Carolina Cruz-neira: I'm Carolina Cruz-Neira,
and I'm the Director of a research center in virtual reality called the Emerging Analytics Center,
and we are part of the University of Arkansas in Little Rock.
And a lot of people ask, why are you in Little Rock, Arkansas doing something that is so much technical events
and mother.
And the reason for that is because there's a tremendous, a good infrastructure here to do what I do,
and there is actually a lot of energy and enthusiasm to support the work that I do.
And the opportunities for us to do interesting projects and more unique things with less restrictions,
not only so much legal restrictions, but almost intellectual restrictions.
Cuz here there is almost nothing, so there is not preconceptions, there is no baggage of any kind, you know.
There is no, things have to be done in a certain way. So, to me that's always been very exciting.
Interviewer: It's new for everybody.
Carolina Cruz-neira: It's new, and we are the cool group on the campus, we're the exciting group on campus.
That for me, is always a good thing. And this is not the first time in my career.
I have always been in universities where you would not expect to have the kind of work that I do.
And it's really, like I said, it's a lot more fun,
it's harder too because if we run into some complications we don't have a lot of colleagues that we can talk to,
or an environment where there is a lot of knowledge on the area that we do research of.
But at the same time it's a lot of fun because, like I said, we have no constraints of any kind in what we do.
Interviewer: So, you have to find out everything yourself, or your students.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Pretty much, yes, we're kind of-
Interviewer: Pioneering
Carolina Cruz-neira: Pioneering to some extent and we hit our head in the wall, we had to hit and hit
and hit it until eventually, we break the wall.
Because, like I say, sometimes, we're entirely on our own in some situations.
But at the same time, because we are the unique group in the compost and in many cases in the state that we are in,
in the United States.
Then, we get a lot of support and we get a lot of encouragement
and we get a lot of positive reactions to a lot of the things that we do.
And also, we give a lot back because around us, we are always generating other opportunities.
So, for example, businesses that will not consider coming into Little Rock,
they consider setting up here because we are here.
So, for them having that relationship with my group, maybe very exciting and they were like,
we're not thinking of going to Arkansas, we were thinking of maybe going to California or Boston or something like that.
But your group been there is for us it's actually wonderful because the cost of living is lot lower,
the ability for us to financially support the company is much easier than these other areas and, at the same time,
we have the same intellectual quality on our relationship with a university.
So, it's a mutually beneficial relationship for us to be and I don't expect it university. [LAUGH]
Interviewer: But what exactly is your science?
Carolina Cruz-neira: What exactly is my science?
I don't know, a lot of people ask me that question
and I'm not sure if I'm actually a scientist myself because I'm more trained from engineering.
And engineers were always sort of the weird scientists because we're always very practical.
So, I think that word science is more of our ability to find the root of a problem
and find some ways to solve that problem or at least to make it better.
So, it might not be deeply, deeply theoretical, a lot of the things that we do, but they are deeply,
technically challenging, the things that we do.
So, sometimes, it's a struggle because we might be doing something that is unique, nobody has done it before.
It's incredibly hard to solve the problem.
But it may not field that we just discover a new way of how the galaxies were formed,
or some new philosophical theory of how our soul relates to the metauniverse or something like that.
[LAUGH] So, we are much more practical and down to an specific point that needs a solution, so-
Interviewer: But altogether, what you do with virtual reality?
Carolina Cruz-neira: What-
Interviewer: Can I have your-
Carolina Cruz-neira: [LAUGH]
Interviewer: Theories about it as well?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yes, I have my theories and myself, personally,
I think throughout my entire career I have been a little bit of an outsider to the virtual reality science community.
Because I always thought very differently than the main trend of thoughts.
Even today, if you talk about virtual reality today, when somebody says, do you know what virtual reality is about?
Immediately they are going to identify with putting some sort of goggles on your face and look around,
some beautiful landscape or something like that. That's not exactly what I do.
Because to me virtual reality is the ability to create some world in the computer that again solves a problem.
And in order to do that, sometimes you have to be multiple people sharing the environment with the own bodies,
not through virtual representation of myself in the world.
But actually my self physically embedded in the virtual world.
So, I wanna see your face, and your face, and your face, while I'm seeing the virtual world.
So, my work is more about building large-
Interviewer: Can you try to explain that?
Carolina Cruz-neira: [LAUGH]
Interviewer: Again, I think I understand but-
Carolina Cruz-neira: Well, when, again,
when you talk about virtual reality with the majority of the community out there-
Interviewer: Yeah, that part I did understand, but the part you say-
Carolina Cruz-neira: With the body?
Interviewer: How to what you do?
Carolina Cruz-neira: What I do. Here, I'm going to tell you what happened to me when I first saw a virtual reality.
Let's go back to the beginning.
When I first saw virtual reality in 1991, I had the same experience everybody is having today.
Somebody put some goggles on my face and I start looking around some beautiful world, and, of course,
I was a young student at that time, I've never seen it before. So, what did I do? Same as everybody does today, guao.
But like with everything else, after that is over, the excitement is over then, you start thinking,
what is this thing really? What is it this thing?
And, again, I'm thinking as an engineer, what is this thing doing for me? Other than just guao.
So, when I start thinking that, first of all I was, I'm not myself anymore here.
Because when I'm right here in this room with you, I see my hands, I see my legs, I see a little bit of my head
and hair. When I put goggles, I lost all that, immediately, I'm not myself anymore.
I don't know how big something is, I don't know how close something is. Because I can tell this table is here.
Because I can see my hand going towards that table so that gives me a sense of space and relationship.
In the virtual world, I'm trying to grab something, but I don't see anything.
At the most, I see some floating hand that is not connected to my body and is not even my own hand.
Because most of the virtual environments, they give you a male hand, and I'm a woman.
I have my little red nails and all that, so it's not even my hand.
So I lose myself the moment I walk into the virtual reality space. That's number one.
Number two, as humans, we like to talk to people, we are very social individuals.
We're a very social, I don't know, animal. I put my goggles on, I lost all of you as well.
Because I might be seeing something, and I might be saying, look at that, you don't see it.
Cuz you don't have the goggles on. So, what I see you don't see it.
There's no way for me to share that with you, in the same way I share this room with you.
So to me, those kinds of things, since I was very, very, very young,
were very annoying about the way virtual reality was being approached, in general, the research community.
So I thought about what can be done to bring myself into the virtual space. What can I do to do that?
And I was very fortunate because I was starting my PhD.
And the professor that I was working with gave me a lot of freedom to explore whatever I wanted to do.
He had some set ideas of what he wanted to do. And I started doing what he wanted me to do.
But at the same time, in parallel, I started experimenting with some of the things that I was interested on.
And down the line, the professor was, I guess,
gracious enough to recognize that the direction that I was going was exciting. And he let me run with those ideas.
So I ended up developing, in a sense, a Goggle big enough that it was the size of a room.
So instead of putting it on your head.
Interviewer: It was like a cave.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yeah, I built a cave. So several, several are still in use today, now 20-something years later.
So you walk into this room, so because your body comes with you into the virtual environment.
Your friends come with you into the virtual environment. And you'll see that tomorrow when we go to the laboratory.
