TFGL2021 - S5 - Ep1 - Pushing for the Metaverse
Welcome to this episode of the Tech For Good Live podcast.
Joining host Fay Schofield on this voyage into 2022 we have TFGL team members Greg Ashton and Hera Hussain
Our special guest is Alex Blandford. Alex is the Lead Product Manager at the University of Cambridge.
Transcript
Fay: Hello and happy new year. And welcome back to the Tech For Good Live podcast. It's our very first episode of 2022. And what a great lineup we've got in store for you today. We're going to be talking about why it's so hard to regulate algorithms, a new government-backed disabled passenger charter, the world's obsession, and probably mine, with Wordle, and the inspiring story of Preet Chandi and her trip to the South Pole. All of that and more coming up. Joining me on this brand new voyage into 2022, we have Greg Ashton. He's back for another year. He’s back for another tech for good live series and he's keeping us on the straight and narrow. We actually kicked off the recording of this podcast before we even began recording, talking about the dumb stuff that the animals in our lives do. So, Greg, question for you. What's Noodle been up to? Is it Noodle or Noodles?
Greg: Noodles.
Fay: Noodles. Plural.
Greg: Important distinction as well because there are other noodle dogs around, so you don't want to get them getting mixed up. Noodles has this thing recently where he makes a little nest on the back of the sofa and at a certain point he gets uncomfortable, so he climbs off, but he basically just moves his front legs and then his back legs sort of just slide after him. He did that today and during his stretch slide off the sofa did a human-sounding fart.
Fay: [laughs] Classic classic husband probably does the same, to be honest.
Greg: [laughs]
Fay: [laughs] It's true. He doesn't listen to this podcast. It's fine. Hera Hussain. Hera is back on the podcast, after a long hiatus. When were you last on the podcast? It feels like many years ago.
Hera: I think it was the last podcast of 2020.
Fay: Oh my God. And it’s 2022. Hera is back. It's wonderful to have you with us. Same question. So you currently share your life with, is it a German shepherd and a cat? What have your animals been up to? What dumb stuff do your animals do?
Hera: Well, the dumbest thing is that they both don't get along. So I have to separate them across different floors. The daytime cause my puppy has separation anxiety and needs to be spent with my puppy at all times, including going to the toilet. Everything. My puppy is with me. The cat meows from the first floor because he misses me and then the dog barks in response to that. So there's mayhem. And the cat sneaks at night when the puppy is locked and sleeping to smell the puppy from behind the door.
Greg: [laughs]
Hera: But if the puppy goes to the first floor, the cat hides beneath the bed, so they don't interact. So it's, yeah, there's proper borders in our house, but they're poor.
Fay: Military style operation. Military style operation. And me I'm Fay. I'm going to be your host today. I always say this. I'm never sure quite why people give me hosting control, but please bear with me as I try and guide us through this first one of 2022. I share my life with a very, very demanding tortoise-shell cat and the dumbest thing that she does is just walks from room to room, sings a song of her people at 4:00 AM in the morning and then kind of forgets where she is and continues to sing the song of her people. Bless her. Never mind. We have a guest with us today. Alex Blandford. Alex is the lead product manager at the University of Cambridge. Welcome to the podcast, Alex, thank you for being our very first guest of 2022. You did share with us before we started recording that you share your life with a rescued greyhound. So what's the dumbest thing that your dog has done recently?
Alex: The dumbest thing he's done is injured his paw while running and running, not even that fast. He's been limping a little bit, but he's got a, there's another Greyhound on the next street over and he's going for a play date with that Greyhound in a couple of days’ time. Playdate is putting it strongly. They stare at each other for five minutes, wag and then lie down.
Greg: [laughs]
Alex: So it's going to really kind of high energy, high emotion stuff.
Greg: [laughs]
Fay: [laughs] I love it. I love it. Also, the fact that a Greyhound injured his paw running, of all the best dog breeds to do that. Right. That’s it. Intro done. Greg, this week’s topics. Stat of the week. What's happening? What's going on?
