Your Mind Matters – Charlie Stein-Cohen & Walter Paice, Technology Healing Or Hurting Mental Health

The most psychologically cruel aspect of the repercussions of lockdown is isolation. However, social isolation is increasing because of the variety of differences amongst individuals. One is that people are fearing, standing out, and secondly, they're becoming afraid to speak out. And that fear translates into the fear and creation of not belonging to emotional and cognitive processes seem to be the most affected. It is suggested that social connectedness serves as a scaffold for the self, hence the saying, no man is an island. Damage to the self and the rest begins to crumble when we don't connect. In 2000, a study was made of the Romanian orphanages. These were the ones that were put into place by Ceausescu, who became the leader of Romania in 1989. And it was found babies and children had been physically and socially neglected. However, they had not been. They had been fed and looked after, they'd been clothed, they were warm. And when they did the study on the children, what was so fascinating and baby is that their neurological pathways had not developed. There were great gaps in their neurological pathways because what lacked was social interaction and tlc, tender loving care, touch, the warmth of another human being. The study of these brains on these orphans, when it was compared to other children, they showed that these children were very attentive, very polite, but had no social relationship. Later on, some of these children were put into foster care, and some of these neurological pathways began to grow. However, there were a number of children whose neurological pathways could not grow, and they always suffered. Now I'm Dr. Maria Kompinska. I'm a psychotherapist, and I'm a psychodynamic psychotherapist. And I engage in what is called the talking cure. And I'm concerned increasingly about the numbers who are socially isolated and those who have to use technology. So my question today is, does technology heal or hurt the individual? And I'm very delighted to have two guests joining me to explore this theme. Charlie Stein Cohen and Walter Pace. My first guest is Charlie. I'd like you to introduce yourself and just give us some of your background, your work, and an introduction to yourself. Charlie, please. Thank you, Maria. I'm Charlie. I'm the founder and CEO of Net2Work, which is an online technology platform that connects young people and companies for work experience, internships, apprenticeships, and also information and content to inspire them about what's possible. I started my career actually more in the city as a broker, but realized that I wanted to use technology for good to help empower young people and create awareness. You know, use technology to Create awareness with that. So, yeah, that's what got us here. And very happy to be here today. Thank you. And tell me a little bit about your family background, Charlie. Well, my family are all from Cape Town, from Sea Point in Cape Town. But I grew up in London, so I'm a real Londoner, which I feel there's not as many anymore, but more from a sort of medical background and mixture. So, yeah, that's mine. Lovely. And, Walter, if you could give us a little bit of your background. Okay. Hi, everyone. Hi, Maria. I work currently as the head of art and technology for a young arts institution called Berkshire House. It's this sort of the exploratory division of a fantastic artist called Jonathan Prince, who's based out of Massachusetts. I've been working with him for the last two years as he's sort of started to build creative investigations involving new technology. And we've been specifically looking at mixed reality, principally augmented reality, but we're certainly looking at virtual reality as well. And I kind of left the corporate world about how long ago now? Seven years ago, after really sort of one experience which sort of involving virtual reality, where I was like, okay, this is going to be a thing. I believe I kind of saw back then that the phenomenon of this technology was going to be really very important, and that certainly in the area of arts, I saw it as something really very interesting. And it kind of galvanized me to leave corporate life and pursue the life of, firstly, a startup. And I've now moved back and I live in London and work as the head of projects for Jonathan Prince at Berkshire House. Oh, wonderful, Charlie. And my first question to both of you is, how important is the coding behind any website or any augmented reality? And by virtue of that, how important is the mindset of a coder and the mindset of both of you when you implement the work that you do? So you, Charlie, for example, you're doing network. You're actually introducing people to their future employees and the work that you do, Walter, how vital is it that you have the right. Both of you have the right mindset, and also that the. The coding that goes behind it, that the people who actually implement that and put that into place have the right mindset? What's your take on that, Walter? That was an interesting question. I mean, I think there's kind of a few layers to what you've just asked, because when you're talking about building software, there's a basic sort of level of coding which is, I would argue, is perhaps ethically neutral. And the personality of the developer probably won't have an impact on how that software or that website or that program gets created. I think once you get into things like the UX and the kind of the aesthetics, the user experience, the user interaction, where you actually get