So you come with me, and then, I will be saying, look that. And you'll see my finger pointing at a virtual object.
The same way I say look at this table or something like that.
So that social element is part of the virtual experience without any recreation virtually of yourself.
Which is what people do these days.
When you do a shared virtual environment, they recreate yourself in a virtual environment. But that's not you.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Carolina Cruz-neira: That's a puppet that represents you. Or an avatar, I guess, is the right term.
So, for me, like I said, since I did that back in 1991.
Everybody's going this way in virtual reality, and I'm going that way.
[LAUGH] So that has been always a little bit challenging, to be-
Interviewer: But with a lot of success.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Well, that's what I mentioned earlier. I have been very, very successful knowing what I have done.
But not necessarily my work has been always recognized as science.
Because it doesn't fit the pattern or the mold that the majority of the community is going.
But at the same time, the work that I have done has had a significant impact in the industry.
Today, a lot of the car companies, for example, have caves.
At different stages of the design and manufacturing of cars. The oil industry uses variations of the cave.
Not the cave as it was originally created.
But this concept of having large spaces that you share the immersive space, and many others for training
and in many other aspects. It's not a commodity or a consumer product.
Interviewer: I understand.
Carolina Cruz-neira: It's not something that you can have in your home, obviously. But it's been incredibly successful.
Another industry that uses this quite a lot and is not very well known in the press is the mining industry,
for safety training. As you know, underground mines are extremely complex and have a lot of safety issues.
So that industry uses caves around the world.
Interviewer: I once filmed in Norway with Rolls-Royce in Marine. And they built cabins from a ship, with a steel ship.
It had windows all around it, all with projections of the sea.
So when you were in there, it was in an office, just not at sea.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yeah, so it does have the Marine trainers, yeah. Yeah, mm-hm, yeah.
Interviewer: Yeah, and even to see what I did, then I'd get seasick.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yeah, and I think that's the main, perhaps, scientific contribution,
if you want to call it that way, of this work.
Because in a sense, it opened the minds of many people that for maybe 10,
15 years were thinking virtual reality was a particular platform.
And my work opened the mind to say virtual reality is a concept.
And that concept can be realized in a variety of platforms.
And it's not one platform is the solution, there are different problems.
So depending on the problem, a cave is a good platform.
For some other problems, the head-mounted display is a good platform.
But some other problems, you see it in the lab, other kind of platforms are more appropriate.
Interviewer: But if we wish to elaborate, suppose I'm a student, and I wanna go study with you.
What exactly is what I'm going to learn, and what reasons would I have-
Carolina Cruz-neira: [LAUGH]
Interviewer: To study with you?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Well, I think if you asked me that question maybe four years ago
when virtual reality was not popular, the answer will be different today. Virtual reality is very popular again.
It was very popular in the 90s and then it went silent. And now it's popular again.
And I think the reason to do it is, I guess, some students that come and study with me,
they just think that if they do something related to virtual reality.
And in particularly, if they work with me, because of my name recognition then they'll get a very good job.
And they'll make a lot of money. So those kinda students to be in it with you, I don't want those students in my lab.
And we have learned very quickly to spot to those students. Because, they don't really care about the work.
They care that in their minds, they think, I'm doing something that is trendy, that is innovative.
And just because I'm doing it, and just because I'm doing it with other groups, I'm just gonna graduate.
And then, I'm just gonna get this very high paying job.
Interviewer: Yeah, opportunistic.
Carolina Cruz-neira: But from experience, yeah, they're very opportunistic.
And they don't really care about what they are doing. They care about making money, at the end of the day.
Interviewer: Well, what do you care about?
Carolina Cruz-neira: So we care about students when they come to us and they say,
can I work with you because I have this idea.
And I think with your guidance, I could explore this idea and see where it take us.
So that's an example of a student that we like to find those kinds of students, cuz that's how I was.
I was doing something, nobody had done it before.
And I had a professor that For one reason or another, decided to let me run with it.
Interviewer: When we start at the beginning, just for our understanding, can you explain to me. And I know nothing.
Carolina Cruz-neira: [LAUGH]
Interviewer: What is virtual reality?
Carolina Cruz-neira: What is virtual reality?
Okay well, [LAUGH] The way I normally explain to people is just, a way to create worlds with a computer.
Now for me there is very little difference between virtual reality and augmented reality. There are two fields.
And when you talk to different professionals there will be people that will be very,
very adamant that it's two completely different disciplines.
You do virtual reality, you know nothing about augmented reality, and so on.
There are some other groups, and I am part of those groups, but I think both of them have a lot of common base concepts.
And the difference is with virtual reality you create worlds that are entirely in the computer.
They don't necessarily have any relationship to the real world
or to the reality that you find yourself in that particular moment.
So you can be tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny and explore the world at the atomic level, or you can be huge
and explore at the universe level.
You can travel to a world that never existed, you can go back in time and you can go into future.
So, basically, what ever your imagination conceives you can generate that inside the computer.
And then put yourself inside that world and-
Interviewer: And what's the difference with the real world?
Because when you enter a virtual world, why isn't that real?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Well, and that's a very good question.
For many of the worlds that we do, they actually become very real to the people that experience those worlds.
There is something that we study that is called the sense of presence..
So how much those virtual worlds make you, in a sense, forget that they're virtual,
And you suddenly became so involved, so engaged in that world that that world becomes real?
So you forget that you're in my lab, or that you're inside a company, or something like that.
And you completely get mentally and almost physically transported to that new reality, whatever it is.
That's what we want to do sometimes. We really want you to feel that those places are real.
Whether you're there for five minutes or three hours, that you disconnect yourselves from the real world.
Sometimes they're very disoriented.
Because we make worlds that intentionally don't behave with the laws of physics as the real world does.
And it's very interesting sometimes to see people adjusting to those worlds.
Because something like for example Escher, you've seen the paintings of Escher.
You have a stair that is going up and then suddenly you're going downstairs. And you don't even know how that happened.
So we have built some worlds like that that suddenly the laws of physics don't work.
But people become very functional, it's like they always did that.
It makes a lot of sense that you're going up the stairs and suddenly you end up in the basement.
You go upstairs to go to the basement, it's just normal. So to me all these kinds of things are really exciting.
Of course sometimes-
Interviewer: And then that's real as well, right?
Carolina Cruz-neira: On that particular moment on that particular timeframe that you are in the space,
it might become very real. We have people that are afraid sometimes to move in the virtual space.
Because we have our floor is also virtual. So sometimes, we might be very high up on a ledge of something.
Or one of the projects that we have right now has one of those old rope and boards bridges.
That you have to cross between two very high mountains.
And we have people that they don't wanna cross that bridge, cuz they are afraid of heights.
Interviewer: But do you, do you?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Me, personally? No [LAUGH] no.
Interviewer: You don't like to do that?
Carolina Cruz-neira: No, I don't.
For me because I've been doing this so long, sometimes it's hard for me to disconnect myself from the real reality.
So I know in a sense it's not real, fake to some extent. So no. I can, I walk in water or I walk on the air.
[CROSSTALK] Yeah, and I don't feel any. [CROSSTALK]
Interviewer: You cross that bridge.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Any yes. But we do have a lot of people that think twice before they go through that.
