Augmented Reality is Just Getting Started

Brian: [00:00:23] Welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast about cutting edge and next generation commerce. I'm Brian.

Phillip: [00:00:29] I'm Phillip.

Brian: [00:00:30] Today, we're talking about augmented reality.

Phillip: [00:00:35] Wow. And augmented in the sense whenever you hear us say augmented reality in the show, just assume we mean Pokémon Go.

Brian: [00:00:42] Yes, pretty much. Or AR.

Phillip: [00:00:46] Yes, AR.

Brian: [00:00:47] Yes, yes. Whatever term we end up using for it.

Phillip: [00:00:50] AR versus VR versus...

Brian: [00:00:53] Yeah. Let's not explainify that please. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:00:56] Yeah. Hey, we're actually you know what this is. As always we want to remind you that we need your feedback. But today is a more important day than ever to get your feedback about the show. And so we need you to give feedback in two ways. We want you to talk back to us and tell us what you thought of today's show. If you're listening on the website right now at FutureCommerce.fm, you can scroll down to the bottom of the show notes and you can see there's a Disqus box at the bottom. We want to hear back from you. Leave us some feedback in that comment box below where you're listening right now. But we need you to stop right now. If you're subscribed anywhere else, like on iTunes or Google Play, we need you to go right now and go give us a five star rating and leave a little blurb about the show.

Brian: [00:01:42] Yes, please.

Phillip: [00:01:42] That's what we need to do. Why is that important, Brian?

Brian: [00:01:45] Oh, you know, just because we've already ordered a bunch of episodes and, you know, be worth listening to and reading.

Phillip: [00:01:53] Yeah. And today we're at this point we've recorded now I think this is our sixth episode of this podcast. And so we are coming out of stealth mode. And if you're listening to this now for the first time and you've probably got a bunch that you've already listened to, we want you to help make the show what it's supposed to be in the future. We want you to help craft the show. And so for us to get this to a broader audience, you need to go like it right now and subscribe to it on iTunes or on Google Play.

Brian: [00:02:21] And give us feedback.

Phillip: [00:02:22] Yes, give us feedback. We want other people to see your awesome feedback, your awesome comments and readings of the show. And by doing that on iTunes, you know, that's how other people are going to find it. Also, you can always listen from your Amazon Echo device or any Alexa enabled device through TuneIn radio with the phrase, "Alexa, play Future Commerce." And there she is right there. Hi, Alexa. How are you? So that's it. That's it. And actually, we have a whole bunch of news around Amazon today right off the top of the show.

Brian: [00:02:53] It's a little bit. Just a little bit. I mean, it was Prime Day.

Phillip: [00:02:56] Do you shop on Prime Day a little bit?

Brian: [00:02:58] A little bit. Yeah, I think I bought one thing.

Phillip: [00:03:01] What did you get?

Brian: [00:03:01] I bought a Kindle. Not the reader. Not the e-reader.

Phillip: [00:03:08] Which one?

Brian: [00:03:08] It was just a base Fire. It's for content, like watching and things like that.

Phillip: [00:03:13] Ok. I like it.

Brian: [00:03:14] Actually...

Phillip: [00:03:15] You have a lot of kids competing for devices.

Brian: [00:03:16] It's a gift. I'm not going to lie.

Phillip: [00:03:19] But you did buy something.

Brian: [00:03:21] I did buy something.

Phillip: [00:03:23] Which is more than what I did.

Brian: [00:03:24] One thing. I really should have spent more time watching the sales and buying. I mean, I kind of like doing that. I kind of enjoy watching sales and having an idea of how much things cost in general in the world. But this Prime Day, I didn't. I kind of took it easy. Apparently it was their best, like best ever. Well, obviously, it's the second one. They surpassed last year by a lot.

Phillip: [00:03:54] Yeah, by like 60 percent. I have to find the number. Somebody said something like it was their second largest shopping day in 2015 outside of Black Friday. That was the figure that I heard.

Brian: [00:04:09] Yeah. I think that's correct.

Phillip: [00:04:09] If this was 60 percent higher than that...

Brian: [00:04:13] I want to say it might have been like their best day ever.

Phillip: [00:04:16] That's insane.

Brian: [00:04:18] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:04:18] Don't take that from us. Don't take it from us.

Brian: [00:04:21] Go look it up, Because...

Phillip: [00:04:23] This is not an Amazon podcast. Well, is this an Amazon podcast now?

Brian: [00:04:26] I mean, if it's about commerce and the future, it's probably about Amazon.

Phillip: [00:04:32] {laughter} Touché. Touché. Well, anyway, I think one of the big bummers for me is that I found out on Prime Day that the Dot is discontinued. So the Amazon Dot no longer with us. Rest in Peace.

Brian: [00:04:45] Which is, I mean, honestly, in my opinion, not a big deal. I understand why.

Phillip: [00:04:51] As a person who is on the waiting list for three months for my first one and two months for my second one, which, by the way, arrived on Prime Day.

Brian: [00:05:02] No joke. That's pretty funny.

Phillip: [00:05:06] {laughter} Yeah, I'm a little bit bummed about it. But I'll be honest with you, my kids have been begging me to have one like upstairs for them to play around with or whatever. So I'm glad that I got to snag one that I don't... It's not, you know, I'm not really too worried about them using it for whatever it is. They ask they basically have learned to tell time like your kids. They've learned to tell time with Alexa.

Brian: [00:05:30] Tell time. Play some songs. Hopefully they don't play the wrong one. You know...

