WEBVTT

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I'm an artist and an engineer,

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and lately I've been thinking a lot

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about how technology mediates
the way we perceive reality.

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And it's being done in a super-invisible

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and nuanced way.

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Technology is designed
to shape our sense of reality

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by masking itself as
the actual experience of the world.

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As a result, we are becoming
unconscious and unaware

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that it is happening at all.

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Take the glasses
I usually wear, for example.

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These have become part of the way
I ordinarily experience my surroundings.

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I barely notice them,

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even though they are constantly
framing reality for me.

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The technology I am talking about
is designed to do the same thing:

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change what we see and think,

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but go unnoticed.

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Now, the only time I do notice my glasses

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is when something happens
to draw my attention to it,

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like when it gets dirty
or my prescription changes.

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So I ask myself, as an artist,

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what can I create to draw
the same kind of attention

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to the ways digital media

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like news organization,
social media platforms,

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advertising and search engines,

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are shaping our reality?

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So I created a series
of perceptual machines

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to help us defamiliarize and question

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the ways we see the world.

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For example, nowadays, many of us
have this kind of allergic reaction

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to ideas that are different from ours.

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We may not even realize that we've
developed this kind of mental allergy.

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So I created a helmet that creates
this artificial allergy to the color red.

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It simulates this hypersensitivity

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by making red things look bigger
when you are wearing it.

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It has two modes: nocebo and placebo.

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In nocebo mode, it creates this
sensorial experience of hyper-allergy.

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Whenever I see red, the red expands.

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It's similar to social media's
amplification effect,

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like when you look at something
that bothers you,

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you tend to stick with like-minded people

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and exchange messages and memes
and it will become even more angry.

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Sometimes, a trivial discussion

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gets amplified and blown
way out of proportion.

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Maybe that's even why
we are living in the politics of anger.

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In placebo mode, it's
an artificial cure for this allergy.

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Whenever you see red, the red shrinks.

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It's a palliative, like in digital media.

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When you encounter people
with different opinions,

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we will unfollow them,

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remove them completely out of your feeds.

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It cures this allergy by avoiding it.

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But this way of intentionally
ignoring opposing ideas

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makes human community
hyper-fragmented and separated.

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The device inside the helmet
reshapes reality

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and projects into our eyes
through a set of lenses

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to create and augmented reality.

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I picked the color red

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because it's intense and emotional,

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it has high visibility,

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and it's political.

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So what if we take a look
at the last American presidential map

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through the helmet.

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(Laughter)

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You can see that it doesn't matter
if you're a Democrat or a Republican,

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because the mediation
alters our perceptions.

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The allergy exists on both sides.

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In digital media, what we see every day

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is often mediated,

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but it's also very nuanced.

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If we are not aware of this,

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we will keep being vulnerable
to many kinds of mental allergies.

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Our perception is not only
part of our identities,

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but in digital media, it's also
a part of the value chain.

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Our visual field is packed
with so much information

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that our perception has become
a commodity with real estate value.

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Designs are used to exploit
our unconscious biases,

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algorithms favor content
that reaffirms our opinions,

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so that every little corner
of our field of view is being colonized

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to sell ads.

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Like, when this little red dot
comes out in your notifications,

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it grows and expands
and to your mind, it's huge.

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So I started to think of ways
to put a little dirt,

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or change the lenses of my glasses,

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and came up with another project.

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Now, keep in mind this is conceptual.
It's not a real product.

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It's a web browser plugin

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that could help us to notice
the things that we would usually ignore.

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Like the helmet,
the plugin reshapes reality,

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but this time directly
into the digital media itself.

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It shouts the hidden filtered voices.

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What you should be noticing now

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will be bigger and vibrant,

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like here, this story about gender bias
emerging from the sea of cats.

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(Laughter)

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The plugin could dilute the things
that are being amplified by an algorithm.

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Like, here in this comment section,

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there are lots of people shouting
about the same opinions.

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The plugin makes
their comments super-small.

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So now the amount of pixel presence
they have on the screen

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is proportional to the actual value
they are contributing to the conversation.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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The plugin also shows the real estate
value of our visual field,

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and how much of our perception
is being commoditized.

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Different from ad blockers,

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for every ad you see on the webpage,

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it shows the amount of money
you should be earning.

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(Laughter)

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We are living in a battlefield

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between reality and commercial
distributive reality,

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so the next version of the plugin
could strike away that commercial reality

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and show you things are they really are.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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Well, you can imagine how many directions
this could really go.

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Believe me, I know the risks are high
if this were to become a real product,

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and I created this with good intentions

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to train our perception
and eliminate biases.

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But the same approach
could be used with bad intentions,

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like forcing citizens to install a plugin
like that to control the public narrative.

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It's challenging to make it
fair and personal

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without it just becoming
another layer of mediation.

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So what does all this mean for us?

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Even though technology
is creating this isolation,

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we could use it to make
the world connected again

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by breaking the existing model
and going beyond it.

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By exploring how we interface
with these technologies,

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we could step out of our habitual,
almost machine-like behavior

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and finally find common ground
between each other.

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Technology is never neutral.

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It provides a context and frames reality.

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It's part of the problem
and part of the solution.

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We could use it to uncover our blind spots
and retrain our perception,

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and consequently choose
how we see each other.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)