Or again we might have a balcony that doesn't have any railings.
A lot of people will not take to that step to get out of the balcony.
Which nothing is gonna happen, I mean they're on solid ground.
But virtually they are not on solid ground so we have people that even we push them a little bit gently said,
give it a try. No no no no no no no. It becomes very real, and people do.
They have this strange dual confusion in their heads. They know it's not real.
But they behave like it's real so it's a very interesting
Interviewer: So what's the purpose of [INAUDIBLE] people that kind of environment into a computer?
Because they have to get used to it [INAUDIBLE] it's not real so I can [INAUDIBLE] real or-
Carolina Cruz-neira: Well again like I told you at the beginning we solve problems through virtual reality.
So one very typical problem that we're solving all the time is types of training.
Interviewer: Are those very practical?
I understand that but somehow with virtual reality we can also live in another world.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yes.
Interviewer: Or think about our own virtual identity.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yes, and it's also a way to sometimes communicate your understanding of the world to others.
For example we have worked with patients that have brain damage.
That has changed the way they perceive the world and how they function.
For us it's very look at this table and we know immediately it's a table.
For people to have some kind of brain damage through accidents or some disease or something.
They look at the table and they cannot recognize that this is a table, for example.
So sometimes their behavior feels erratic.
But it's not erratic because they find themselves in situations that they just, something as simple as a table.
The brain doesn't process that.
So we have worked with some patients a few years back,
where through their verbal descriptions of how they perceive the world.
Which I had to recreate virtual environments that we could become that person.
And we could understand how the person perceives the world.
And why that person has a panic attack when there's a tree on the path, because it does not recognize that as a tree.
So those kinds of things are-
Interviewer: Then you could solve that problem?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yeah, you can help people to understand your reality, in a sense in a way.
And again you can also create a completely new reality that we don't Know what it is at this moment,
that you might imagine and build, it and make an experience. I have a good colleague, that his sort of perspective.
Is that virtual reality allows you to be not only somebody else, but something else.
So he always gives the example, he always wanted to be a lobster.
So one of his first virtual reality applications, over 20 something years ago.
Was to understand the world, from the perspective of a lobster. And you use virtual reality, and you become a lobster.
So that's not really my area of work.
It's more, I guess I'm more from a practical perspective of, how do we solve a problem.
But certainly, you want to feel the world, let's say you were some sort of bacteria.
How do bacteria understand the world, and how do they spread themselves through another organism?
Well, you can use virtual reality, and become a bacteria.
And live in the world of microorganisms, and see how that world-
Interviewer: Well, that's all very practical, and I can understand that.
But if you try to look at the borders of your science, what's possible right now, what would,
we can expect in the future? That this virtual world, will become so real. Or am I wrong?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yeah.
Interviewer: When you try to think about it, not in a practical way.
But in a way, in the direction we're going with these developments.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yeah, and I think there is a little bit of.
With every new science, there is always the positive part, that the science can bring to society.
And some of the potential dangers that can bring to society.
And certainly there is a concern that we might create some realities that become much more pleasant.
Much more rewarding, or satisfactory, than the real reality.
Especially in the world that we live today, there are so many frustrations.
We all have a lot of frustrations in our daily life.
And then you can go into virtual reality, and you can be, I don't know.
Some beautiful, wealthy person with a beautiful virtual yacht, going to some beautiful virtual island.
Not your small, tiny basement apartment, that you can barely pay the rent.
So there is certainly a concern, and it's a growing concern.
That we might, in the long-term future, not in the next, maybe five years, but really looking far into the future.
That we might create this alternate reality, to some extent, that is better than our real reality.
And we might all start living more those alternate realities, versus the real life, or something.
And how we are going to handle that?
And that at this moment, we are, I think, so early on what we are doing, that I don't think none of us has a very good.
I don't know how to say, understanding, or picture, of how all of this is going to happen.
Because right now, with the technology that we have? I am personally convinced that will never really happen.
Because the technology is still-
Interviewer: It will never happen [CROSSTALK]
Carolina Cruz-neira: With the way we have it right now. We haven't-
Interviewer: But you know, it's, who's going to develop it?
Carolina Cruz-neira: We haven't, I don't think we have found the right solution at all, yet.
All the platforms that we have right now and right now I'm talking about physical platforms.
The different helmets, or the different projectors, or the different, all these things that we have.
They're not transparent, it takes a conscious effort to put them on.
You have to have a specific technology, computers, this, that.
It's not comfortable, it doesn't fit well on your head, it crashes. All those kinds of things, so it is a good novelty.
But I think that as we move forward, people will, like other novelties, in a couple of years, everybody will calm down.
And then, everybody is gonna have their virtual reality set at the bottom of the drawer.
Like has happened with some of the gaming technologies.
Interviewer: You think so? This will happen?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Again, with the current platforms, as we have them today, I think so.
Because, again, there were some gaming platforms which I'm not gonna mention.
Interviewer: But they're [CROSSTALK]
Carolina Cruz-neira: But they were gonna change, they were gonna change the world a few years ago, and what happened?
Yes it was a great innovation.
But who wants to spend three, four, five, six hours playing a video game standing on your feet?
Interviewer: Yeah.
Carolina Cruz-neira: It was a really cool platform.
Interviewer: I think that's 20 years ago
Carolina Cruz-neira: [LAUGH]
Interviewer: But in the future, I can imagine that as virtual reality becomes so real or so perfect
or without any bugs. Because in real life, we can also get sick.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yes.
Interviewer: Or we can
Interviewer: Crash, too, like the car.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yeah, and that's what I say. With the technology that we have today, no.
But in the direction that we're going, whatever might come down the line, that is certainly a concern.
And there are starting to be, around the world, movements related to ethics and the use of virtual reality.
So there are some committees and groups, and they are starting.
There is some here in the US, there are some in Europe, that are starting to appear, there are some in Asia.
Where, at this moment, are being more kind of like, coffee-shop conversations, a small group.
But they are starting to appear, because there is a concern.
Now, at the same time, is it a concern to say, hey, we should stop doing what we're doing and not do it anymore?
I don't think so, because the benefits are so much.
And at so many levels, that I think this is something that is more education, like drugs.
Everybody knows that drugs are bad, but there are people who are still taking drugs.
Well, that's their own responsibility to make that decision, so-
Interviewer: But I think in every science, and every development, there is-
Carolina Cruz-neira: There is always something like that.
Interviewer: Should we do this or not?
Carolina Cruz-neira: But on the other hand, it's also good.
Because we also have done some work related to stress and depression. And again, creating this alternative reality.
That for a short period of time, you become, again, some person, whatever is your fantasy.
A very famous singer, a very wealthy person, a famous explorer going somewhere. A lobster, whatever your fantasy is.
Just fifteen minutes' exposure to that type of alternate reality significantly decreases stress levels and depressions.
And that has been demonstrated, by not only my group and other groups. That we have [CROSSTALK]
Interviewer: [CROSSTALK] because I would like to.
Of course, there is a discussion of ethics, and that's in every science.
But, since the discussion will be there, or come, anywhere.