Greg: We're going to jump straight into 2022 with some automated decision-making gloom story from the US. So this comes from the Markup. People may be aware of them. They're an organization. That's looking at social media and tech and trying to provide very intelligent well-researched reporting and study of various platforms and they've had a look at automated decision-making recently, and they've found that there's currently, of forty bills designed to regulate it in the US, only one has passed. And that was basically a task force who generated some recommendations and have ultimately been ignored. So basically what they're saying is there’s no real regulation for automated decision-making and AI in the US and it doesn't look like there's going to be any, any time soon, due to two factors, they mark it up to. So one is that lawmakers and the public actually don't know. What automated decision-making or AI systems are being used in government, both local and national, which baffles me. Absolutely baffles me. And when they ask they get stonewalled, basically. So when they try to police it, they can't do any specifics around what they’re trying to police, because people won't tell them what there is, which is a really interesting way of stopping it from happening. And then the other factor is that big tech and contractors are really successful at derailing any legislation. They use arguments that things like proposals are too broad, that they're going to stifle innovation and the usual kind of things that you would see from big tech. There's lots more to go into, but yeah, really interested to hear your guys' thoughts before we start digging down into the detail.
Hera: My first thought is that, you know, it's been years since society’s been talking about AI, the tech sector has been talking about AI. The fact that we still don't know, which has been deployed in what public like services is to me, like a basic starting point, which where we're not even there yet. So I understand why regulating would be hard because how can you regulate something based on principle when like, without knowing the full repercussions of it? A lot of the really amazing work that's happened by academics and sort of like consumer rights groups around how AI has affected like the ability to get a mortgage and like, sentencing guidelines and criminal justice systems. I think those have been fascinating, but it just does raise the question that, you know, how many other nefarious ways is it being used. And also if we only think of all the nefarious ways we kind of miss out in, maybe some of the good ways it's being used but because we don't know anything about it, the actuality is like a black box of applications. I feel like we're kind of like walking through a misty evening, trying to figure out, you know, where the guardrails are.
Fay: I love that. I love the analogy. A misty evening whilst we're trying to determine AI. I love it. Alex, what's your initial take on this story?
Alex: I've got two or three things with this. The first is, last year or the year before, there was a sort of consultation group that was looking at sort of automated decision making stuff in the UK context and one of the things that were really difficult with how do you kind of build that transparency stuff in was how regularly do you do publish? Because like on a sort of, coming from sort of a government digital services background, you just go, well, yeah, just put it all and Github and tell me every time, you know, and I can select a notification of every time the algorithm changes. But like, no one's going to look. No one's gonna look that regularly. And especially if it's like non-development practices and there's sixteen deploys a day, no one's got no one can look and there's this kind of, there's this balance at the moment between how we manage accountability in regularly deployed code systems and how that translates. I mean, I know there's a lot of, sort of talk that you see on Twitter about code is law. And I think there's this real problem with the legibility of things when presented as code. The other thing is like, sometimes it’s AI but sometimes it really is. You as a citizen, make an application to the state, it goes into XL. There's a formula at the bottom. It's not to say that that isn't worthy of accountability because it absolutely is, but it's this kind of, sometimes it's not as fancy as you know, um, one of the big sort of bogeyman of AI and politics has come in and done a, done a Dominic Cummings on your thing. It's sometimes just dreadfully mundane. There is a third part of this as well, that I just want to mention in passing. So I'm a type one diabetic as well. And one of the things about this is like, it comes up against the medical device stuff, which is that. For diabetics, we've got this thing on the horizon, which is closed loop pumps, where it can take data from a sensor in your body and then make a decision about how much insulin you should have based on your readings. And the problem has been that’s it’s difficult to regulate and it's difficult to assign blame if it goes wrong. And I am always interested in these sort of automated decision-making things at a state level because it balances out with how people see it at a personal level of when they might actually want to outsource some level of decision-making, but simultaneously, how you regulate that and how you assign blame to something that is built politically to be blameless and to be neutral, ha ha ha, is difficult.
Greg: Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned them and mundane or anything because I, it kind of references AI and automated decision-making within this article. And I think it's dangerous to kind of conflate the two. Like you say automated decision-making could literally just be a flow chart. Like yes, no, go through to the end and they've just automated that. I mean, certainly in the UK, I think a lot of the automated decision-making is essentially going to be a digitisation of existing flowcharts and processes. And I can't expect that it's going to be wildly different in the US as well. The big difference being that here we've got GDPR, which kind of has those protections built-in, so that, you know, we're way ahead of them in that set automated decision making is directly within there. So you're already getting people to consider the implications of those things, but in the US it just sounds like a complete wild west. And it's crazy. I was reading the article and they talked about some of the efforts that people have made, you know, in California, they had one case where they were trying to do something which covered everything. So private and public sector. And they hit a wall and they were like, okay, well we'll just focus, focus on the public sector. So maybe that'll get through and same thing again. And it seems like the private sector in the US are like, all or nothing. Right. We're going to stop you regulating anything, even the public sector, because the minute you bring in any kind of legislation that's a warning sign for us. So they've literally just thrown the full weight and that case in California, I think it had the California chamber of commerce and 26 industry groups. So not people, organizations. It was groups that signed a letter opposing the bill. So you can see there's real rampant, defense of this supposed freedom of innovation, which is depressing because. It does lead to, like we've mentioned bias and issues with people. You know, we had talked about one on the pod last year about people not getting access to housing and housing support because of issues with the way that the system had been set up. So yeah, glad that we have some defenses here to kind of prevent that from happening.