Phillip: [00:05:34] They just listen to the My Little Pony like 30 second snippets because it's not on Prime music. So they listen to My Little Pony soundtrack...

Brian: [00:05:42] Your household is so different than mine.

Phillip: [00:05:44] Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Brian: [00:05:46] Yeah. So just see you guys know, Phillip has two girls, and I have four boys and so our households are like polar opposites.

Phillip: [00:05:55] Couldn't be more different to each other but yeah. But life has brought Brian and I together. I am the cartoon cat and you're Paula Abdul in this crazy version of Opposites Attract. Our 2016 version. I'll be the cartoon cat. I don't mind that at all. Anyway. Speaking of cartoon cats, phenomenal segue.

Brian: [00:06:19] {laughter} Yeah. Good segue.

Phillip: [00:06:22] Have you caught Meowsers, or what is it? A Meowth?

Brian: [00:06:28] Meowth. Yes.

Phillip: [00:06:30] Yeah. So first of all, I've never been into Pokémon. It missed me by just a few years.

Brian: [00:06:36] Oh. See, I caught it right at the very beginning and lost interest at some point. But like that initial Gameboy game when it came out, man I spent a lot of time playing Pokémon, no doubt about it.

Phillip: [00:06:49] Yeah. And I feel like a lot of people in our generation did. So it's not surprising to me that Pokémon is the vehicle for this new mobile gaming craze, which for those who are not affiliated, Brian, could you kind of give us a little bit of a rundown? If you don't know what Pokémon Go is, by the way, and you're listening to this podcast, you are in a very interesting demographic, and I want to hear back from you. {laughter}

Brian: [00:07:15] I feel like I don't need to talk about this at all because Hillary Clinton tried to make a joke about it. And I feel like if I try to explain Pokémon Go right now, it would be kind of worse.

Phillip: [00:07:25] Ok, fine. All right. So you better just go if you don't... Yeah. You need to know about this. But it's interesting because I'll be honest with you, if there is an element of of Future Commerce topics that I couldn't care less about, it's augmented reality up until last week.

Brian: [00:07:45] Really? Dude I'm all about it.

Phillip: [00:07:46] When Pokémon Go came out. I know you are. I know you are. And I always kind of cringe every time you bring it up. I'm like, this is so never going to happen. Like, who in the world is going to run around with, like, their phone out or who's going to run around with, like, who's going to sit at home with a VR headset on and like shop?

Brian: [00:08:02] Just wait. No, it's not going to be sitting around with VR headsets on.

Phillip: [00:08:05] But this thing.

Brian: [00:08:05] I mean, sure, we are going to be sitting around VR headsets on playing our games.

Phillip: [00:08:10] Yes.

Brian: [00:08:10] You know, I always think of that...  You ever watch that Nick Swardson skit where he talks about gaming in the future?

Phillip: [00:08:20] {laughter} Yes.

Brian: [00:08:20] And he's just he's blown away about like games of the present because when he grew up, he was playing Frogger and then he's thinking about the future. And then he's like, OK, games of the future. And then he just contorts his body everywhere. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:08:34] Yes. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because there's a couple things that I think have been sort of game changers that came out of nowhere. So I kind of want to rewind a little bit about how shocking these things are to me. Like they're just shocking to me. So let's take it back a bit. If you remember six, seven years ago, all of a sudden, every single person I knew had a Nintendo Wii and a Wii Fit, and people were all of a sudden like jumping around like maniacs playing video games, and they were standing on this silly balance board. And they were, you know, people were all of a sudden gaming changed. And who led that charge?

Brian: [00:09:20] Nintendo.

Phillip: [00:09:22] Nintendo did.

Brian: [00:09:22] Dude they killed it. When the Wii came out that was mind altering.

Phillip: [00:09:28] Exactly. And now you think about this. In a week's time, the entire world is going nuts over a brand new mobile game that's barely been out over a week. And what does it do? It gets people up off their butts and it gets them outside and gets them active. And who's leading that charge?

Brian: [00:09:50] Nintendo.

Phillip: [00:09:51] Nintendo. It's insane.

Brian: [00:09:51] It makes sense. And hence the like nine billion dollar gain in value.

Phillip: [00:09:56] Yeah, yeah. So they had like a twenty five percent uptick on the market cap just in... And by the way, like the last thirty six months, have not looked too good for Nintendo prior to this. But it's kind of incredible and I think it's reinvigorated their business. So if you had asked me a week ago, I would have said I'm totally not excited about the stuff. I'm extremely excited about it now because I think it takes a groundbreaker of someone to put something out that's engaging enough to introduce a concept. And that's when we're going to see innovation in a space. So that's what today's episode is about. It's not about Pokémon Go. Who cares? Today is about all the potential that's at our fingertips.

Brian: [00:10:41] It is about the potential. That said, we can start by talking about Pokémon Go because there's potential right there.

Phillip: [00:10:48] All right, so have you played the game?

Brian: [00:10:51] No. I have not.

Phillip: [00:10:52] {laughter} Come on, man.

Brian: [00:10:52] I know. I know. No. Forget that. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:10:56] I'm not into the game. I did install it. I did load it up. I am on, you know, full disclosure, I am on Google Fi, so I will not be wandering outside paying ten dollars per gig to Got To Catch them all.

Brian: [00:11:13] Dude, did you see that T-Mobile just announced that they're going to, I think, I believe...

Phillip: [00:11:19] Ok, ok, ok...

Brian: [00:11:19] Offer one hundred percent free data for all Pokémon Go data.

Phillip: [00:11:23] Ridiculous.