But if we explore the path of development into virtual reality.
It seems to me, that in the future, you can have more identity than only your own real identity.
So you've become, and it's not about ethics or something, but How will that look like?
Suppose its 2050 and we have more then our own real identity.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Well we have that today. I mean look at what people are doing in Facebook. Is it you in Facebook?
Its not really you, I mean, you are the one doing the postings but you're, in a sense,
maybe exaggerating some of your postings. Not necessarily lying, but embellishing the situation.
We already, to some extent, are using some technologies that are giving us multiple personalities
or multiple identities.
You see a lot of discussions on how people represent themselves in chatrooms, and in Twitter,
and some other things like that.
So, I think at that level, of course with virtual reality is much more powerful because it's not just you're,
let's say posting a picture and say, look, big deal about this.
But it's actually living that experience that you're actually creating or something like that.
So I don't know, personally, that's something that doesn't worry me too much because,
again the benefits are really what I'm focused on.
Interviewer: So it's not about race, not at all. It's more like, I try to have an image of how future will look like.
Carolina Cruz-neira: I don't know.
Interviewer: Me having other identity. I'm curious.
Carolina Cruz-neira: We might be, in many ways, maybe happier than healthier because as we're getting older,
for example, we don't have as much energy as we used to have.
But one of my entities can be a very energetic woman that kinda still go and dance in pointe shoes.
Which I haven't danced in over 30 years now, but I can still virtually maybe do that.
Maybe your other identity is that you used to go and swim ten kilometers or something across some strait somewhere
and you cannot do that right now but that virtual reality might allow you to do it. So I think it's-
Interviewer: What will that do to us if we have those choices in virtual reality? [CROSSTALK]
Carolina Cruz-neira: We're also gonna have, life is gonna change to because again, some of the virtual reality helps,
like any other again, new technology too, I think the way we work is gonna change. So as we are all having more.
Right now, we're in a strange, in my opinion, transition technology era.
Where we are having a lot of technologies that make our jobs easier. But at the same time, they're giving us more work.
Like, for example, email. Email has facilitated communications tremendously. But at the same time.
Our community in so we can never clear that inbox queue.
We're always busy trying to clear our email, so we communicate so much now that it's keeping us busier, but again,
looking into the future, many of these things get resolved
and that translates into us having other time that we can use for more quality time or something else.
So I think maybe in the future virtual reality is gonna help us to do our normal everyday work life easier in some ways.
Like we have worked with companies for example that in the last ten years,
their timeframe from the concept of a product to the product being in the market was in between seven
and nine years period.
With the introduction of virtual reality, doing virtual testing, the virtual prototyping,
bringing customers from the virtual status of the [INAUDIBLE] and all that,
their cycle now has reduced to about two years.
That has released a lot of the people in that company a tremendous amount of work that they can use for something else.
I don't know, it's hard to imagine a future, but at the same time,
I think it could potentially be a more relaxed future, maybe a happier future, because again,
it's a few minutes of escaping being, doing. You know, I love the ocean. And we don't live by the ocean.
We live in the middle of Arkansas right now.
So it would be great if I could spend 30 minutes every day sitting by the ocean and feeling the breeze,
that alone just, I'll be happy for the rest of the afternoon,
or something like that versus kind of here like it's hot and humid.
It's been six months since I've seen the ocean or something like that. I don't know. I think.
Interviewer: Do you still have to do things when you have virtual
Carolina Cruz-neira: Well, of course. Of course because-
Interviewer: What is left? What do you have to do yourself?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Well, same as what you do in life. I mean, the virtual reality is not a passive reality.
It's an active reality, so in real life you don't sit on a chair and stare at the ceiling.
[LAUGH] You have to do things. You have to open a can of Coke. You have to turn on the lights.
You have to look out the window. You have to do something.
Interviewer: What if you live in a virtual world, maybe you neglect your self? I don't know.
Carolina Cruz-neira: No.
Interviewer: You can get to drink or
Carolina Cruz-neira: No, you mean neglect your physical needs. Yes. That's a good point yes.
You might, I don't know, it would be, I don't think anybody has done any studies on that
but I'm assuming the physical part of your body, the sensation of being hungry or thirsty
or wanting to go to the restroom or something that would probably is still kicking.
I mean, I don't think that virtual reality will override some of our basic survival instincts, or something like that.
I will surprised if that happens.
We talk about sensory substitution, but I don't think that you can do a virtual space is so real
and so exciting that you don't feel hungry or something like that.
Interviewer: But you can imagine that you have another reality that you go to a restaurant and you eat a lot of food
and not get fat.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yeah I don't know, but I still there is the there are.
Interviewer: But it's possible will have right?
Carolina Cruz-neira: There are groups that are actually developing
Interviewer: Okay.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Virtual taste and virtual smells you know?
So potentially yes or potentially you might beyond the virtual environment and just have virtual tastes of the food
and actually not be eating anything.
But I still think that there is some primordial, basic survival instincts that sooner
or later your stomach is gonna be like, okay, this virtual taste is delicious
but my tummy still has not received anything [LAUGH]
Interviewer: What's the difference then between our own reality, virtual reality, and our instincts?
What's the difference? Why can't wait fake our instincts?
Carolina Cruz-neira: I think that we can fake a lot.
Like I told you, we get people that will not walk off a balcony In the virtual environment.
So that's a survival instinct that the virtual environment actually figures.
Interviewer: But that's one we can't get used to because we know we can really fall down.
So it's just a trick and if you know the trick Then you can walk
Carolina Cruz-neira: Well I can, it depends on how real is real, the virtual world because we can make you fall down
and we can hit you pretty hard if we can put you in a motion platform
or put you in some kind of Device that actually makes you feel the fall and actually hurt yourself,
if we wanna go to that level. So, in my lab we don't do that right now, [LAUGH] you know?
But in previous locations that I was before,
we actually had robotic type of systems that were around your body that as you were interacting in the virtual space,
the robotics were giving you physical feedback of the world, you know so.
Interviewer: Physical feed back. That's nicely said.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yeah, yeah so you could actually touch a virtual object and feel, or you could grab something
and feel the weight of that virtual object. Again, depending on how real is real, you can actually make it happen.
But assuming, again, with the technology that we have today you know there are some instincts that again we trigger.
We don't necessarily intentionally do it when we build the worlds, but we observe that
when we have people testing our spaces, you know.
So sometimes we don't realize something and then when we have people in our virtual spaces we notice things
and we're like whoa, we didn't think about that one, you know?
Because, like I said earlier, there's a lot of things we don't know yet,
we don't understand yet what this technology really does to our head.
Interviewer: Of course that's what interests me.
Carolina Cruz-neira: [LAUGH]
Interviewer: Because we try to explore the borders of science and what's there in the future waiting for us.
And if you, if you continue the way it does like this with the development of virtual reality,
you can imagine that we have realities which are so real, where you can live in
or you can create a new identity for yourself. It kind of makes of reality. What is still real and what is not?
So at some point virtual reality becomes real reality.
Carolina Cruz-neira: And they might become, for you or for me or for other people,
the reality that you prefer to be versus the real reality.
And as you know, that has been around in science fiction for a long time.