Alex: It's an interesting one as well with the kind of, there's a real kind of first move advantage with the regulation is with this. You see how GDPR has essentially set the bar for how as a state you're probably going to be because you don't really want to have to build 50 different standards for how you do privacy legislation. And I think it's probably going to be very similar with this. The first country, or sorry, the first economically significant to Silicon valley country, that seriously enforces laws about this probably sets the bar and I suppose they just can't be doing with somebody getting their first .
Hera: I just want to point out that there are some really progressive cities in the US that are doing really good work. Not necessarily AI, but some facial recognition. So it's related, including Boston, Minneapolis, and Francisco, Oakland. Portland in Oregon, they have all fast, like city council have fast bans on using facial recognition, but the lease. So, you know, I feel like a few years ago this would have been a really radical move. It still is a really radical move that would not have seemed possible. So when we talk about like, sometimes it feels like it's unsurmountable, it's like lobbying power of big tech and then I think about these kind of moves and it gives me a lot of hope for the future and that there is like a real, there's like people power still. And it's just, you know, there are things are happening and in some places the right moves are being done.
Fay: Saving lived in the us for a bit as well. And. Seeing just how polarized people in groups can be on stuff like this and you summed it up, Greg. It is the wild. Well, I mean, it literally was the wild west, you know what I mean. But yeah, it's an interesting one. It's an interesting one. Was there any other kind of nuggets as part of this story, Greg, that you wanted to kind of mention? I'm just looking at our agenda and there's like a page for the notes on this one cause it's such a big story.
Greg: [laughs]
Fay: Is there anything that we haven't touched on that you thought would be really interesting for our listeners?
Greg: I think the one thing that stood out for me was, so there was a case in New York where they were they had a task force, a very important sounding thing. They were trying to do some initial study of automated decision work and basically what it produced was non-binding recommendations for further research and oversight. And the reason for this being so vague was one of the things they couldn't even agree on was the definition for automated decision systems.
Fay: God [laughs]
Hera: This does not fill me with hope for the UK’s AI strategy.
Greg: [laughs] Yeah, but there are definitions of them out there that are in use, but apparently when they tried to present those, they get accused of being too broad. So again, we come back to that tech interference thing. So yeah, I can see why, I mean, you're never going to get things passed if you can't agree on basic definitions.
Hera: Can I just say that Greg saying the task force has a very important sounding name is like the best thing that has been said in this podcast so far. I feel like that is such an accurate description of so many of these working groups and task forces and commissions. Love it.
Greg: [laughs]
Fay: Let's just appoint a task force to discuss this coalition. Yeah. It's yeah, it's just mad.
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Fay: Charity news of the week, Greg. What's happening?
Greg: Some good news.
Fay: Yayyyy. That’s so rare on this podcast.
Greg: So the government is teamed up with the charity, Scope, on a disabled persons’ passenger charter for bus, coach, taxi, private hire vehicles and rail. So basically it's to help all passengers travel with confidence. It's kind of a one-stop-shop for advice for disabled passengers and it's updated expert guidance on, uh, oh, sorry. They have also updated expert guidance on tactile paving and inclusive mobility. Yeah, it was really interesting. Now, when I first read this, I thought charter. It's basically loads of information that's available elsewhere, but in a messy way, stuck on another website and maybe tied it up. And I was like, is that the best thing that you can do? But actually, when you look into it, there's more to there. So it's not just the charter. It's part of a wider national disability strategy. They're doing an accessibility audit of all rail stations. They want to have clearer audible and visual announcements on buses. They're going to introduce legislation for taxis and private hire vehicles, and there's going to be one million to improve access at seaports. Seems very specific.