Brian: [00:11:23] Crazy.

Phillip: [00:11:24] So this is what's incredible about T-Mobile. Just when you thought that they can't stoop to any more lows, T-Mobile is literally paying their customers to stay on their network. Literally, they're giving away stock. Did you see that?

Brian: [00:11:39] No. I didn't see that.

Phillip: [00:11:40] They're literally giving away the T-Mobile stock.

Brian: [00:11:43] I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised.

Phillip: [00:11:45] It's like every Tuesday they call it T-Mobile Tuesdays and they're like just giving stuff away left and right. And they literally are giving away T-Mobile stock to people so that they stay on T-Mobile. Meanwhile, T-Mobile has been trying to sell themselves for years and can't do it. And a very blatant violation of net neutrality they've decided that all of a sudden any data that traverses their network is free for Pokémon users. But listen, everybody is going to capitalize on Pokémon right now, and they're not the only ones.

Brian: [00:12:19] Well, that OK, the big announcement, I mean, it was all was suspected, but I think it was confirmed today that McDonald's is sponsoring a Pokémon Go. It makes complete sense. There's going to be a country that it's rolled out in where there's going to be all McDonald's are going to either be PokeStops or Gyms. And that is crazy. That is amazing.

Phillip: [00:12:42] No, no, no, it's not. It's not.

Brian: [00:12:44] No, no, no. I'm saying it's crazy in an amazing way.

Phillip: [00:12:48] If there are two very large global organizations who have mastered licensing, it is Nintendo and McDonalds.

Brian: [00:12:59] {laughter} It's the perfect pairing.

Phillip: [00:13:00] Yeah, it's like I mean, I've never heard of corporate synergy that's more synergistic than this. By the way. I can't get like silly contracts from Fortune 500 companies that are like worth so much smaller and lower amounts of money. I can't get that stuff signed inside of like two months. So this stuff had to have been planned.

Brian: [00:13:21] It was a oh, I mean, I think...

Phillip: [00:13:23] A year ago.

Brian: [00:13:23] Yes. Oh at least.

Phillip: [00:13:24] This has been in play for a long, long time.

Brian: [00:13:26] Yeah. Like right after Niantic's spin off you Google.

Phillip: [00:13:33] Yes. Yes.

Brian: [00:13:33] Probably right around there. They're like, OK, let's talk.

Phillip: [00:13:36] So do you know that. So hold on. Do you know the background behind the creation of Pokémon Go?

Brian: [00:13:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole Ingress thing. And then it was, you know, it's part of Google and they were worried that other partners would be kind of scared off by big bad Google, and so they spun off and...

Phillip: [00:13:58] Google was never going to get a licensing deal for something like that.

Brian: [00:14:01] Sure. But I believe that Alphabet still owns a fairly significant piece.

Phillip: [00:14:07] Oh, I mean, yeah, yeah, oh, that was that was actually really interesting is that no matter I mean, gosh, I don't know how we became the Pokémon podcast, but the uptick in Nintendo's stock was significant, like I said. Twenty five percent gain in their market cap inside of five days or something crazy, but Nintendo gets the smallest cut.

Brian: [00:14:28] Yeah, I saw that.

Phillip: [00:14:30] Of everybody who has their hand in the pot of selling this. Apple gets a third, Nintendo gets like 10 percent when all is said and done, you know, like Alphabet, Niantic, all these guys, everybody's getting a cut. Because really this is a rebranded game. This is a game that preexisted. And it was rebranded, licensed with Nintendo's cooperation because this game existed already and was already available on all the major outlets and wasn't really a commercial success. This is Nintendo's MO, though, because if you think about it, do you know the story behind Super Mario Brothers 2?

Brian: [00:15:07] No, not 2.

Phillip: [00:15:08] So Super Mario Brothers 2 was actually created as a spiritual successor to a much harder version of Super Mario Brothers One. It was exactly like identical in every way graphically. But they had like harder components, like poison mushrooms and some other things. And it was kind of made as a spiritual successor from the arcade version of Super Mario Brothers, which was made specifically to try to churn quarters out of kids. So they made it a little bit harder and a little bit more difficult. The American Audit, it was actually released in that form as Super Mario Brothers 2 for the Famicom in Japan, like in I don't know, 1986. Like, it was a very quick follow up to the original Super Mario Brothers by like a year and a half or something. About two years later or soon after that they tried to bring it to the United States and Nintendo of the USA basically said this is never going to work in our market. It's too hard. And people just don't appreciate the game. They're not going to appreciate the game. You've got to give us something else. So what does Nintendo do? They find another game that they had licensed characters from, but wrote the content themselves and they rebranded the game with Super Mario, with the cast of characters from Mario. That's why Super Mario Brothers 2 is such an oddball game with like this with Wart the frog and all these weird things. It was a game called Doki Doki Panic, which was like a completely different game, but it was rebranded with Mario characters. And that's exactly what they've done again here in this genius move with Pokémon.

Brian: [00:16:49] Well, it was a genius move because one, Pokémon has like such a, there's something so catchy about it. Like catching all of the Pokémon, you know, and then defending the Gyms and all of that.

Phillip: [00:17:09] Yeah. Yeah.

Brian: [00:17:09] It's interesting. It's got a cuter storyline. It's got the cute factor to it.

Phillip: [00:17:16] Yeah. Yeah.

Brian: [00:17:17] And obviously it's got the name, the name recognition.

Phillip: [00:17:21] It has the nostalgia. It has the millennial nostalgia. It's the right platform. If you came out with Pokémon Gold or whatever, if you reissued that, yeah, a lot of people would buy it, but literally everybody in the world can get this app today and download it. Anyway. Enough about that.