to that point where the developer is starting to think about how this program is going to interact with the person, the end user, that's where the character of that development becomes very, very important. And perhaps this is where you get into ideas of ethics and perhaps morality and technology. And it's a very interesting idea because we come across this in social media now all the time. It's well understood that Facebook has a clear sense of the kind of dopamine response that likes were creating in its user. And it's something that, I mean, it's something that more or less they have been able to exploit. And it's something that has made, I suppose, social media sharing the phenomenon. It is. But when they set out, when Facebook was just sort of an idea in Zuckerberg's head, I just think he thought of it as a tool for networking. I don't think he necessarily realized the genie he was going to let out the bottle. So these things tend to evolve as you start to understand the user experience. And this is really the point of technology starts out, I think, as a neutral idea, perhaps a possible caveat for AI, and then becomes it's our use of it and how we exploit it that it develops. It moves from either positive or negative. And what is your. When you use it, Charlie, are you aware of your own mindset, how you interact with both your employees and your employers and if you have staff, how your. How you relate to everybody? Did people mimic you, so to speak? Because I've worked in companies where I used to own comedy clubs, and I'm still in the world of comedy and organizing entertainment. And I used to phone up various companies and you'd speak to somebody and they'd always sound like the boss. All the voices did. But are you conscious of that, Charlie, and your work? Definitely, yeah, definitely. And, you know, in relation to your. I mean, in terms of coding, for example, I'm not the tech. I, you know, I have a team of amazing tech developers who turn my imagination, you know, what we. What I think of and our concepts into reality. But I think it's, you know, it's super important, particularly in terms of working with young people that we think of and corporates and creating something that, you know, is easy to use as well as, like, aesthetically pleasing and you know, for example, there's a famous book called Don't Make Me Think, which I think is also super even more relevant for young people in terms of just got to be easy to use and anything that takes more than a few seconds, you know, is someone will sort of give up on or close. So yeah, I mean, luckily with good coders and good tech developers who can create that, I think then it sort of enables both sides of it. So do you actually interact, Charlie, with both your clients and your employers, the employees and employers directly yourself, you know, via telephone or mobile or is it always by email? I think I'm more of a. I prefer to speak or have a meeting. I'm not but of course it's sometimes in emails and you know, when you maintain a relationship, I think over time, obviously it's various ways, but yeah, it's definitely mainly over, you know, phone, email and through our website as well. So yeah, sort of all obviously technology mediums are used. Sometimes it's a bit too much, too many. But yeah. And do you have any rules in your company? Can you just remind everybody of the name of your company again, Charlie? My company is Net to Work. So it's NET to Work. So in the people that you employ, are there rules of engagement via the website? There's only. The only thing is in terms of safe, because we have a lot of young people. So it's only in terms of safeguarding and making sure that it's all done well by young people and that they can communicate securely with hopefully companies and corporates and opportunities in terms of my team and sales and so on, that's for them to decide the best way to communicate and I think in terms of any business. But yeah, we've created a technology that makes the communicating a bit more easy, a bit more accessible, particularly more accessible to young people. In terms of talking with the corporate, that might sometimes be a bit more daunting. Write an email. So we sort of made it in a more accessible way in a sort of internal WhatsApp looking thing. Yeah, because I think people don't realize that for a young person to write an email to a corporate can be quite, quite daunting, quite scary and they might not even do it at all. Rather than, you know, and miss opportunities, you know, it's been an interesting time. We'll come on to augmented reality, which is your world a little bit more Walter shortly. And also the theme of isolation. But just touching on that theme during this period of time and there will be extended times because nobody's sure quite how bad this virus is going to be and any new mutants, if you like, that will happen, but hopefully not. But when you're at home and you're working, did you find a way to communicate with your staff? There were some people who said they missed that communication. I know one company that I used to work with that actually had a streaming connectivity in play all the time so you could watch other people working and so that you didn't feel alone. Did you manage to do anything like that or did you just keep regular Zoom meetings, Charlie? For me it was regular meeting and just regular updates as well and how people are feeling. I think sometimes when you have meetings as well, it can be so into the agenda and what's going on that, you know, I think it's important to take time to see how people are feeling, how they're