Fay: [alughs]
Greg: Seaports. Gotta keep the sea in there. But also, I was looking at Scope’s involvement in this and they released a report back in 2019 and the first recommendation of that report looking at public transport in the UK was to have a disabled person’s charter. So I find it really interesting that in 2019 they made that recommendation and the government have gone ahead and done it with Scope’s involvement and support.
Fay: Sounds great. Is there any, not to be a cynic, but is there anything that you've read kind of on this story or here Alex that you kind of, uh, coming up, you know, right now here in about this, that you're like, ooh, have they considered that? Or this could go wrong. Cause this actually sounds like a really positive thing. Maybe I'm just so used to being a pessimist on this podcast that I should just actually enjoy the fact that we've got a good story for a change, but yeah. Hera, Alex, what are your thoughts on this?
Alex: I think here about the difference between grassroots and the technocratic thing. Looking through this document, it's good. It will definitely improve the planning and delivery of some parts of transport. I think what sticks out for me is imagining that there is a particular situation, I mean, this could just be from spending too many years of people getting angry on Twitter, but you know, you come across a particular situation with transport and there's not a clear rule. The way in which the disabled person has been screwed over, but you, you know, that, that something's, you know, like, um, buses, insisting that people in wheelchairs get off if a pram comes on or like, you know, refusing to pick up two people in wheelchairs, you know, that sort of thing. I mean, appreciate this covers a lot of different disabilities, but there's a lot of stuff there, and I keep thinking about like how the government could better present this saying you as a user, have these rights of what you can expect from transport and that they're baked into the procurement of the franchises or something, and like, you can make a complaint. At the moment, it seems like a really good way of planning, but not a really good way of enforcing, I suppose, with my negative hat on.
Hera: I'm going to go with a positive and yeah, I like it. Thanks, Greg, for sharing this. And it makes me feel like, you know, urban planning is such a slow process and like the way they've laid out the work in here, it feels like they actually going to do it much quicker than usual. So I would be very, very curious to see actually, in another episode, how it's progressing. Cause it feels like such a positive thing. And I absolutely do not know enough about the kind of barriers that disabled persons face when traveling. Only tidbits from here and there and in the news, so, you know, it'd be great to find out more about this. I'm definitely gonna look into it more.
Fay: Yeah. I think the fact that like, you know, the government is partnering with Scope as well on this is such an important thing and t if there is anyone listening from Scope that would like to go to the podcast and talk about this, get in touch. But you know, the fact that they are kind of using, you know, the research that scope has done and are actually partnering with a charity that is so kind of entrenched in this is only a positive thing. Anything else to say on kind of this Greg or any sort of, any other new stories or updates you've seen about this? I was just like, haven't tried to have look at it and it's just buried in a massive kind of deep PDF, so just wondering if they're going to like, you know, publish a more accessible version of the guide. But yeah. anything else to add Greg?
Greg: Oh yeah, hundred percent it's going to be more, more accessible I believe than a PDF [laughs] It’s that classic irony of we're going to create this accessible guidance thing and then they stick it in a PDF.
Fay: [laughs]
Greg: At least they didn't call it final, final version three [laughs] But yeah, I think like everyone said, I think it's a really great example of when these things can work really well. You've got the government working with experts in the field. It's part of a wider picture so, you know, on our point, maybe, maybe it will feed more into those other aspects away from the planning aspects of it in the future. But hopefully we can track this and see what happens and see if we can see any great results from it because, you know, I've spoken to many disabled people about their travel woes and it just sounds the worse. So even a small improvement will be great.
Fay: Yeah. I mean, I follow, I follow like a bunch of blind Tik Tok users who just document kind of that journey on how, like this is, this is more kind of getting around sort of like pavements and stuff like that. But just, you know, obviously, when it was a pandemic and it was restaurants kind of opening up their doors and putting like tables and stuff on pavements and streets and whatever else and just the blind community on Tik Tok, were just really trying to like raise awareness for, we actually can't get around anymore guys, like, you know, you're outside enjoying your first cold beer and a long time. That’s important, whatever else. But for us, we need to be able to get from A to B. So as you say, Greg, it would be interesting to see how this kind of rolls out. To plug again, if anyone from scope was to come on and talk about this, that'd be a really nice follow-up. Greg, you've also got a link to an event here as well. Hope you're not trying to ditch us for a future podcast to attend this event. Is this in-person? Do we do in-person?