There are,
for example Asimov has a few novels where it's a society in which humans don't wanna have face-to-face contact anymore
because they prefer the virtual contact.
It's to them almost a physical contact, almost repulsive, they don't wanna do that anymore.
So certainly, like I said earlier, if we want to think on the pessimistic extreme side of things,
maybe we can go that way.
Interviewer: Or optimistic.
Carolina Cruz-neira: On a positive way, hey, if your virtual reality makes you a better person,
makes you enjoy your life better, then what's the big deal about it? I don't know.
Carolina Cruz-neira: [LAUGH]
Interviewer: I have another, I have a virtual identity which I like and I created that identity myself, right?
Is it logical to think that any virtual identity I create myself,
or is it also possible that my identity will be influenced by other elements or other people? Do we have control?
Carolina Cruz-neira: I think-
Interviewer: You know about my virtual identity.
Carolina Cruz-neira: My personal opinion is probably yes, because, again,
it's an identity that you are creating digitally in a computer.
So you can decide how much you let others to influence your identity versus you have full control of your identity.
Again, at a very simplistic level, look at people doing social media.
Some of us share everything with entire world and we let the world sort of, in a sense,
influence how we appear to the world in our social media
and some of us have a lot of restrictions where we have a very limited group of people that can influence our
conversations
and in that way maybe we don't necessarily are informed of everything else that happens because we didn't do it.
So that's a simplistic level but again, it's a digital reality, so you can define,
in the future you could say I want to be a virtual hermit, so my reality is mine and mine alone
and I just don't want anybody else to distort it to some extent or you know, hey I have a really cool reality
and I want to share that with my friends or with the rest of the world and let us see where this goes.
I let other people evolve it with me and see where this takes us.
Because I think everything at this moment is an open possibility again mediated by.
Interviewer: Sorry.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Again, thinking as an engineer mediated by how we build the tools and the systems
and the platforms and all those kinds of things to make these things happen because today is not possible.
And normal, let's say an average person that is not at the level of technology that we have
and other people around the world has, they cannot do that right now.
It's not very easy to create these realities right now. You have to have a certain training to be able to do it.
But you know that it will be possible in the future? In a very far future, yes.
Interviewer: So now everybody has a computer but there were days that people thought well,
computers are only for experts, or for companies.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Well,
if I can digress for a moment I'm gonna talk about a little bit about what you're mentioning right now,
because that something that right now is a very big concern of mine. A personal concern that I have.
Interviewer: What is?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Which is, the fact that many people today,
they think they are virtual reality developer experts because everybody today, as you say,
has a computer because gaming industry has proliferated very quickly.
Everybody has a fairly good computer at home that can do pretty good graphics, pretty good animations
and those kinds of things.
So there are some tools out there that are open source,
or free licence tools that people can get their hands on pretty easily.
And now suddenly we're seeing all these virtual reality experts popping up everywhere because they think that because
they grabbed the tool, they do a few pretty 3D models and they put it on Google Cardboard for example.
Suddenly, [SOUND] I'm the big virtual reality expert, well.
I, this is something that is a frustration of mine because this is not.
Interviewer: Is it hard for the development?
Carolina Cruz-neira: There is many other things behind that.
Because you guys are producing a documentary, so you know that everybody nowadays can get a digital camera.
But am I gonna produce a documentary at the level of quality that you're gonna do it? No.
Because the further I can get a camera and I shoot off somebody's face
and hold it still that doesn't make me a good director.
Because there is all the lights, there is the questions that you are making me and the experience that we all have.
The same thing happens in virtual reality. Yeah you can get it too. But do you know what your technical parameters are?
Interviewer: Is it necessary that these developments also have
Carolina Cruz-neira: Absolutely,
for example if you generate a world there is a certain speed at which that world needs to be presented to the user.
Otherwise the user plain and simple is going to get really, really, really sick right off the bat.
Now many, many people don't understand that, they just start putting 3D worlds in their 3D models and all that.
They have a horrible performance. They are not even synchronized.
One eye is going this way, the other eye is going the other way.
[LAUGH]
And my issue is that those kinds of applications sometimes aren't the first virtual reality experience for many people.
And we're starting to see more and more people coming in our laboratory saying, no, no, I don't wanna try a thing here.
I already tried virtual reality and it made me very, very sick. So there's this immediate rejection.
And I'm, well I'm not a high school kid that just got my hands on some free license something
and just slapped together a pretty model.
We have been doing this very scientifically, very consciously with all the right approach and constraints and years
and years of experience. So please try it. No, no, no, no, no.
And that is unfortunately happening more and more and more.
And all these sort of things that we've been talking about, when they'll happen.
If this other thing continues proliferate, because if the experience that the people have are negative experiences,
there's going to be rejection. And that happened back in the 90's.
Interviewer: So can you tell me again what time are living in?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yes!
So I was mentioning to you that I do talk a lot around the world about what I do
and also my vision of what I think virtual reality is gonna go.
And I am pretty convinced that we're living in one of those human history changing times, you know?
That right now we don't see it because we're living it.
But I think generations into the future, maybe 200 years from now, 300 years from now,
people might be referring to this time as the virtual reality revolution like the industrial revolution
and information revolution.
I think, we're at a point that what we are doing I think is going to change our world as we know it.
It's going to change how we live as humans and how we identify ourselves as humans.
And of course we don't know it because we're living here right now.
But again, I'm pretty convinced that we won't see it, but in a few 100 years or no we'll be in the textbooks and say,
the 2015's, the 2020's was the peak of the virtual reality revolution where all this was happening.
It's hard like always to imagine how the future is going to look like but again is, I think is
Interviewer: Can you give it a try to for me?
Carolina Cruz-neira: [LAUGH] I can give it try.
Interviewer: So suppose in 200 years, there you are.
Carolina Cruz-neira: There we are. I think.
Interviewer: What are you doing?
Carolina Cruz-neira: I'm doing a lot of things. I mean right now there's a lot of things that I cannot do.
Either because of physical limitations.
Interviewer: I mean that suppose
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yep.
Interviewer: In 200 years what are you doing?
Carolina Cruz-neira: What am I be doing?
Well you know I will be right now and saying it's super hot at this particular moment.
And I really want to go to the beach. So, I'll see you there in five seconds. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go to the beach.
I'm gonna get the cool breeze of the ocean. I'm gonna smell the beautiful, salty air.
And I'm gonna forget about all this fogginess and humidity of July in Arkansas, for whatever time I'm in there.
My child might decide that he wants to go to some amusement park,
but I don't have the time to physically take him there or maybe we don't have the finances to go there.
But my son might say, okay, mommy, I'm just gonna go and visit this amusement park for the next two hours,
so don't bother me. [LAUGH] So I think that's an example.
Or my car just broke down and I have no idea how to fix this car.
But I'm just gonna go into some reality that is just gonna somehow help me fix that car and get it better.
Or since I cannot go with my real car, then I'm gonna go into some virtual reality
but I'm gonna go what I was gonna go, but I cannot go. So I think that it's gonna be.
Carolina Cruz-neira: I tend to tell people what we can do with virtual reality we're limited somebody's imaginations.
And I think right now our imagination is still very constrained by real life.
