world that may come our way.  Enjoy!

131 Future Now Show - 'Love, Al, Turkey, Seattle, and visionary architecture' with Minimalist Thaddeus Van Petten, 'Seeing Life as it is.." with Richard Cray, "Perfection is the enemy of the Good," with Greg Panos

Listen to Ep. 131 Future Now Show  

‘Love, Turkey, and visionary architecture’ with Minimalist Tadd Van Petten, ‘Seeing Life as it is..” with Richard Thaddeus Van PettenCray, “Perfection is the enemy of the Good,” with Greg Panos

I knew Thaddeus when he became a housemate of mine in the late 1980’s, 19 years old, raised in Santa Cruz, ready for whatever’s next, which included me..An inquistive, kind, and thoughtful person, I helped connect him with his mentor for many years, visionary architect, Eugene Tsui.  Tsui’s work embraces a profound understanding of the architecture of Nature, and many of Tsui’s buildings resemble works of Nature, like sea anemones.  Returing from an 8 year love affair in Turkey, he has been working as a finishing carpenter on the glorious new mansions of our tech bros, he shares with us his journey into the heart and soul of humanity.

In the second segment of today’s show we hang with our buddies Greg Panos and Richard Cray, exploring their latest adventures in singing, performing, being honored, and communicating with the AI’s privately on your personal machines. The last song of the show is from Richard’s performance in The Man from La Mancha, in Maui last year. And just somehow his performance perfectly meshes wtih Gregory’s seamlessly interwining the real with digital worlds. Enjoy!

Al, Sun, Greg, and Richard creating the Future Now Show

Future News and Views - Congrats to Space-X, Starship Explosion, New Solar Activity, Monica on City Council Meeting, Greg Panos on AWE 2020 XR Expo,Beyond Zoom tools, HP VR, Dan Dan on Dr. Zacks on the Microbiome

Listen Now to Future News 6.2.20

A full show today, with news, both local and global.  A big congrats to Space-X and their successful ferrying of humans to the ISS, just wow! Too bad about the Starship explosion, though it was half expected. Thanks to Monica McGuire for her report on our Santa Cruz City Council meeting, including plans for our slow re-opening of businesses locally.  

And a special report from Greg Panos on Augmented World Expo 2020, covering such topics as new VR/AR hardware, social spaces like Alt Space, spatial io, and Alt Space. And good to hear from Shane, an Australian listener who loves our show and bringing our attention to Dr. Douglas Gentile, a renowned media psychologist at Iowa State University.

Dr. Dan Beilin checks in with an update on Covid, with some good conversations between him, us and Bobby Wilder, our science journalist co-host. We all got so engaged with our discussion about Dr. Zack’s work with the microbiome, we forgot it was the end of the show! Enjoy..

SETI and Alien Technosignatures, Penrose on Life after Death, Orbiting Lunar Platform, FBI Uses Face ID, Report on Oculus 5, Special FX wizard Ethan Summers on the Opening of HubX, an immersive media center in Santa Cruz.

Listen Now to Dr. Future Show 10.02.2018

After our Future News we our corresponents Greg Panos and Richard Cray report on Oculus 5, a major conference on VR (Virtual Reality) last week in San Jose, with a focus on the Oculus platform. The biggest news there was the announcement of Oculus Quest, a stand-alone headset with no longer any need for a computer or wires, slated for a Spring 2019 release.

We then have Ethan Summers in the studio, an Emmy award-winning visual special effects wizard, now focused on opening a center in Santa Cruz dedicated to Immersive Media, known as HubX.  It’ll be a place where visitors can have hands-on experiences with Virtual Reality and related immersive arts, and in the Makerspace tradition, learn to create one’s own stories in the new media.  Enjoy!

L-R Greg Panos, Ethan Summers, Mrs. Future, Dr. Future, Richard Cray

Guest - Cosmo Scharf, founder of VRLA

Listen Now to Cosmo Scharf with Greg Panos

There is lots going on in the Virtual Reality industry these days, such as the release of Facebook’s new $199 headset, the Oculus Go.  To bring us up to date we have Cosmo Scharf, founder of VRLA (Virtual Reality Los Angeles) and Gregory Panos, industry insider and regular contributer to our show. VRLA, happening this coming weekend, promises to be the world’s largest festival dedicated to the immersive technology, with 12000+ attendees, hundreds of tech demos, art installations, educational sessions, and product launches. Enjoy!

Cosmo Scharf, founder of VRLA