Greg: No. It’s still online, but, yeah, Third Sector have got their tech summit for 2022 coming up on the 3rd of February. I assume there'll be an online event. You can still sign up and get access to it but they've got some really interesting people involved on that. So check it out.
Fay: Nice. Nice. Nice little plug there. I like it. Talking of online events, our tech news of the week. Metaverse. I can't believe this has finally made to the agenda.
Hera: Ta-dah.
Fay: [laughs] Oh God. Tech for good live podcast 2023, we'll be hosting it in the metaverse. Now Greg what's happening? I don't want to ask what's happening, but what's happening in the metaverse?
Greg: [laughs] A lot, apparently. So obviously we had the name change for Facebook last year to Meta, who everybody is still just going Facebook, and parent company Meta platforms. Well done guys. That worked. It's not them. So we had CES 2022 recently, which is the big tech summit that they have at the start of the year. Facebook weren't even there but it seems like everybody is hungry to explore the Metaverse, so you had one analyst called Avi Greenheart who said, I recommend avoiding press conference drinking games around the word Metaverse because you'll die of liver disease before the end of the week.
Fay: [laughs]
Greg: So whether the tech is there or whether it's just the marketing people who've gone all in with this, everybody is super excited about the Metaverse. In the background of this, I've also been seeing a lot of articles about Apple and Microsoft and talent issues. And there's a real hunger, they’re really having to work hard, particularly Apple and Microsoft to stop their talent being stolen by Facebook and ultimately Meta, to work on their Metaverse platforms. So it is driving a lot talent moving across the sector. And I just wanted to bring it up with you guys because while we can laugh about, you know, in this case they had. CS Samsung. So because a lot of people weren't attending and a lot of stalls weren't there, organisations like Samsung opened their virtual doors and they had a my-house Metaverse experience where people could go in and navigate the Metaverse using something called Zapato, which is a Metaverse platform. And there were other booths and stalls that were doing this. And it all seems quite fun and silly when you've got it at something like CES, but Facebook was fun and silly at the start. And I just think the concept of moving more social interactions online in a different context, just instantly red flags for me.
Hera: Greg, can I just stop you there? And can I just read the article’s headline, because I think it’s a piece of art. So this article that Greg's referencing is by Omar Shakir, and it's on the verge and it says Samsung CES 2022 showcase includes a metaverse experience we didn't ask for. We gave the company a shot so you don’t have to.
Fay: [laughs]
Hera: I think that says it all.
Greg: Yeah. What do we think? One, do we think the Metaverse will be a thing and two, how will it drive us to the brink of extinction?
Fay: So it's interesting, like this whole virtual reality, like this is something that gaming has done for a while and has done really, really well for a while. You know, this whole kind of, you know, maybe not through like virtual reality headsets, but this whole idea, I mean, take Animal Crossing for example, and, you know, kind of meeting your friends, meet your family on little islands or whatever else. So I think, you know, this idea of kind of social interaction through virtual reality is just as something that has been an existence and has been done well by other industries. The thing that terrifies me is that it's coming from Facebook or sorry, Meta, who are wanting to just use it to kind of dominate that sort of space. And we'll just kind of almost in a way, make it so that you have to eventually, I don't know, maybe meet in the metaverse or else you won't be able to be part of the meeting. You know what I mean? They're going to put in barriers so that you have to use this tech or you're going to be left behind and I think that's for me is what's really kind of scary and I was just really quickly before we started recording, I just put in. Metaverse like into, you know, into Google to see what came up and this is a really sad story, but there's a farmer in Turkey who's using virtual reality headsets, on their cattle at the moment to see whether they produce more, no, seriously, to see whether they produce more milk. If they think that they're in a nice green field and not suffering in a cowshed or whatever. So it's already started. The experimentation has already started and it always starts with animals first and foremost, it's kind of like, okay, if you're experimenting on cows to see if they produce more milk because they think they're somewhere more positive, how's that then going to translate further down the line for human? Is there going to be a case of, I don't know, big corporates are going to be work from the reverse. Be more like, be more productive whilst you're in. It's like the matrix, isn't it. Do you know what I mean? I know I’m probably getting a little bit too into it but it just feels like that kind of tech, I don't know.
Greg: [laughs]
Fay: I don’t know. It's super interesting and exciting in some ways, but it's also terrifying. And especially this cow story has actually made me incredibly sad.