So it's very hard to imagine a world that is not physically constrained. And it might not be my generation.
It might be the next generation after us that actually has a much more free mind to imagine,
because I think right now we're so tangled on developing the technology,
that we have not freed up our minds yet of what this thing really can do.
But again the ability to go there, whatever that there is, it just opens.
Again, a time in human history that is completely different from everything else that we have right now.
Interviewer: That sounds very exciting.
Carolina Cruz-neira: To me it's very exciting. Here I am. I've been doing this since I was a younger student.
And people say hey don't you get bored? And I'm like no.
As a difference for example lets say, with maybe a biologist that spends his
or her entire career looking for a particular drug to cure a disease.
I had to spend my entire life in 100s, 1,000s of different realities, experiences, worlds.
I have seen things that I have never seen before. I've been in places that I can not be otherwise.
I've been in 15th century India for example
and I have participated in some religious ritual that doesn't happen any more in real life.
We have been into the future and trying to figure out how life in Mars is going to be.
I have traveled through galaxies.
I had gone down inside a plant cell and I actually travelled inside a water molecule
and see photosynthesis from the inside. Do I get bored?
No, I don't because I live many, many lives and I've experienced worlds that don't exist, in a way.
And I experience worlds that exist. But I can not physically experience them.
So to me, is really cool, is really exciting. Like I said, what are we gonna do 100 years from now, 200 years from now?
I don't know.
I mean, it's hard to imagine because again, could you imagine riding a water molecule
and follow the water molecule inside a plant cell.
You couldn't imagine that, well we've done it and we done that routine in our lab for example.
So, how to see beyond that is, sometimes it feels like having broken my iron chains here yet. But we're trying. [LAUGH]
Interviewer: Well, that's a promising thought that we now. Learn the techniques.
But we don't accidentally use our imagination of what's possible with those new techniques.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yeah and to me that's what's exciting to see the little ones.
I have a six year old son and to me sometimes watching him in virtual reality opens my own mind sometimes.
Because his mind is not constrained as my mind is.
Because we have, right now,
I think we have four generations concurrently living as it relates not only to virtual reality,
but to technology in general.
And again it's a unique time in history because all the issues related to health
and quality of life have been are the best in human history,
so now we have people that are living well into their 80s and 90s having a perfectly functional life.
So we have elderly people that have been their entire life without technology, and now in their '60s, '70s,,
'80s are facing technology.,
So when you put those people in virtual reality [LAUGH] my best way to describe it is just adorable.
It's just adorable [LAUGH] because they're just like, they just sit there and they're like [LAUGH] and they just don't,
they can not even comprehend what it is that they're looking at, they are very afraid of moving,
they just kinda look around and they are like, thank you dear but that's it.
Then you get people like us, the next sorta group of people where technology came when we were already professionals,
very young professionals. So we have to develop our professional life with this technology around us.
So I think we are the tinkers. Because we are the ones that were like, how this thing works.
What can I do with this thing?
So for us, the mystery is not so much on more of the vision of what this thing is gonna do for the life of the humans.
For us, the mystery is, what's under the hood? And how this thing works.
And that's really what my generation is really focused on.
Then there's the next generation, which is the people that are now maybe in their 20s or so.
And this technology came to them when they were kids, but older kids like teenagers or so.
So for them it was like this I have it whatever. I'm texting, I'm doing this, I'm doing that.
It's cool, I can play video games, I can do this. So for them it's something that is a cool factor.
And then you have the little ones that are being born into this, like my son.
My son, because we are researchers, he's literally been in virtual reality since he was even,
I have pictures of him in the little basket as a newborn inside a cave and things like that. For him, it's just
Carolina Cruz-neira: It's just like a refrigerator, it's just there.
So he doesn't wonder about it, he's not afraid of it.
He's not curious about how it works, where he is curious is what happens in here.
His perspective is he gets into a virtual environment and he just wants to do things in there.
He doesn't think about how difficult it is or how uncomfortable the gear is.
He is immediately mentally there and he just wants to be there.
And then he started asking a lot of interesting questions because he wants to do things that he can not do.
And for him, that doesn't have any logic.
Because, again, he's mentally there, so he has, in his mind he has a concept of how this thing needs to respond to him,
and its not responding to him, so sometimes he gets frustrated.
Interviewer: He's the first one with limitations.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yeah, because his mind is way beyond my mind.
So when he sees my constraints implemented on the system, he gets frustrated, because he wants to really go a dare,
but it's a dare that I don't understand it yet. Because I'm still busy looking under the hood.
So I think for me, the fact that I think in our case, we're very fortunate, because he's the whole family.
[LAUGH] Cuz my husband is part of the the same research that I do
and now our son pretty much lives with us in the lab whenever he's not in school.
So we have an interesting perspective on doing this.
And in some cases like I said, he, our little son, sometimes opens our minds just because we see his frustrations,
cuz he expects some things that are not happening. But we didn't even think about them.
Because we were too busy tinkering. So this is, as he is getting a little older, I think it's gonna be.
If he continues being interesting, because who knows what he's gonna develop [LAUGH] as he grows up.
But I think it's gonna interesting to see his unrestricted mind, and I do mention earlier,
he might develop different identities that I'm not thinking about, but he might decide that.
We just got some recent equipment in our laboratory,
and he mastered that equipment before any of our graduate students.
And watching him using that particular equipment, it was absolutely amazing.
The students got the technology, look around, and couldn't think of anything to do with it.
He could have spent hours, days, doing things with it. And we were like, where did he learn to do that?
It's amazing, it's just amazing to see that. So I think we have those different generations.
And it's very very interesting because again, I have my other partners
and watching them sometimes their reaction is the total opposite.
They're more constrained, because they don't even wanna move.
Because they fear they're gonna break something or they're not sure what to expect..
Where then the little ones [SOUND] There's someone else that we don't even know [LAUGH] where they are.
So that's amazing.
Interviewer: Yeah, that sounds beautiful. I'm looking forward to seeing him playing with the things.
Well playing, it's not even playing. It's.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yeah, it's.
He travels with us sometimes when we do professional events and he actually he is in the booth doing demos
and its really, really fun watching him explaining his interpretation of our work.
It's just really amazing, because in most cases he just observes a little bit, what the grad students are doing
and he just takes it to a complete different level immediately.
I mean he doesn't even know how to read, but it's just again, his mind is somewhere else that I cannot go there.
I'm too constrained with my own knowledge of the technology to let me go there. Where he doesn't care.
Interviewer: Is he reading an old reality?
Carolina Cruz-neira: I don't, what?
Interviewer: Reading and alter reality.
Carolina Cruz-neira: What do you mean by that?
Interviewer: Well, he cannot even read and he doesn't even need to read to-
Carolina Cruz-neira: No, He doesn't need, no, he just.
Again he's, not only he, we talk about my son because I probably see him all the time, but
when he brings his little friends to the lab sometime, it's the same thing.
They all, they are little kindergartener's and they again, then they start doing things, manipulating the space.
Creating their own worlds in there with a freedom that we don't have.
And again, they don't know how to read, they don't know how to write yet. They're learning that in kindergarten.