coping, because I think particularly after the second and definitely the third lockdown, people got a lot more, you know, it was definitely more stressful for everyone, I think, and I blame it on winter and lack of sun, darkness early and all these things. So. So yeah, I think we had regular meetings and regular Zooms and just making sure that everybody was there for each other because I think it's important to be able to say, actually I'm feeling a bit stressed or people were not used to spending as much time at home. So I think as I said, particularly towards the third lockdown, it was just more having that continuous support as well. Not just in terms of work agenda and that, but also just making sure people know that we're all feeling a bit similar and we're all, you know, going through this and being there for each other, really. But that comes down to you, doesn't it? I think so, yeah. But also, as you said, having those regular meetings and I can totally understand the people who, who have that sort of updated, some people working around them. In fact, I asked Sir Walter earlier if he was a more of an introvert or extrovert. And I'm certainly an extrovert and I, you know, like to work with other people and that, you know, even if they're working in different companies, it's. It's a different. It brings out a different capabilities, so. Well, actually, talking about introvert, before we move on to you, Walton, I'll ask the same question and then move into different aspects of technology. But introvert and extrovert, there is the Myers Briggs sort of test that people can do and that actually was started by CG Jung. He had a psychological club and he was always fascinated by personalities as I am, and I actually did my MA in psychological types in stand up comedy, which was interesting. But as you say, you know, sort of to be an extrovert is not so much, you know, the typical American, or maybe I shouldn't say this, but typical American check trousers and very loud and somebody who is a hermit. But similar to that. It's where you get your energy from. It's where you get your energy from. Exactly. So if you're introverted, you can often just feel you can absorb information, digest it internally before you say it. Extroverts often have to discuss their thought process and clarify what they're thinking. But it's. So a person who's extrovert will be the one that in an extreme, let's say on each end of the spectrum, an extreme extrovert will be the one that flitters around a party and talks to everybody. And the introvert will stay in one place talking to one person in depth. But also you have the sensory and intuitive. The sensory person needs the practicality, needs the proof. The intuitive sees the picture and then you've got thinking and feeling. So the thinking person is the person that will create structures, will make sure things are in order, make sure that if you're broken into that the police come and you fix the door. The feeling person is more about quality of something and how you are feeling in relation to what's going on. So you've got all these different types and then you've got judging and perceiving, which is something else. But it just gives you people an overview of what you're thinking about here. And I think analysis and understanding your team can be very helpful. And I've done work like that with teams where the two opposites I've suggested work together occasionally because very often because they're opposites, they don't necessarily socialize. But coming back to working during this period, how did you cope with not being able to meet your team? Or did you meet your team, Walter? We're very much a remote operation. Jonathan Prince is, as I said, based in Massachusetts. And that's really where Berkshire House's sort of, I suppose, physical home is. But as I said, I'm based in London. Our director of communications is based in Belgium. Various people sort of who work sort of with us on projects are based between New York and the Far East. So it's sort of. We've always, I think we, we were born remote. So that's sort of, that's kind of been part of the culture of the company and one that we're all comfortable with. And we have a healthy sort of dialogue on any number of different platforms. So we speak on Zoom. We also have sort of WhatsApp group. We also kind of have between us, sort of the core group. We have a sort of a business and we have a kind of sort of social chat. So the conversations can evolve organically between what is the business needs and those conversations have one sort of track, if you like. And then if we're just chatting about things so that our relationship as individuals and actually I suppose what adds to the culture and community within the company does also evolve outside of just the kind of your classic Zoom call about what needs to get done and so forth. Yeah. I must say I've had some of the most interesting conversations during the various lockdowns with people in various industries that are saying things that are so profound and engaging in conversations that have a discussion to them that I would never even in, you know, sort of a more casual environment would never have had. So I can imagine. So your work now you've got the artist Jonathan Prince, is he. There's a new wave of art that's happening technologically, isn't there? NFTs? Yeah, well it's not exactly a new wave. It's a new way. It's a new sort of commercial sort of economy for digital art. Yeah, it's. It's certainly. I think it's. Yeah, it's, it's been extraordinary to watch to be honest. It really. For those who are not as well versed as you, like