Brian: [00:17:41] Yes.

Phillip: [00:17:42] They are making tremendous amounts of money from in app purchases already. You know, Kevin Rose was like one of the first people that I saw that tweeted that he spent over one hundred dollars on, like Poké coins or whatever. And I guess, you know, I think in app purchases are an incredible example. It's the canonical example for me. And I have a whole great story about how One Click was licensed from Amazon for iTunes and iTunes is what popularized One Click. In fact, Amazon on One Click was awesome, but very few people used Amazon so much that they needed the One Click functionality at that point in time. So  iTunes was the killer app for One Click. And now we're talking about like this is an engaged form of commerce and a different type of commerce because people are buying digital goods or ephemeral goods that it's a different type of commerce. And we haven't talked about in app commerce before. And now this is hooked up to AR, which I think is kind of intriguing So there's a lot to talk about here.

Brian: [00:18:45] Yeah, I know. I think about this. I mean, let's just talk about some, you know, next steps that wouldn't be that hard, right? Just throw advertising in there. I mean, I don't know if Pokémon will do this, but other games that AR, you're going to be running around with your phone and you're going to see ads for things. There's no doubt. That's almost too obvious to me to not happen. Then you're going to be able to buy things in those ads in app, like are just talking about, so the transactionally actually for something other than what's related to the game or whatever else that you're doing will actually be a purchase for something that's outside of it, that may be related to it. I know everyone streams music now, so this is not a good example. But let's just say that you are playing the game and listening to a song, you know, that was part of the soundtrack. Okay, this is really...

Phillip: [00:19:42] I love where you're going with this right now. I love... I can tell that this is so spur of the moment.

Brian: [00:19:46] It is really spur of the moment. But my point is there's going to be things that part... You're going to end up in the you know, in a store or in a park. There's going to be something that's there that's going to be a great cross-sell or up sell or whatever. And you're going to be able to buy it right in your app as you're doing whatever game that you're playing or activity that you're doing.

Phillip: [00:20:06] I think the McDonald's... So, yeah, I think you've just described the exact McDonald's philosophy there is that they're going to bring you to McDonald's to engage in, not to buy food from McDonald's, but it's going to become a destination of a different sort. It's like the reason that McDonald's put free Wi-Fi in every location that they have is because they want McDonald's to be a place that you come to be. And while you're there, you're probably going to buy something. And, you know, it's probably true if I find myself, by the way, if I ever find myself on a PokéStop in front of a McDonald's, just shoot me. But if I do find myself in a McDonald's parking lot, the temptation will be there to be there for more than just... By the way, people are like hanging out. I was at Bryant Park last week for work in midtown Manhattan, right behind the New York Public Library. And it's a massive Pokémon stop. Like everybody is there doing Pokémon stuff with their phones. And they're all like talking to each other. Everyone's having fun. And it's a place where people are coming to hang out and they're hanging out in places that they traditionally haven't hung out before. And that's creating all sorts of other problems, too.

Brian: [00:21:26] Yeah, definitely. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, so there's going to be a lot of problems that have to be solved as we move into this new era. I mean, I think, you know, the more games and the more activities that happen in AR, the more dangers and new things that we're going to see that we have to actually address. Like, for instance, like you and I talked about this earlier, but virtual property rights.

Phillip: [00:21:53] This is by the way, I had never thought about this in any way until I saw Boon Sheridan on Twitter, who I don't even know that I follow. Actually, I just saw his re tweet back like over a week ago when this whole craze kind of broke out. And he had this amazing quote because I guess he lives in an old church that is now his house. But he said, and I quote, "Do I even have rights when it comes to virtual location being imposed upon me? Businesses have expectations, but this is my home." And it's incredible because it's like they took map data, and they took map data that, you know, I guess is either outdated or which, you know, is any map data ever perfect? But they took map data and they basically took public locations like parks and churches and schools and things like that. And they made them places of interest for people to show up not necessarily to do anything of any nefarious acts. But, you know, it's loitering. People are hanging out. People are there in a very odd manner. They're hanging out for no good reason. And so he brings up this great thing about this virtual property rights or virtual...

Brian: [00:23:14] This is going to get crazy, too. I'm going to take us on a little bit of a tangent. But I'm going to bring us back.

Phillip: [00:23:18] Yes, please, please, please.

Brian: [00:23:19] I actually can't help but think this is why Microsoft purchased...

Phillip: [00:23:25] This is... Here it comes. Are we talking about LinkedIn again?

Brian: [00:23:29] Oh, no, no, no.

Phillip: [00:23:29] OK, OK. You know, I always bring it back to the LinkedIn acquisition.

Brian: [00:23:34] No. Minecraft. Minecraft.

Phillip: [00:23:38] Ok, go, go, go, go.

Brian: [00:23:39] Yeah, no, I want to imagine playing Minecraft in AR, like all of a sudden your pocket Minecraft version is actually the AR version and you're running around and you're building things in virtual spaces. And there's actually like multiple, multiple worlds within the world that are all... Yeah, crazy stuff.

Phillip: [00:23:59] No, this is the HoloLens demo isn't it?

Brian: [00:24:02] Right.

Phillip: [00:24:02] Don't they have a Minecraft demo for HoloLens?

Brian: [00:24:05] Yes. And so just imagine how crazy that could get all over the world. People start building crazy things on top of other people's lawns, you know, you're like walking along in AR, and you see something crazy. I mean, this could get really contentious really quickly.