But it's not about that. It's about their mental understanding of the world or something.
They grew up with TVs, with iPads, with all those things.
So for them it's just as normal as a refrigerator in the house.
Interviewer: Is that what he is developing in other children from his age?
Can you call that like the minds of the universe?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Certainly, it would be the mind of the universe for the future of course, because,
I mean every generation has a new mind set on, not only technology, but just humanity and the world.
So yeah, these are the new minds of the new universe.
Because the new universe is not going to be on the, the universe as we know it today with the planets
and the galaxies and all the beautiful formations.
It's a completely limitless universe because it's going to come out of our imagination. So it's new minds, absolutely.
Carolina Cruz-neira: [LAUGH] What?
Interviewer: I was thinking because it is beautiful, because our new universe is coming from our imagination.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yes.
Interviewer: That's what you said.
Carolina Cruz-neira: That's what I said. The new universe, it doesn't have physical constraints.
Because again, we can't create it in the computer.
The real universe will still be there, and all the real problems like pollution, global warming, crime,
socialist status, of course those are going to be there and that's outside my expertise to prepare the work for it,
but.
Interviewer: Since you are making it there your comment,
that we won't recognize the virtual world anymore as a virtual one.
Carolina Cruz-neira: We might get to the point. I think we will get to the point.
Not in my generation, but we are getting to the point because again we go back to what I was.
Interviewer: Which point?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Were we don't know the difference between real and virtual.
Because we go back to my earlier comment that is people that differentiate between virtual reality
and augmented reality, and I don't, I think it's in a sense the same.
Because the virtual reality and the computer with augmented reality, you can blend it into the real world.
So that's really for me where the future is.
Where virtual reality and augmented reality converge, because now your real reality
and your virtual reality are intermingled and not different from each other.
So again, we can be looking out that window and I'm looking at the river, but through augmented reality I might see,
I don't know, some mythical dragon flying by instead of the birds. It's my reality.
Because I want to see dragons flying around through my window. I still see the river.
I still see the same things you see. I see the real trees. I see the barges coming down the river.
But I have my dragons flying around. That's my reality.
Interviewer: What is that? If we have a real identity, a physical identity, we have a virtual identity.
What is the common thing we keep untouched? Is that the mind or is that instinct or what is it?
What is it that which makes us, us with all our identities.
Carolina Cruz-neira: [LAUGH] I don't know, I think the definition of us again changes the history
and again we are on that changing time in history so.
Interviewer: What is the thing that's-
Carolina Cruz-neira: What makes me? [LAUGH]
Interviewer: And you with definite identities, but it's still you.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Well I think what's gonna make me is based on whatever situation I wanna be me.
I don't think, I might not be just one me. I might be multiple mes and that defines me. I don't know.
The essence is my change of what we think as individuals, because again you can be different things.
You can be in different places. You can
Interviewer: But it's always one person or one me who chooses to go to different identities.
What do you mean, that your me also develops different personalities?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yes
Interviewer: It becomes two?
Carolina Cruz-neira: [LAUGH] Yeah, again we might get into the realm of almost multiple personalities
or something like that.
But there is might be a dominant personality of dominant individual that I think perhaps a way to look at it is we
might have a choice. Right now we don't have a choice, me is me, it's this one. Whether I like it or not this is.
Interviewer: But you make the choice.
Carolina Cruz-neira: This is the one.
Interviewer: You make the choice. You make the choice of making the choice for all the personalities.
But it's still you who makes the choice.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yeah.
Interviewer: That's something which you could, like DNA or something.
Carolina Cruz-neira: I don't think DNA works in virtual reality [LAUGHS] so I don't think so.
I think it might be yes, maybe
Interviewer: There's nothing unique then?
Because if everybody thinks he was a all kinds of identities or personalities
and then people will become like each other.
And what's the difference between all these people with different identities and personalities,
there must be something you can do.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yeah but I guess like I said [LAUGH] I think that there's probably gonna be that person,
that,individual that maybe is the, I don't know,
we end up having some supreme individual that is our main character that we decide.
This is the boss of all my individual's representations and this is the one that makes all the decisions. I don't know.
Like I said, to me, it's hard to envision that at this moment because there are again,
I feel I'm a little bit constrained on what I know I can do.
Interviewer: I would like to know
Carolina Cruz-neira: [LAUGH]
Interviewer: Which personality I can trust.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yeah, but again I go back to what we have today, with the situations with social media.
There are many, potentially many means out there because many of us maybe we have one social media persona,
but there are people that have multiple social media personas in there and.
And I might be talking to you on my social media persona when I'm some young teenager boy that goes surfing.
And you have no way to know you're talking with a 50-something year-old woman.
But behind all those personas I'm still me making that supreme me making the decision, okay, I have these multiple,
I don't know.
Interviewer: I would like to know what,
Carolina Cruz-neira: There are times I may be very philosophical, and I'm not philosophical. [LAUGH]
Interviewer: I'm not philosophical as well.
I'd like think about it because if I cannot trust one of my identities, I get lost. You-.
Carolina Cruz-neira: No.
Interviewer: Would know what I mean, right?
Carolina Cruz-neira: I know what you mean
but I think you can trust your identities because you are building those identities.
The problem is with the other people can trust your identities.
You are building those identities so I don't see any issues in you
or me trusting my identities because I'm defining those, I'm building those. I'm making those happening.
So I don't seem to have any issues. Again, I can be a lobster and I totally trust myself as a lobster.
Now, would you trust me as a lobster? That would be a big question.
So I think it's more, and again, going back to the simple situation with social media, it's the same thing.
Do you trust that person that you're meeting through social media?
You don't, cuz you really don't know who that person is.
You see what the postings are, what the blogs are, what the maybe fake pictures that person is putting in there.
Not that person is trusting himself or herself because they are building that.
The problem is not so much us, it's gonna be them, the others. And yes, there is again there is-
Interviewer: How do you know if another virtual reality isn't real?
Carolina Cruz-neira: We might reach a point where we don't.
And again science fiction has already discussed this heavily in a lot of different books where you get into these
alternate realities, these alternate universes.
And you get to a point that you don't know which one is the real one anymore, and which one is a dream
and which one is real. And potentially we can get into that direction again.
Not in the very short-term, but in a very long-term, potentially we can go that way. When we get there, I don't know.
We would probably, neither you or me will be alive by then. [LAUGH] At that time. But there is-
Interviewer: How to create your identity was useful?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yes, then maybe we can create some of us, some persona that stays,
even though we are physically no longer here. And again that's a possibility. That's a completely feasible-
Interviewer: What you're saying now? And this is the last question, because-
Carolina Cruz-neira: I'm saying are we going to be immortal in virtual reality? Maybe we are. I don't know.
Same as for robotics, people that are starting to develop robots that you can transfer your mind to the robot.
So, our physical body might be gone
but maybe many years from now we might continue living on through our robotic replica of ourselves. Who knows?
So, all these things are out there for our imaginations to really explode, I guess. [LAUGH]
Interviewer: It's up to your son.
Carolina Cruz-neira: I think that it's gonna be a lot more people out there than my son trying to be your.
[LAUGH] But again for us, for me it's just been fun.