myself, I've only just been made fully aware of this recently, but can you just go into how it works? A plotted description? Well, nft, fungible tokens and fungible meaning means sort of non replaceable. It's sort of the problem with digital art has always been if I have a digital artwork, you know JPEG file or a 3D file, if I send that to you, Maria, that's not a forgery, it is an exact copy. So how do you sort of where art is based, where the price of art is largely based on, you know, mix of, you know, subjective quality and then scarcity, the demand for it. How do you stop, you know, digital artworks just proliferating by just copying them? Well, the blockchain has sort of emerged to be this, of the sort of opportunity for that because it's the system that the blockchain works on, allows for an artwork. And this is what NFTs are to essentially define their origin and create Additions which are irrefutable. So it's essentially like watermarking a digital artwork. Artists create editions, or ergo, a single artwork that can then be sold online. And if they're resold, that artwork can be qualified. So if anyone ever tried to sell an absolute copy, they could. But the idea of the original edition work, which is what the art world sort of respects and how the art world is largely based, is sort of is enshrined in the NFT model. So is the token evaluation of the artworks and is the token specific to that piece of art? Unlike a bitcoin, which is a general. Well, the price can go up. So, you know. But yes, essentially that an artist will create an artwork like this gentleman Beeple, who's just sold this extraordinary work, although that, interestingly, was auction and Christie's for $65 million or some incredible amount. But yeah, you can post on an auction site like Rev or a digital artwork and you say, okay, this is 10 editions, and I'm putting this as a price. And the NFTs are largely based on Ethereum currency at the moment, although I think that is going to evolve. And then people bid effectively and they bid on their perception of the value of that. But there's a lot of my problem at the moment. There's a lot of speculation. I think the market is getting flooded and as everyone jumping on the bandwagon, they sort of see it as the next Bitcoin. And it's not. Art is not a commodity. Bitcoin is a commodity. And it's rather a shame because there's a lot of people essentially just speculating on the price of the artwork rather than whether they, you know, do I love this artwork? Do I want to own its digital self? For my. And that is, as I said, that that's a bit unfortunate because I think that's not where digital art needs to go to evolve into what it can be. So. And do you think your particular artist, Jonathan, would he ever recreate that, and can he recreate that into a physical entity that you could put on the wall? That's a very good question. So would a digital artwork become analog? Well, I don't know. Anything is possible. JP has a very, very open mind on these things and he has a strong professional, early background in early augmented reality. So I think where he saw the creative and artistic value in that sort of project, he might consider it. And we're certainly looking at the intersection between physical and digital art and that relationship, because that's what sort of augmented reality sort of speaks to. So it's definite. There are all sorts of creative and interesting possibilities around that idea. Whether you would ever sort of look at a digital artwork and then turn it into. Well, if, yeah, as I said, if the creative merit of that artwork, then I think anything's possible. I think it's immensely exciting. The thing that I find a little bit disturbing about it is that it is so remote and I was having this discussion here at home just about this subject. So it's fascinating that you're able to shed more light on it. But what I find a little bit disturbing for me is when they were talking about books, you know, sort of going online and, you know, you don't need any books in the house now. I'm a real physical person. I like a book in my bag. It's like my friends. So I always carry a book with me. And gradually people were getting rid of their books, but now they coming back and they're going to be more expensive. The same with vinyl records, they're coming back. So there'll be a complement now, I think, between the physical and the technological, if you like, approach to everything. Because if you have a piece of, you know, sort of artwork, digital artwork, you must have a laptop or an iPad or something to show it. So will the place be full of these bits of technology all over the wall? Is that how it's going to be? Well, this is. It's very interesting. Again, you're raising kind of very interesting point, which is that once you own this digital artwork, so what is the point of that ownership? How do you get to appreciate that? Well, at the moment, as you said, you might look at it on your laptop or you might look at it through a mobile phone. You might even look at an augmented reality through a mobile phone device. But in the coming future, you're going to have wearable technology. I think everyone's waiting for the advent of Apple's AR glasses as a sort of marker. That'll be a watermark moment for wearables, I think. And then suddenly you'll be able to. If you're. If you've got your digital AR glasses on, you'll be able to position your artwork on your wall and see it sort of. So at that point, the sort of the system of. Certainly for that sort of work, you'll be able to sort of, you know, bring it into your physical world, although it's still be