Phillip: [00:24:26] Well, I mean, it could be digital defacement too. I mean, when you talk about...

Brian: [00:24:30] Digital defacement. {laughter} Yeah.

Phillip: [00:24:31] Honestly, I mean, when you think about the types of things that you wouldn't want represented on your building or on your property in the real world, I mean, how much worse could it possibly get in the digital space where maybe you don't even happen to be engaged?

Brian: [00:24:49] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:24:50] It's like this guy, Boon Sheridan's, probably not even on... He wasn't even on Pokémon at the time. And he just figured out that all these people were congregating at his house for that reason. But he has this very good point, which is his neighbors could get the wrong idea that there's people kind of coming and going outside the front of his building, like, suspiciously. And at late, late hours in the night. There's a lot of stories of people like running around in parks at two, three o'clock in the morning with their friends doing Pokémon stuff.

Brian: [00:25:25] There was a flash mob at Santa Monica Pier...

Phillip: [00:25:30] Oh, I didn't see that. What was that?

Brian: [00:25:31] So, yeah, it was some Pokémon appeared near LA and there was a huge craze, the late night flash mob of people that rushed toward the spot. And he just said it was nuts. And I mean, so I think the only example of this, like...

Phillip: [00:25:53] Let me talk for a minute about how how real life is so different than what you see in the movies. Because I was forced without any means of defending myself...

Brian: [00:26:09] What are you about to say, dude?

Phillip: [00:26:10] I was forced. It was forced upon me. And I had to watch the new Jem in the Holograms movie. Like I said, my household is very different to your house.

Brian: [00:26:21] {laughter} So different.

Phillip: [00:26:22] And I was forced to watch the Jen and the Holograms movie. There's a moment in the movie where they go to the Santa Monica Pier at like ten o'clock at night and there's nobody there. There's nobody at the pier and it's dark and they have to climb a fence to get onto the pier. I'm like, what are you thinking? Like and then they're there. And then it's like, then they're going to get arrested and then they I'm just like, anyway, whatever. But apparently it's a very popular PokéStop in the middle of the night. So I was lied to by the Jem and the Holograms movie. I'll have you know. Which is not a new thing for me, I'm sure, taking Jem at her word. What was I thinking? There's so many privacy issues that I'm concerned about here. As the person who has four Amazon devices listening to every word I say in my house all the time. There's a lot of privacy issues, I think, mostly because these things are aimed at children. This is a game that has been has been criticized since day one for overaggressive app permissions, you know, the implication that they could possibly have access to the entirety of your Google account, including the ability read your Gmail or for you and I who are on Project Fi possibly our text messages and some other stuff. It raises a lot of concerns about children, you know, at a young age, 12, 13 years old, being able to make informed privacy decisions, you know, for the sake of entertainment. And what does that data do? What does it power? It powers more consumerism, it powers people to go to McDonald's. We already have an obesity epidemic in the United States of America. Do we need to be driving kids to McDonald's more than what we already are? There's a lot of concerns that I think it brings up.

Brian: [00:28:17] Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think especially the more iterations we have of this, which there will be more.

Phillip: [00:28:25] Yeah.

Brian: [00:28:26] The crazier it's going to get from a security standpoint. I mean, just even like a physical safety standpoint. I think some guys recently two people fell off cliffs. I think that they survived or falls but were severely injured because they were playing Pokémon.

Phillip: [00:28:46] Wow.

Brian: [00:28:46] And so if kids are now going out into more dangerous situations that they wouldn't have been in, I mean, I could even see kids like, you know, wandering off with their phones, trying to get a Pokémon away from their parents and getting lost. I mean, like that alone.

Phillip: [00:29:06] Wow.

Brian: [00:29:06] Yeah. I mean, there's just a lot of things to think about which means that I think there's going to have to be more, there will have to be more probably precautionary elements in the game. Like in the game, there might be, "Hey, you can't go in here. There's not any of the part of the game here. You should not try or attempt to be in this spot."

Phillip: [00:29:36] Right. Yeah, well, that fits very well in this really interesting... It fits into this patent application by Apple a few weeks ago, which I may have already mentioned on the podcast, about being able to disable your camera or be able to disable your microphone in certain areas that are considered to be high security of off limits.

Brian: [00:29:59] Yes, that's right. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:30:00] And I think that this brings up another thing. We're getting very, very good at location sensing in mobile devices and GO fencing. Things are becoming very, very sophisticated to where I think they're able to do these things now that I used to believe that could only be done with beacons because of the proximity and triangulation. But now it's being done with Wi-Fi and with cell phone towers. And it's getting very, very, very complex. It's just I don't know.

Brian: [00:30:31] Take this back to commerce for a second. Yeah. All right. So now let's talk about, like, how a game like Pokémon could actually isolate companies from having Pokémon in their stores and informing their users that there are no Pokémon in those stores.

Phillip: [00:30:56] Yeah, so you should be able to claim your business and make yourself off limits. That should be something at minimum you should be able to do.

Brian: [00:31:03] Make yourself off limits, but I mean, first of all, one, why would you? I mean, I guess there are some businesses that would want to do that, certainly. But on the flip side, a lot of businesses are going to want and I'm using Pokémon as an example because we have it, but they're going to want people who are playing and involved in these activities to go through their stores. And unless they pay that company to make them a part of the game, it won't. And it will be very clear that they're not.

Phillip: [00:31:30] Oh, so pay to play.

Brian: [00:31:31] Pay to play. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:31:33] I see. Yeah, I see what you're saying. I see you're saying.