It's been an amazing career, I guess, or life or way of living that I have.
And it was not chosen, some people choose their path. Mine was not chosen.
Mine was totally random, I came from here and I'm from there and I'm from there,
and I landed into this virtual reality thing without even knowing what I landed.
And I just enjoy it tremendously, but it was not a planned path.
Like I have some students that come with a very planned path to do this. It just happened, you know it's been fun.
And it's fun to be able to open the door.
Carolina Cruz-neira: And see what happens to the next generations that don't have those constraints,
or their imaginations really can fly free. And that is when real progress is gonna happen.
Right now, we're just starting. And we are, again, sometimes constrained from our own.
Our own knowledge today constrains sometimes how we can think.
And the new generations of that knowledge is a matter-of-fact. It's not a discovery anymore.
Then they can take it to the next level. Some of us we live from the previous generations, from us,
Interviewer: Clear, very clear.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Very practical.
Interviewer: [LAUGH] Yeah.
Carolina Cruz-neira: I'm very practical. I'm not, like I said, I don't philosophize very much [LAUGH]
Interviewer: Well, I like the way we philosophize about it very much, because,
Interviewer: A list of people who watch this program also think about what, does it mean in the future?
Or what could it mean?
Or what,
I think it's interesting to raise a lot of questions without answering them because we will know in the future.
Carolina Cruz-neira: But I think that fundamentally,
what makes virtual reality to me an exciting science is that there are no physical rules limiting what we can do.
Again, if we go back to the example of a biologist or something like that that is trying to find a cure for a disease,
his or her creativity Is bound by the laws of physics.
No matter how many ideas they can have, at the end of the day, it has to have some sort of molecular bonding, protein,
something, vitals whatever, DNA something. It has very clear rules of behavior.
The nice thing about virtual reality is we don't have that.
Like I said earlier, the limit is what we can imagine, what we can think. We have no physical constraints.
The physical world does not constrain what we can do in the virtual reality.
Interviewer: In what sense is what you do magic?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Is magic because again I am not bound by the laws of physics, so I-
Interviewer: Why is it magic? I don't understand.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Well, it's magic because here if I wanna walk on the ceiling I can't.
Because gravity's gonna make me fall.
In virtual reality, nothing prevents me from starting walking out the wall and walking up the ceiling.
Interviewer: So now, that is magic. But in the future, it's not magic anymore.
Carolina Cruz-neira: It might be a matter of fact.
It's magic because, for example I'm here with you right now, and in two seconds I can be in China.
Carolina Cruz-neira: That's poof, magic, like you would put-
Interviewer: Do [INAUDIBLE] understand that?
Carolina Cruz-neira: I don't know, you can ask my father about it?
[LAUGH] I think that they are starting more and more.
When I started doing this many, many years ago they were very worried
and skeptical that I was doing something that was worth anything.
Because of course when I started, it was the tinker, the really tinkering time.
So I was totally covered from head to toe in cables and hanging myself in a scaffolding
and a screwdrivers on my hands all the time,
so But I think over the years they've seen a lot of the experiences that we have built.
They've seen how the work that I do has been spread out in a lot of industry, in a lot of different parts of society.
And I think they to understand it better. Again, their perspective is always like, for them it's truly magic.
I have no idea how you do this honey, but it looks great. [LAUGH] So for them it's truly, truly magic.
For me, again, it's magic in the sense that you can just, in a split second be somewhere else.
And again, that somewhere else could be real, a reconstruction of a real place, or a complete imagination place.
And you can see sometimes again on the little ones, you can hear my son sometimes say, this is magic, I'm doing magic.
Because he does something and presses a button or shakes his hand or something, and something else happens.
That of course in real life is impossible to do. So it is magic, and it is magical because it just enchants people.
When you got to Disney World, it's just the magical place.
When people go to virtual reality, it's the same feeling is this enchantment like, this is very cool.
This is very nice. It's fun.
Interviewer: And suppose if we discontinue. Is it also possible that because now it's magic, but magic anymore.
Is it possible that we create our own virtual-
Interviewer: God?
Carolina Cruz-neira: [LAUGH]
Interviewer: Will there always be something in us humans if we want to create some kind of creature control.
Carolina Cruz-neira: Almighty being maybe, I'm not really religious, I don't know. But maybe.
I mean it's all what everybody individually can believe.
Like I say I don't believe that if I step on my virtual balcony, I'm going to fall down the cliff.
There are many people that come and they cannot take that step.
Interviewer: How far to the units together they create which nobody can see.
But it's there because we believe that it's there.
So it's all the virtual identities that also create something which they cannot see or touch what they believe in.
Carolina Cruz-neira: I don't know. I think that I'm a bit skeptical about that because it's still digital.
It's in the computer. [INAUDIBLE] I mean.
Interviewer: What will be different between us in digital?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yeah, I think for something like that-
Carolina Cruz-neira: For something like that you're talking I think it might have to be.
If you look in the history, every time there's a new religion or a new god or something.
Something very drastic happening in human history that this new god appears.
So it might be a possibility if again some massive drastic who knows what happens in human history.
That the digital world supersedes the physical world in some manner.
And then at that point maybe there should be maybe so me new groups of people that start creating this.
Almighty being that is never seen or something.
But I think with the world as we know it today, I don't see that happening.
Unless again some major something happens to humanity. That they need to believe in something new.
You look at the history of religion, that's really what happens.
The new gods come out when something else happens and there is something else that people need to hold on to.
As we are right now, I don't think that will happen. I mean-
Interviewer: But you said something that, I remembered.
Because I was just wondering, our reality right now, who says that is not a digital reality as well?
Carolina Cruz-neira: Yes..
Interviewer: Some virtual [INAUDIBLE]
Carolina Cruz-neira: For all we know, we can be some computer that somebody else built.
That we are just enjoying a little bit of battery life. Yes, yes of course, of course.
And then we get into the argument, do you believe in a Christian God or do you believe in a Buddhist God?
Or are you completely an atheist and all those kinds of things. I think that's more individual beliefs.
My family is traditionally a Catholic family.
So we, I guess, believe that we are humans and the reality
and hopefully there will be some other reality on our next stage in life. [LAUGH]
Interviewer: Is virtual reality able to believe?
Carolina Cruz-neira: No, I don't have an answer for that. I have no idea.
I think that again, it's gonna be a very, very individualized mindset for that. Same as all the religions.
There are some traditions that are, to some people feel very crazy but that have a lot of followers.
And some other religions, we are more comfortable, and we are the followers of something.
I think that's just part of human life, part of humanity.
Some of us believe in things, and some of us don't believe in things.
I don't think we all collectively will believe just the one thing. Because that will never happen.
You'll never have the entire world believing the same thing all together.
So I think in virtual reality, it might develop some cults, sects, communities, parishes,
whatever it is you want to call it. Maybe, I can't say most have religions.
Sometimes you hear something on television, some preaching that happens.
And you're like, I wonder how these people actually follow this.
And then, sometimes you hear some others that go, this is really good..
But, maybe somebody else thinks, Carolina, you're crazy. How you can believe in that? I don't know [LAUGH]
Interviewer: We'll see. We'll wait for the future to happen.