a virtual idea. So before we move on to the healing or hurting components to this. I did see Van Gogh, his work twice has been explored in a sort of different way. One is through film. I don't know if you saw that a film was sort of made like a cartoon. Yeah, the animated. Yeah, the animated piece on his life, which was fabulous. And it was made by some Polish graphic designers as well as a tremendous director who had the foresight to make that happen. Did you watch it? I've seen parts of it. No, to myself. Yeah. Fascinating to watch. I watched part of the documentary like it really was because there was lots of different artists sort of all inter. Doing their own sort of interpretation. That's why it was such a. And now they're actually projecting the world of Van Gogh in different mediums as an exhibition. And I love that. And I think that is the world we're going to enter where you physically explore a new dimension. So that. That could be uplifting if you use the right art. But you don't want the scream to be done like that, do you? No. Don't want to walk into a room where, you know, Munchy's scream is all over the wall. Especially not nowadays, your artworks. But I mean, that's kind of a. Those experiential kind of art projects. And you know, Van Gogh is one. There's an amazing group called Team Lab based down of. I think they're based on Japan and they have the. They've just. They've created a museum called the Mori Museum, which was, until Covid, most visited museum in the world. And that is literally what you're describing is projection mapping. It's essentially creating something and then. And then projecting it onto walls, usually multiple walls, to create kind of an immersive art experience. And people love it. It's. It's, you know, become very big. Not that golf experience is the tip of an iceberg of these experiences that are now around the world. But yeah, I think they're growing because I think people really see just the experience of art. And we're seeing this. There's a sort of shift or certainly a trend in the sort of. In the art world for these sorts of experiences more and more. I think you'll see them increasingly. I think that's fascinating. So let's talk about the relationship that you can project through a laptop, let's say. So if you, Charlie, are talking to a young person, how do you know that this is the real person? How do you know you're not being catfished on your world or in your world much like they do? As you know, they've got these programs about it on dating sites. And that's quite prevalent. But how do you know that you've got the right person at the other end? How do you check? Well, from our website kind of view, we check through, you know, we have ways of checking this through the through. But I mean, we mainly go through schools and education, so we talk about in classes and so on. Has also, obviously during all of this, all of the lockdown, been very different because rather than being in the schools and within the classes, we're now on a zoom with, you know, 20, 30, 40 young people with just a name and no faces answering questions and then doing their little yellow raised hands. And it's really been a whole new world from that. So I guess, yeah, our main way of, you know, we go through education and so on. So that's sort of how we know, you know, who we're connecting to and who's looking for the opportunities and so on. But it has been, as I said, very, very different in terms of this sort of new education and doing everything on Zooms and classes on Zooms and talking to groups of young people through that. But yeah, as I said, it's mainly through schools and education. Do you have to you teach? Do you. And would you ever use an avatar to teach in your place? No, I mean, I'm not a teacher. I just. We just sort of promote about careers and what's possible and talk to young people about opportunities and career pathways and work alongside, you know, careers guidance within education to, you know, show people what's possible, what's possible if they want to go into different industries, whether it's media, sports, fashion and so on. So we work alongside the sort of teachers and tutors and help to really inspire them and show them, which already doing that on zoom is not, in my view, as effective as obviously being in a classroom or, you know, in a company with them, or taking them and helping them make contests, which is what we do. And, you know, it's not the same. So we sort of had to adapt to that and sort of use technology and zoom to do that, which we've sort of adapted to. But I mean, they've obviously adapted to a lot more because they've been doing all their classes and spending all day like that. So, yeah, that's sort of where it's at now. Do you think that can be a cover for who they really are? Do you think that you can put a full self across through the. Using anything online? There's an interesting thought because it comes back to, I think, to what I was saying before about introverts, extroverts, what you feel comfortable with. And I think there's been a mixture. And if you're a bit more of an extrovert like me, then you're probably missing being in the class and being with friends and so on. I've met a lot on those, on the Zooms and in the Zoom classrooms essentially that, you know, they say, actually we're much more looking forward to doing the interview on Zoom, and they're preparing for that and they're going to be a lot more comfortable to do it that way. Whereas obviously some people would much prefer to be in person shaking someone's hand, sitting opposite them. So I really think it depends again on