Alex: The thing with the cow story though, he was only doing it for one cow. All the pictures were just one cow. This poor thing we'd like to Oculus rifts over it, you know, one over each eye. And you know that. Yeah. I was just thinking like, I mean cows aren't renowned for being kind of gentle custodians of delicate technology. I did wonder how much Facebook had bummed him this week for that story.
Greg: [laughs]
Alex: But if you can think about this, like, you know, we were promised ten years ago, 3d TVs, 3d cinema, and the cost of that was like three quid for a pair of glasses. Every time you went to the, you know, the big screen at picture house or whatever. That didn't happen. And it was three quid and I can't convince my work, you know, that we should have, you know, that everyone gets a new laptop. I don't see how, like, I see how they want to push this, but it's coming at this exact moment where everyone's coming. Do you know what I'm going to put a bit less of my life into one company's hands. I feel like there's a real reticence around this. And I think again and you know, going for the stories around the Metaverse, in the Christmas break, which was people complaining that in meetings on, you know, different Metaverse meeting platforms, people were already finding ways to sexually harass women. And you kind of go, of course, because you've designed this as a way of trying to sync, you know, some wow factor into something without ever thinking of the implications of what's going to happen as soon as you let a bunch of the world's worst people onto this platform. And I think this is it. Like, it's not like they've come out at this with what's the user need and designed a platform around it. They've gone our platform is dying, where can we jump? And a bit like kind of cinema in the early 2010s there they've decided that a gimmick will do the trick and this is the, for me, and I'm prepared to be very, very wrong on this, but this is the equivalent of Avatar. Like it will be big for about three months and then we will never hear of it again. Hopefully.
Hera: I was actually thinking of along similar lines to what Alex said. In sales and whether this is a kind of like alternative reality that can satisfy some of that loneliness that they have that. And also their complaints about lack of attention from men. And I wonder if this is, this is going to be like, Like a supportive or like, you know, toxic space for them to engage in those good conversations and interactions. So my mind went to that, but I think what you said Fay was something I had never considered before. I never connected the fact that gaming has this thriving community of people across the world, engaging in virtual reality settings in different ways. I just never, and I, somehow that doesn't feel as gimmicky as this does. This feels like it's more of a chore. Like, why do I need to do this? If I'm going to a conference, I'll just like chill out. Or actually, if it was in person, like, then there'll be no need for this at all. So, whereas the gaming thing, I think it has made a space for itself. Yeah, it's just very interesting. I just never connected those two things before.
Greg: I have a very different view though of gaming.
Fay: Go on then.
Greg: You were talking about Animal Crossing and, you know, if you play some of the more violent games, then yeah, you can certainly see the way, you know, people are already abusive within those spaces. So if you introduce a lot more people from various backgrounds you're just going to see the potential for a lot more abuse, you know, you're reducing that distance between this and of what people, you know, when you talk about online and then people say, oh, but in real life, and if you start making the online more and more like real life, then yeah, there's going to be some bleed there. And I think you're running the risk of great harm to a lot of people.
Fay: It's always kind of like going back to like the early days of the internet, isn't it, where you'd be on like AOL messenger and just rando would just pop up and be like ASL. ASL. is Are people are going to be like going into the Metaverse being themselves like catfishing, like this seems like the perfect place to catfish. I'm not recommending that anyone does, but do you know what I mean? It just seems like, it just seems, you know, as you said, Greg, like this is real life and online life kind of conversion, so are people going to be more attuned to who they are online because it's more as connected to their Facebook profile or Instagram or whatever else, or is it going to be, is it going to open that kind of opened up flood gates for. In sales, catfish, spikes, and abuse or whatever else. So, yeah, an interesting and terrifying one.
Greg: One positive. I don't think it's going to be a thing because unlike Facebook. You know, Facebook was free. You could access it that easily, as long as you had an internet connected device. And those became more proliferated as things went on, but this you're going to have the you've got that barrier of needing the tech. Yeah. Some people have got to have a reason for one in that, but not just the reason for wanting to buy it, but then to continue to use it. So even businesses, I think, you know, the idea of having a meeting in the metaverse, you've got to really convince some people that that is any better, much better than just doing it on Zoom or Teams, you know? And I don't know that they can do that because you can pretty much do everything you need to in a video meeting. So why would you spend loads of money on just making it look a bit fancier?
Fay: Cause it's the metaverse man [laughs]
Greg: Yeah.