Brian: [00:31:35] Yes.

Phillip: [00:31:36] Well, I don't think so. There's a lot of stuff that I think that this is going to enable from an augmented reality point of view and for Commerce that I think is and even traditionally commerce that I think could be really compelling. So I'm going to give a few examples of ways that, you know, we didn't have a concept of, well you and I may have had a concept of augmented reality a year ago. I don't know that the average consumer did. And now we have a successful example in Pokémon Go. So there are already tools in place right now. Both Facebook and YouTube have the ability to do 360 videos and 360 pictures where you actually hold your physical phone up in the air. And as you move your phone around your space and inside your space, you can actually see through your phone into a virtual space. A great example of this and maybe we can link it up in the show notes is the Falcon rocket landing on the barge from Elon Musk's company, SpaceX.

Brian: [00:32:44] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:32:45] They actually did a 360 degree video. It's on YouTube right now, load it up on your phone, hit the link, load it up on your phone. And as soon as you hold it up, you're like, man, this is kind of a crappy video. It's like aiming off the side of the ocean. As you move your phone around, you actually get to pan with your phone through the whole space as if your phone is like a window into that moment in time. And this is what I feel like engaging eCommerce and even traditionally commerce could take it to the next level is if you could have product demos and product videos and product, you know, 360 product videos...

Brian: [00:33:20] Already being done.

Phillip: [00:33:21] I know. I understand that's being done. But I'm talking about taking it to the next level, as AR in your space on you. What if you could go to the mirror, you could hold up you phone, look through your phone, and you're seeing yourself wearing the article of clothing?

Brian: [00:33:36] Dude, yes. Absolutely.

Phillip: [00:33:37] I mean, and those are things that I think now they physically could have been done before.

Brian: [00:33:44] Yes.

Phillip: [00:33:44] But nobody would ever do that.

Brian: [00:33:46] I totally agree. I think I mean, now that we're talking about like now we're getting into some really cool stuff.

Phillip: [00:33:53] Right. Right.

Brian: [00:33:55] Like body data. And like, I don't even want to go down that tangent because I want to do a whole show just on, like, body data.

Phillip: [00:34:02] Yeah.

Brian: [00:34:04] Yeah, I totally agree. Like, now that Pokémon Go has paved the way, like you said, this is one of those defining moments, kind of like the Echo of her voice and other things.

Phillip: [00:34:14] Yeah.

Brian: [00:34:14] Where I actually think we're going to see a whole bunch of new devices built around this. I think maybe just maybe like the whole Google Glass idea...

Phillip: [00:34:26] Google Glass!

Brian: [00:34:28] Might make its way back. I don't know if it's going to be back as Google Glass, but it's gooing to... The idea of wearing something where you can actually just see augmented reality all the time is going to be a lot more compelling very soon because it's going to be way more than you could do with it. The problem with it before is like people just couldn't do anything with it. And it was a chicken and egg scenario.

Phillip: [00:34:51] Right.

Brian: [00:34:51] So now that the software is going to start popping up everywhere and we're using existing technology and people are into it, I expect that the device side's going to ramp up like crazy.

Phillip: [00:35:02] And these things are available today. I mean, I haven't seen a website that has it yet, but there are sites that can deep link to your phone or there are proof of concept that exists that can deep link to your phone for Google Cardboard content, for YouTube 360 content. And these are things that are available today. But we haven't, like you just said, we haven't had anything pave the way. And I think there's going to be a new element of telepresence, which we don't, we're not really going to be able to talk about too much of that stuff, I think, in the context of commerce. But just as an aside, like the whole telepresence movement, both for business and for, FaceTime is a great example. FaceTime is the same exact thing that we have had in Skype for the last 15 years. There's nothing different about it other than that it's on your phone and it's in a walled garden, private network in Apple. I think that we're going to see tremendous... We're going to see tremendous growth and improvement in those experiences. And they don't have to be in virtual reality headsets like the HoloLens, which does a great job of this. If you look at some of the telepresence demos for HoloLens, they can place people in the room and it looks and feels... It's like I've seen people forget that, like they don't realize that those things and people aren't actually there. And so, anyway, there's some really interesting tech that I think could come out of this. I want to talk about a little bit about, you know, I sort of alluded to it about how it could be used in traditional eCommerce. What do you think? Do you think... Let me ask you the question directly. Do you think people will actually be buying things while wearing a virtual reality headset? Do you think that someone's going to buy something?

Brian: [00:36:57] Yes. I do.

Phillip: [00:36:58] What makes you think that? And can you give me an example of something that might make me change my mind on that.

Brian: [00:37:01] Clothing. Clothing for sure. This is a foregone conclusion with like once body data, which is the next big data point, by the way. Once body data actually takes hold in people's minds and they understand, like, how it's going to benefit them and businesses understand how it's going to benefit them, which I know that we're a little bit early on this curve. I have a bunch of thoughts on this. And I think that it's going to be the next big point of investment.

Phillip: [00:37:36] It already is. Didn't Facebook purchase what was the VR purchase that they made? Come on, somebody out there screaming it right now. Who did they buy? Oculus.

Brian: [00:37:53] Oh, no, no, no. I mean, I'm talking beyond just... Oculus, obviously, the VR sets are there. That's no doubt. There's already a huge amount of investment. I'm talking about body data.

Phillip: [00:38:04] You can buy them today. And people are already playing games on virtual.

Brian: [00:38:08] No, there are a lot of people predicting by like by not this Christmas, but the following Christmas, it's going to be a major part of household items.