the person and what they feel comfortable with. And if they feel more comfortable to have, you know, interviews on Zoom, then obviously preparing themselves for that and, you know, doing the right Zoom etiquette, if you want to call it, to do that. But I think it's really dependent on the person and the personality and, you know, the psychology behind each person and what they feel comfortable with. And yeah, they can. Do you think in your own experience that young people will not be able, because they're so comfortable on Zoom, because they're comfortable sitting at home, that that won't be able to translate into the actual one to one connection that they will trip over. You know, they just won't look right. They won't be able to. They won't have, as you say, the right etiquette when they actually get out into the workplace and have to mix and mingle. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think certainly for young people, they have to be taught this kind of thing because it's new to all of them. You know, we've, you know, me, you, Walter, have been in an interview before on meeting in person and on Zoom. So we kind of know and can remind ourselves, you know, it's for us to also teach young people or their parents or their teachers to prepare them for whether it's Zoom meetings or hopefully real meetings in time, and to just make them feel comfortable and prepared and not just say, oh, you know, you have to get an internship and a virtual one, but also making them feel prepared. And, you know, what this all comes down to, which is, you know, mental health and feeling mentally and strong enough to partake in that and to get the best opportunity for them feeling uncomfortable. So whether it's the interview, whether it's hopefully getting an opportunity, whether it's studying and so on, you know, you want them to be able to ask questions on Zoom or present themselves or ask even a teacher. And so I think it's mentally preparing them, whether it's on Zoom or in the office or in a meeting, to, you know, get the most out of it for their life, for their future, for everything. And preparing them, instructed by your employers on how much detail do they have to give you in this case, for each person that they're looking to employ? Well, it's more for them. We're not a sort of recruiter. We sort of help to promote what companies do. We help to create company awareness. We have to really create the diversity and opportunities also for the company, not just for the young people, but for helping promote those companies and opportunities to a diverse range of young people. So it's really for them to decide what it is they're looking for, what they need and what will best sort of help their future workforce and the future of the talents and the young talent that they need and what can be beneficial for both sides. And do they talk about mental health to you? Is that a conversation yet that they've had, or have they just not yet managed to understand quite how to deliver mental health on this level? Yeah, I don't think it's been an area that's really been discussed. I think that, you know, a lot of companies have CSR possibilities and amazing opportunities when you're within a company in terms of support, from what I've heard. But in terms of when they sort of reach out to young people, you know, maybe at the very beginning, they don't. And it's something that's hopefully expanded on. Definitely something I think, you know, I think most people can relate, whether they have their own children, whether they were not far from it. I think people can relate to the experience of it and the importance of it. So I don't think it's far from people's minds, even if they're not mentioning it. Yeah. So, coming back to you, Walter, about Jonathan Prince, and you were talking about augmented reality in the world of therapy. I had this discussion with a very senior and quite renowned therapist who said, no, in future, therapists will be avatars or will be augmented reality. Let's kick open that door, shall we, and look at that rise of digital society. Yeah, it's coming. It's absolutely coming. I think, you know, there's rather alarming documentary that aired on Netflix a few months ago called the Social Dilemma, and it showed that kind of our social overlords like Facebook and so forth, have at their fingertips over 40,000 points of data that they can kind of assess the identity of an individual user. Well, that is going to coalesce also to the user's benefit. And users are going to become versions of themselves online. Now this is going to have, I think, positives and negatives. Again. The technology of IT is arguably neutral. It's actually the application of IT and how we use it that it's going to become the subject of contention and discussion. But digital avatars are definitely coming because we are becoming more and more engaged in this idea of a virtual society. And the technology is moving much faster than people perhaps see or necessarily give it credit for. I think we've been spoiled to a certain degree by sci fi and by sort of film and entertainment. So our expectations of what virtual reality should be able to do and how we'd experience it have been sort of a little bit off. But there is a coming nexus between actually what mixed reality is going to be able to do and what the customer's experience and the user's experience is going to be. And it's not far off. It really isn't far off. And with that, as I said, if you think at the moment we are all kind of ourselves in a kind of a two dimensional format accessible through whatever profiles we have online, that's