Fay: Talking of something that is free and you don't have to pay for, this is not a great pivot, our rant or nice of the week was submitted by you, I think Hera, let's talk about Wordle. For anyone that doesn't know what Wordle is, what is it? Why should we care?
Hera: So you may have been completely, you know, confused by why people are posting these results which show these like green, grey and gold boxes. And then it says a score out of a five, out of six. So what it is is a five letter word game. You have six tries to guess a word in English that has, has five letters. And it helps you by telling you which letters are in there or not. And it's just such a simple thing, really, really simple language game, and it has completely taken over Twitter. It's crazy. And I love it so much. I cannot wait for the next few hours before the next one comes in and it's like a simple delight. Isn't it Fay? You're also playing it.
Fay: Yeah, I am, because, again, I saw my entire Twitter feed and with Twitter's new algorithm, if you'd like something now, It floods your bloody timeline. So I was logging on and all of a sudden was Wordle. I was like, what the hell is wordle or how I'm obsessed. It's the fact that it's like once a day and you cannot, it's not like I can go back and play it after I've played it. I'm like, oh no, I fucked up on that one. Let me go play it again. I'm like, no, I can't play it again for another six hours. I'm obsessed with it. I'm really obsessed with it. I love a fad.
Hera: I am too.
Fay: I do love a fad, and I hate the fear of missing out. If somebody is tweeting about it, I'm like, what is it? What are you tweeting about?
Hera: Same. Same.
Greg: It's interesting you can only do one a day. Like a lot of these things, they just be like right. There you go. And people would burn out in the first couple of days and they’d drop off but doing one a day, that's cool.
Fay: Since it's got popular, nothing about it. Its interface has changed. It’s the same simple interface. I just love that, you know, the simplicity. I really hope they don't change it. Yeah, it's just super fun. So if you haven't checked it out, that's a good thing to check out. And another interesting perspective I saw on Twitter was a lot of people in the VC and sort of finance for startups sector were joking about how Wordle, because of the success of it, if it was a startup that was trying to raise series A funding, if it did that, it would have such a high valuation because everybody wants to get on it. So it's kind of funny, right? It's the things that you, I don't even know who came up with it. It’s by an organization called Power Language. Hi, Josh. Josh, the creator, hi.
Greg: [laughs]
Alex: I think he was a coder for Reddit or something and this was his spare time project.
Fay: Good on him. I love the fact as well you don't have to have an account. You don't have to log in. You don't need to create anything. It's just Wordle.
Alex: Can I just ask, so I reached a point with Twitter and the flooding where I had to mute Wordle or hashtag wordle or, and the green square emoji.
Fay: Come join us.
Alex: I want to know. Right. Like when you post that thing, like when you post the grid and you see somebody else’s, what do you see and why is it like, do you go, oh, they got something. Cause I know it's like meant to not spoil you as to what the solution to the puzzle is, which is clever in itself. But like, what is it? Cause it never seems like it's starting a conversation with anybody. It just seems like somebody is going, hey, look at me. I'm very clever. I did a puzzle.
Hera: I think sometimes I look at other people and think wow they got it so much earlier than I did. But what I find interesting is I get lots of replies and it's like, you get some really intelligent replies so you can see how many wrong tries they had. If the guessed words were the letter was in the word, but it was in the wrong position. So it tells you all of those things. So I had one, which was quite, I had got a lucky break off for getting three wrong tries on the fourth one. I only knew two others. And on the fourth one I got it right. And someone messaged me saying, you know, like, oh, wow. That was a very lucky guess. So you can still somehow have intelligent conversations and there are no spoilers. Yeah. It's amazing. Twitter does not have spoilers for Wordle. How awesome is that?
Fay: I love it. I feel like we've got to get the guy on. Let's get him on.
Greg: [laughs]
Fay: What’s he called? Josh. Come on the podcast pal. Have you tried, have you played it Greg?
Greg: No, I'm not saying this one. I feel like my wife would love this. There was another word game a while ago where you played against people.
Fay: Words with Friends?
Greg: Yeah, I think that was it. We played that for a while until we burnt out.
Fay: AKA Scrabble [laughs] I'm sorry, I'm too excited about Wordle now. I've lost where we are in the podcast. Thinking about Wordle. Finally, this is an awesome one. Preet Shandi. The first woman to make a solo trip to the south pole, Greg what’s going on?
