A new language of touch in the metaverse
my parents immigrated from singapore
to the united states in the 1980s to a
tiny town in the south called oxford
mississippi
and his poor students they ended up in a
place where they didn’t know a single
person
they got married while in school and
were taken in by a loving couple named
norman and maxine nelson who ended up
covering the entire cost of their
wedding the thousand dollars it took to
put on and who i would come to call
grandma and grandpa
that stylish kid in the middle is me
thank you and next to me my two younger
brothers dexter nicholas who i’m
extremely close with grandma and grandpa
became our anchors in this country and
were and still are so influential in how
he became his people
my grandma’s an internal optimist and
even as she developed an extremely rare
neurological disease and parkinson’s
she remained and still remains today
very positive
like most first-generation
americans i went away for work after
college in my case to an extremely
remote place
in hawaii called molokai four thousand
miles away from home
and like most i really struggled with
staying connected with my family and
friends
especially my grandma
that’s my grandma and that tiny person
in that tiny square that’s how we
connect and it’s so frustrating how
limiting it really is and still is to
connect with people that we care about
when we’re not physically there
like most people
i visited home once a year
hoping to make up for lost time in those
few days
over time as my grandmother’s
parkinson’s developed and progressed her
hands started shaking we found ourselves
holding hands a lot more especially her
shaky hand
and in those moments i realized how
underestimated our sense of touch really
is
how powerful it is to convey emotions
the scent of touch is the first we
develop as children it’s how we
understand our world
it’s how we understand ourselves and one
another
it even influences our language we
describe people as warm soft hard cold
this sense of touch is really what
bridges the gap when our words fail to
communicate how we feel think about
life’s hardest or most joyful moments
there’s nothing nothing to be said but
the sense of touch can bridge that
emotional connection
and this is what’s really missing when
we think about communication today
i’m really grateful for the fact that we
can have something like a video call
and today we’re in boston where the
first audio call was made in 1876
but what’s next
what comes after this
what’s a paradigm like when we can free
ourselves from this tiny glass screen
what’s a paradigm look like when we can
physically feel connected
well in 2015 i met two people that would
become my fast friends my brothers and
co-founders of a company called emerge
and this was our idea in a napkin moment
this was the philosophy that we each had
individually for our lives and the
philosophy of a company we wanted to
build together
and what you’ll notice is it all centers
around human connection
the relationships the bonds that we have
with our friends and family
not only with them but also people on
the other side of the table on the other
side of the fence on the other side of
the border
enhancing human connection and empathy
this is the mission that we wanted to
pursue
and each of them shared with me a very
personal story that resonated with mine
the person on the left is izak and next
to him his aunt nina’s
his family’s from spain and like most
people had very close to his extended
family his aunt ines was like a second
mother to him
he grew up his childhood spending many
summers at her house in alicante in
spain and like myself izak moved away
from home for work first to germany then
to colombia
aunt nina’s one day developed breast
cancer and she fought it for months
before it spread
one day izak got the call
that same day he took a flight from
colombia to spain
from madrid took a train to alicante
from alicante took a taxi to the
hospital and once he stepped into that
hospital room
she whispered his name
she tried to say more
he reached out and held her hand and she
passed away
he shared with me that very personal
story and how in that moment he realized
how disconnected he really was from her
for all those months and how badly he
wanted to just have the
slightest sense of touch to be able to
do something as simple as send a caress
over distance to comfort her
this is mauricio talking with his family
in ecuador in 2015 when we were building
our company we were still in los angeles
and they had just had a son together in
those early moments of childhood there’s
moments that cannot be captured
in a phone
first steps first words
a child can’t hold a conversation when
they’re one years old but it’s that
sense of touch that really grounds us to
this reality that makes us feel present
mauricio daily wanted to reach through
that screen and physically hold the hand
of his wife of his son to do something
as simple as throw a ball back and forth
now we all have moments like this where
we are separated from people that we
deeply care about or that sense of touch
could do so much to make us feel
connected
so we set out on a journey and attempt
to communicate touch over distance
but like many early technologies there
are challenges we are entering a new era
of the internet many are calling the
metaverse
and it’s going to be enabled by pretty
radical technologies like
edge computing
decentralized organizations nft
blockchain but we think the most
important aspect of this next era will
be one that allows us to feel more
connected with our loved ones because
after all if not
what is achieved if we remain limited
with these two senses
now don’t get me wrong we’re not
attempting to replicate the feeling of
the in-person reality
or attempting to enhance it when that’s
just not possible
the sense of touch has been attempted
for many decades
gloves wearables suits these one day
could potentially enhance or attempt to
replicate how the reality feels but it
creates a lot of friction for a person
to use
we ask the question
what if you don’t have to what if we
create a new understanding a new
expectation of touch in the virtual
world for us it was way more important
to create a frictionless experience for
a person one where you don’t have to put
anything on your body at all so we took
a different approach
[Music]
now if you were close enough to this
subwoofer you would have not only heard
that sound but you would have felt it
and that’s because sound is a mechanical
energy wave that can impart a pressure
on our skin that we can physically feel
especially our hands
now imagine taking that basic concept of
feeling sound energy
channeling it using a very special
speaker
at a particular frequency that’s above
the human hearing range
and feeling all of that energy in a
single point
imagine sculpting that sound in three
dimensions
that you could physically feel and hold
and even share with someone that’s not
physically there
what if we could create a new language
of touch in the virtual world one that
does not feel or behave like reality
what new possibilities we could enable
in art and expression and creativity
for most of us the most powerful
experience would be a shared one
and it’s pretty remarkable how with the
slightest sense of touch
and the right context
you can physically feel connected
well you don’t have to imagine too much
longer because for the last six years
we’ve been working tirelessly to make
this happen and today
here it is
[Music]
[Applause]
so this device
creates the sense of touch using sound
energy and you can not only feel that
sensation here and above the device
within three feet or a meter distance
above it but also here
and here within a 120 degree cone of
interaction
now this device works in a variety of
scenarios in context with a tv with a 2d
screen with virtual reality with
augmented reality
our goal is to create a platform for
touch in the virtual world a platform
for touch in the metaverse but because
it’s pretty difficult to see
touch i’m going to show you a video of
people using our product instead
this is absolutely
that’s fantastic
god that’s pretty wild anyone in
particular you would like to try this
experience with yeah my dad thinking
that oh let’s say my mom is playing
thinking that i’m gonna be able to touch
her like
right here in the game it makes me happy
i just imagine that that would be a
really meaningful thing to virtually be
able to hold someone’s hand while they
are really craving some type of human
interaction kind of just to connect with
that person and have a completely new
experience you interact with people in
your space virtually
having that and then adding a physical
experience so i just threw one layer so
it was like whoa
that sensory aspect was so fun i hate to
say i feel like a supervillain almost oh
my god my god would love
this it’s very tactile and the fact that
you don’t have to use those controls and
stuff like that using your hands makes
it feel i don’t know it’s more visceral
interacting with people
this is perfect this is i mean again
this brings no matter what the scale of
it this brings another level to that
incorporating our sense of touch
across distance
this has been a long time coming
we are right now in a technological leap
yet we still feel very disconnected from
people that we deeply care about
our sense of touch
is how we understand ourselves
our world and one another
we all have people that we deeply care
about that we are physically separated
from
we think it’s time to change that very
very soon
if you agree
join us as we build a new paradigm to
enhance human connection across distance
and time one where you can physically
feel
connected
thank you
[Applause]