going to, I think that's going to increasingly become a three dimensional and more kind of singular idea where you will be a person that will be able to walk within a virtual landscape and interact with others in that virtual landscape. And the technology and software already exists for this. It's just, it's not so widespread or has such utility that actually people are sort of compelled to use it in their daily life. But it's absolutely coming. There's a wonderful movie and was a book and was made a movie by Spielberg called Ready Player One. And as I said, I think sci fi is a great sort of predictor of the future. I think there's so much in older sci fi that really kind of points to where we're going. And that movie really sort of speaks about sort of the VR in when it's in sort of full, was in full use in society. And people live in these virtual worlds as much as they do in the physical ones. And they engage in there's industry and economy and society and it's as pronounced to the lives of these individuals as it is as the real one, if not more. And that it's an extreme idea, but it is actually one that's not far from what the reality might be. My discussion point with this Particular therapist was that if you create an avatar that would, let's say it be housed within a virtual reality. And as you say, Facebook have these 40,000 points of differentiation between us. I still maintain that the art of psychotherapy, because it's sort of born under the, it's registered under the arts as opposed to a science, is that you can actually work with a client and help them move and understand their world because you're interacting. My worry about doing anything, creating an avatar is that it would be very self congratulatory. It will be a reflection of the best part of yourself and that's the danger of it, that all it will do, it will encourage and enhance that you and only the parts of you that are brilliant because you're not going to want to divulge the worst parts of yourself. Well, I mean your digital avatar, as I said, you're right, it's going to be a sort of digital version of yourself. And what's going to be interesting is yes, I imagine immediately people will be like, oh well, I'm going to make myself gorgeous and sort of, you know, I'm going to be absolutely sort of the person that I would want to be. But that's going to get old quickly. If the digital world is just populated by gorgeous people with very little diversity, it's going to get old very quickly. I mean it's going to be, the Internet is going to have to learn, the digital society is going to have to learn authenticity for it to survive. Otherwise people will reject it because it won't feel real. So I think, yeah, you might see what, I think you might see almost a further more extreme bifurcation of sort of identity where people are, you know, are changing, might identify with different races. At the moment we've, we're kind of seeing this sort of, this extraordinary sort of growth in sort of, I suppose, social identity and people identifying along all sorts of different lines. I mean I didn't know three years ago what CIS binary meant. That's the sort of new idea to me. And yet these things will be reflected in digital society as well. And probably more so people will really start to explore how they seek to reflect the person they are. And I don't think it'll be just as simplistic as just aesthetic good looks. I think the technology will allow people to really kind of start to kind of consider that. I know that in the world of comedy it would be quite useful to do because you could write a piece and have your avatar. Actually this is just on the spot Idea you could have your avatar actually becoming that stand up and testing out your material. Is it something that you would use, Charlie? Well, I definitely think it would be interesting. It's something that perhaps we could use on the technology to. On the website, for example, to perhaps interact and communicate with young people. It would definitely be something different. It's a bit ahead of where we're at, I think. But is it something you personally would use? Probably not. Personally, no. Where's your resistance? Well, I think I'm definitely as someone. I mean, I should really say as someone as a technology company, but I'm definitely in the wrong generation. And, you know, I miss the old. You know, I'm sort of not quite at this stage of accepting all this. And, you know, I'm definitely honest, you know, wanting to put phones away more and, you know, use. Use social media and so on less. Yeah. So I think the idea of personal interaction. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I believe in that. They say that there are in the virtual reality for therapy. They are using it with therapy to enable people to experience a trigger, a psychological trigger, which then the therapist will assess and see how much that person could take. It just reminds me of the Milgram experiment. Do you know that experiment? No. Where they. This is, I think, happened in the 60s. They had a scientist sitting in one room overseeing a normal person, just anybody. And in the other room, somebody was linked up to electrodes. Room number one, the scientist would encourage the first person to turn up the intensity of the electrical pulse going through to the person on their hands or on their body. And it was found, allegedly, that when the scientist encouraged person number one to turn up the intensity, nine out of ten people did turn it up to the point where the person on the other side was in real pain. Yeah. And that's quite scary. There was also another one