Phillip: [00:38:21] I mean, if it doesn't... If the batteries don't blow up and catch on fire, then I'm sure it'll be here to stay come two Christmases from now. I'm more concerned about, you know...

Brian: [00:38:32] But back to the question in app purchases, to change your mind, if you could see exactly how you were going to look in something, and then purchase that and it was fitted exactly to your body, you weren't buying something off the shelf, it was a fitted purchase. And it was shipped to your door...

Phillip: [00:38:53] I mean, there's a lot of ifs there, I think, you know, I get it.

Brian: [00:38:57] It's a when. Future of commerce, dude.

Phillip: [00:39:00] Fashion. I know. I know. Fashion is just one small thing. I feel like there's got to be something that's more generalized than that. What would Amazon do?

Brian: [00:39:11] Oh all kind of things. Golf clubs. You're going to get them fitted via VR. You're going to take a swing. You're going to buy a golf club based off of your body data and... Yeah, yeah. You're going to take a VR swing.

Phillip: [00:39:25] Oh my gosh. I'm not there yet. I'm trying.

Brian: [00:39:27] Play a round of 18 on your VR set with different clubs as you're going along trying out different things in VR and then buy the ones that you like most. It's happening.

Phillip: [00:39:39] I mean possibly. Yeah I think yes. In items that need, that have extreme detail and where a product photo doesn't really do it.

Brian: [00:39:49] Everything is going to be customized. I'm talking down to furniture. You will have items that are personalized to your body so that they are perfect for...

Phillip: [00:39:59] Furniture. Ok, ok, ok. I like that example because furniture is very difficult for you to visualize inside the room in a concept as... Yeah.

Brian: [00:40:08] Dude, we're getting into my buddy did episode. Man.

Phillip: [00:40:11] OK, right. All right.

Brian: [00:40:12] So much ahead on that.

Phillip: [00:40:13] It doesn't have to be that way. I think it still fits firmly in there. HoloLens. I know we keep talking about which is not, you know. Yeah. Microsoft is forging some paths here. I think Oculus is probably the most popular or well known brand of VR at this point. But, yeah, HoloLens has amazing room tracking, like incredible room sensing algorithms and planer tracking and things like that. And I think that's those are things that and the demos that I've seen are just incredible, again, of creating a AR type experiences in a VR headset, so that it kind of pulls you into the room and you're still in the room and you're engaging with things that aren't necessarily there in the room. So, furniture is phenomenal.

Brian: [00:40:52] So let's just say eventually we do... And I think this will happen even before we get there. But ok, so go into a store and right now we have all the packaging and all of the elements of oh let's just say grocery store.

Phillip: [00:41:08] Ok.

Brian: [00:41:09] Packing, sales, banners, all kinds of marketing and so on. They'll actually potentially, this is again a little bit further out, but I don't see any reason why there won't be different personalized experiences for everyone that will come to them via their phone. I mean, grocery stores are a great example of this because they've already got all of their clubs that they are collecting all of the data on you, on everything that you purchased. Otherwise you don't get the sales. And they've got, you know, a lot of them don't have rewards points. They do. They have their gas rewards points. But in short, there's going to be some crazy gamification that happens and they're going to be targeted ads to you right there on your phone or on your eyeglasses or whatever it is. Oh, and there's going to be one more element that's mixed in here that we haven't touched on, and I'm thinking a little further out here, but I don't see why we won't mix our personal assistants in with AR.

Phillip: [00:42:13] Oh, I think that has to go that way.

Brian: [00:42:16] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:42:16] Right. It has to go that way. I mean why in the world. I don't know. Why does this... We have this phenomenal digital assistant in she who shall not be named. There's no reason in the world, and this is the sixth episode that I've said it. There's no reason in the world if it can run on a credit card sized Raspberry Pi. There's no reason it can't run on your phone. So that is a great frustration for me that it's kind of tethered to where I am when I'm at home. It is probably best used while I'm at home because I do different things at home than I do on the go. But I do think yeah, I think you could make the... I don't know.

Brian: [00:42:58] I saw recently... You can check this out. I wish I remembered the name right now. I should have wrote it down. I saw sunglasses that can play music to you through your skull. They didn't even put anything in your ears.

Phillip: [00:43:14] Yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, this has been around a while.

Brian: [00:43:16] It's been around for a while. I personally can see how instead of music, which I mean, it seems kind of silly to me that you'd have music to play with you through your skull because when you are listening to music, you want it to be kind of immersive. But to have your personal assistant talk to you through your skull makes a ton of sense to me.

Phillip: [00:43:38] Yeah, this is exciting stuff. But I guess coming back to the new normal, which is augmented reality is here. It's in our lives. Our phones are now a window to a new virtual world. I don't know, I think that what I would like, you know, some of the kinds of things I would love to see is to be able to, in my own life, be able to use AR for something that actually betters my life, not just for entertainment, not just for consumer behavior, but for something that would make life actually better. And a great example of that is in the medical field. There is no reason today why you couldn't. And there are companies that are doing this. I know Optum does this. I know there's a few others. And I have friends and family that are already using their smartphones for health care with virtual doctors that are available 24/7 at the touch of an app. So I know that this exists today, but I'm talking about AR. If you could have a consult with a doctor and a doctor could use AR to be able to communicate with you where everything from, you know, him being able to instruct things on your body, let's say everything from diagnosing like a a spider bite or to plastic surgery, for instance, not just showing you what the final product or enhancement would look like, but being able to kind of, you know, like almost like a weatherman, be able to show you the instruction of where things are going. Personal training for fitness could be done very interestingly through this. You brought up golf. Fitness...