Greg: [lauhghs] Yeah. Yeah. I had just, I thought it was an absolutely brilliant story. And I seen a few things recently about, um, people of color kind of doing things that. You know, you don't normally associate with people of color, which I think is just really good for representation. So here was a thing in the news the other day about people of color birdwatching twitches, and just kind of saying that there are groups out there. And I just think it's really good for representation to show that it's, you know, things like this that are just so solely viewed as white activities. Finally we're kind of getting to see that that's not the case. I think it's really, really good. Cause even when we're talking about positive things, uh, with people of color, my worry is as long as they're pigeonholed certain people feel safe. And I think when we get them out of those pigeonholes, that's when things really start to change.
Fay: Also, her nickname is Paula Preet, which I'm kind of loving it. She had to battle 60 mile per hour winds. Sub-Zero temperatures pulling a 90-kilogram sled, I mean.
Greg: Yeah. Outstanding.
Hera: Crazy.
Fay: Outstanding. I mean, I struggle if I'm like having to haul a suitcase through Heathrow you know what I mean, never mind a 90-kilogram sled. But any other final thoughts? South pole expeditions Hera or you Alex, maybe you've done one. Who knows?
Hera: Well, you know, the funny thing is my husband and I have been talking about Antarctica a lot because he really wants to go and it's really hard to get in simply because they limit, nobody's allowed to go there. They limit the people who can actually land. It's different from the north pole. So you can go from Australia. You can go from Chile. Most people go from Chile. So we actually spent the whole of last night looking into this.
Fay: Oh my God.
Hera: Little did I know we would be covering the story today. And it's like almost, I think £5,000 to fly just over from Australia to Antarctica and the flight is like four hours. You can see. You can see what the hell like what it looks like. You fly at 20,000 feet. So these are the kinds of things I found out yesterday. So if anyone's interested or anyone who's listening, who has done that trip or wants to let us know through our Twitter. Tweet us, we'd love to see.
Fay: I love it. I love it. Next week's episode [laughs] live from the Antarctic. Antarctica. Sorry. Wrong pole. Alex, have you ever been?
Alex: I have not ever been but the British Antarctic surveys in Cambridge and when I was a teenager. I had a job at a museum and we were borrowing their freezer to freeze a load of objects to kill off an infestation of moths. And if there's something about working in a museum and going from a sort of 25, 30 degrees some a day to walking into a freezer that is minus 25 in your shorts and t-shirt to do some grunt work that kind of puts you off that lifestyle. But I seem to remember, they do actually have regular openings for bar staff to go down to the British Antarctic survey. Like, you know, somebody managed the social space of the research station. So, you know, keep you keep your eyes on that. There's a couple of anthropologists who've done studies of people, you know, living alone, living in a community of like 20 in an Antarctic research station. So very close-knit.
Fay: Close-knit. Good word for it.
Greg: [laughs]
Fay: It's fascinating. Again, I'm sorry I keep going on about my Tik Tok obsession, but I follow this woman who lives in Southblard and it's just her and a dog and it's just mental. It's just mental check out anyway. Probably thankfully that's all we have time for. Alex, how was that for you? It wasn't that bad. Was it?
Alex: It was lovely.
Fay: Excellent. Excellent. Where can people find you online? This is your space. Have you got anything to plug?
Alex: Wonderful. Yeah. I'm at blangry on Twitter and in my spare time when I'm not at Cambridge, I'm on Oxford doing a Ph.D., looking at civic technology. So if you're involved in civic technology, tell me about your story and how you got involved. Give me a shout and find me on Twitter. And if you're looking for a job, the University of Cambridge information services, because those are jobs going at the moment - jobs.cam.ac.uk. Have a look.
Fay: Amazing. Love it. Thank you for joining us, Alex. Thank you for being our first guest of 2022. Hera. So great to have you back, Greg. Thank you for picking some wonderful stories that. Sparked a lot of good conversation. What a taskforce we have been. Listeners, what did you think? We'd love to hear your thoughts? You can get in touch with us on Twitter at tech for good live. Or you can email us hello at tech for good dot live. We'd love it if you gave us a nice iTunes review. At the minute, I think the only review on there is from my dad. No, I'm joking. That's a lie, but please do tell your pals about the podcast. It really helps add to spread the word. Thanks again to podcast dot co for hosting our podcast and thanks to all of our many offscreen volunteers who you can find on our page at tech for good dot live. Thanks everyone. Bye.
Greg: Bye.
Hera: Bye.