Brian: [00:45:27] Oh, man, we're talking about my body data episode again.

Phillip: [00:45:30] I'm trying not to get there. I'm not trying to get there.

Brian: [00:45:32] We are getting there.

Phillip: [00:45:32] You know, where augmented reality, I think, takes it to the next level is it's not just in seeing Pokémon that are sitting in your room. I think that that's such a simplistic example because it's entertainment only. It's how we interact with each other. It's a third person perspective. For the first time in your life, you'll be able to see through another person's eyes, and they'll be able to communicate to you what they're seeing and show you exactly how things in their world, in their view, reacts. And I think that that's just fantastic. I want to know how that makes my life better. And ultimately, if I can spend some money to make my life better in that new reality, that's great.

Brian: [00:46:18] Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I think we know we've been all over the map here.

Phillip: [00:46:23] We sure have. I think you can sense the excitement. We're definitely excited about it. You know, I don't know. I guess we'll see. I think there's going to be a convergence of all of these tech, all of this tech all at once, like you were just saying, virtual assistant wearables, augmented reality. There's no reason why all that couldn't be rolled into Google Glass. Just the fact is, you just look like such a douche wearing it right now.

Brian: [00:46:54] Yeah. That will change. That's not hard to change.

Phillip: [00:46:55] And, well, supposedly they had a partnership with Warby Parker and they were supposed to be these like new... It's a long way off still. It's a long way off.

Brian: [00:47:04] It's a long way off, but it's maybe not as long as as I think maybe some people were initially thinking. I think Google Glass is another example of a technology that was introduced too early and kind of fell flat, had some buzz. And then it tanked because there wasn't all of the other things in place to help it be successful. And I think, like you said, I've been thinking about this a ton lately, there's just a lot of things that are coming together right now where I think in our lives, we think the Internet's changed our lives a lot already. And I would say we ain't seen nothing yet.

Phillip: [00:47:49] Right. Right.

Brian: [00:47:49] I think it is going to get crazier and a lot faster than we could have imagined. I think we finally hit that tipping point. All that stuff that, you know, that they were waiting for in the 60s, 70s and 80s is finally actually able to materialize.

Phillip: [00:48:10] No, it's not the Jetsons until I have a flying car. When I get a flying car, then I'll be excited about it.

Brian: [00:48:15] No flying car, but self-driving car. Yes. Which is close enough for me.

Phillip: [00:48:21] Yeah, which is interesting. Yeah. Again, so we were talking about in app purchases. I mean this is so completely outside the realm of this particular show, but since in app purchases are a huge part of commerce and again we're talking about digital goods that really have no other meaning outside of what I other than ones and zeros, there's nothing tangible in this world that's being transacted there. It's an ability or a feature. You've bought some code is what you've bought. Tesla. Have you heard about this, Tesla's new Model 3, they're going to allow people to buy a Model 3 at a lower price point, which is virtually handicapped. It will be slower and have less horsepower and you'll be able to upgrade it to the full fledged version, which it's fully capable of doing. But it's limited via software. You'll be able to through a nine thousand dollars in app purchase, upgrade your Tesla to the next level. And this is to make the Model 3 more accessible down market to even more people. And that is where we are. That is that is where we are.

Brian: [00:49:40] Now consumers are going to feel what it's like to try and work with enterprise software. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:49:47] {laughter} Ok, that's a perfect place to end.

Brian: [00:49:49] No. No. One thing, one more thing. You talked about cars. We talked about cars. But if we're in driverless cars, talk about augmented reality, there is absolutely no reason why Tesla won't sell their ad version of the car. We'll have augmented reality in window...

Phillip: [00:50:11] This is ridiculous.

Brian: [00:50:11] It's not that ridiculous. In window that will pay for your car. It's not that ridiculous.

Phillip: [00:50:20] You know, at some point in time, we're going to transcend, you know, in an automated economy. We're going to have to. And this is definitely something that we need to talk about in the future. But in an automated economy, we're going to be in a place where a living wage or a standard wage is just going to have to be a thing that is provided to people because there won't be jobs enough for everybody.

Brian: [00:50:45] Dude, I disagree with that. I disagree with that.

Phillip: [00:50:45] And at some point with that, no, hold on. But we'll get there. So here's what's great about that. Why wouldn't someone's full time job just to be to be marketed to all day? Like, I just I want to make that my job. My job is just to watch all of your advertising.

Brian: [00:51:00] No. No. No.

Phillip: [00:51:00] Eight hours a day. I want to take it all. And welcome to my dystopian future. I told you we should have ended a minute ago.

Brian: [00:51:07] We were talking about AR, and then you brought up cars. So I had to bring up that idea. I think it's... I don't know. Anyway, OK, we can end now.

Phillip: [00:51:15] Ok, awesome. Thank you for listening. We want your feedback. I know for a fact that my microphone clipped out five or six times because I got so excited and so loud about this particular episode. I want to know what you think and Brian wants to know what you think. So please leave your feedback for the show.

Brian: [00:51:32] Yes I do.

Phillip: [00:51:32] Remember that you can subscribe and we need you to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, and you can always listen on your Amazon Echo through TuneIn radio with the phrase, "Alexa, play Future Commerce." And until next time, I'm Phillip.

Brian: [00:51:45] I'm Brian.

Phillip: [00:51:46] And keep listening. Tune into the future. Thank you. And adios.

Brian: [00:51:51] Adios.

Phillip: [00:51:52] Bye.

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