which I think has been that now sort of demolished. There was an idea of putting people into a prison and creating different stratas. Types of prison experiment. Yeah, the Stanford Prison experiment. That's right. And I'm not quite sure whether that really happened, but the concept was basically you had the prisoners, you had the managers, and then you had the ones that oversaw the managers or the prison wardens. And gradually how they all took on the more extreme, authoritarian psychological attitudes, you know, to being much more and more psychotic. Well, this is touching on something which in the digital realm is quite a frightening idea because there's a wonderful author called Yuval Hariri who talks about how our behaviors online have kind of changed. And actually it's amazing. I mean, you see it on Twitter, the kind of vitriol and sort of expleted laden anger that people will deliver to other people that they don't know purely on the fact that they disagree with them and that, you know, in physical society, if someone's sort of playing their music loudly next door and that's something annoying to me, I will go next door and try and have a reason conversation. But online, because of the benefits of anonymity and that kind of fourth wall idea that, you know, you're, you're that far, you're that much removed from this person, but you can find out as much as you want about them, to actually despise them and establish their difference from you. That has given people kind of extraordinary, seemingly extraordinary license to behave absolutely appallingly. And you just constantly sort of see this behavior. And I hear about examples amongst teens and kind of the experience of being a teenager now and a socially kind of enabled teenager with your details and everything across these sites, like you put a foot wrong and people can just, you know, your life can be destroyed. And we were, we have a friend whose daughter was, was relaying some stories the other day which just left me shocked. I put it this way, I'm glad I'm not a teenager now. Yeah, it's just terrifying. And I think that there are so many opportunities for the, for people who are outspoken, the extroverts who really need to speak out, or introverts who use this as a medium to explore their ideas because they don't have to mix. Introverts. You know, a lot of the psychotics that, you know, Daimler and everyone were people that were extreme introverts that they can speak out on social media, on virtual reality. They can create these terrible, terrible new realities that are so extreme and so bad. But there is this component in people's minds and whether this will change, I don't know. And we're all going to watch this space that you can step into that. And by virtue of the person who shouts loudest, the person who is seen the most on, on the media or on Facebook or on social media is the person that is deemed to be right no matter whether you think they're absolutely wrong. There's a term for that and it's the Mandela effect, isn't it? Where even though you know it's wrong, you think it's right because they shout the loudest. And I, I'm worried about the threat of that happening in our world. Yeah, very much so. What you just touched on is kind of. This is the fear of how democracy is being subverted by, you know, digital media's ability to actually, you know, to project that loud shout, you know, to specific audiences. So, yeah, it is a frightening idea. So let's just talk about the impact of not only social media and this sort of technology. Can it be a drug? Can that whole process, if people, we know that in certain elements they make sure. So on the gambling side, there's certain underpinning technology that keeps you addicted. But can the world of augmented reality or the connectedness that you have when you're isolated, can that become a drug? So you're sitting at home in a lockdown on your own and you've got nowhere to go. People will then turn to something that will respond to them the quickest, no matter how disruptive it is. Do you think that's the case, that that's what people do? Well, I think if, as I said, if you're experiencing this, you know, a sense of isolation and it's something that, you know, and you. You turn to sort of augmented reality, I would say this would be more virtual reality because again, that. That would be in your home, a fully immersive experience which would sort of essentially take you through from your home into another place and you can interact. If that experience becomes connected, authentic enough and connective enough, then, you know, and then people come out of that experience and feel disenfranchised by the detail and circumstance of their real world, then, yeah, I think it could absolutely become addictive. And you're kind of talking about perhaps not addiction, but the inevitability of what's the spatial era is that as people move, as virtual reality and augmented reality becomes much more part of our daily lives, because the software, just as we use laptops, suddenly gets into homes in a bigger way, people will use it more. And in using it more, they'll find sort of more enjoyment and they will. It will have an absolutely sort of socialized aspect. In fact, that will be major part of it. And so people will start to live their lives, I think, and this will be a generational thing because as you say, like Charlie, just this, she wouldn't necessarily feel massively comfortable using an avatar. But generations will coming forward because they will be. They'll be born into this effectively, this idea. You know, the movie the Matrix. And there's this one extraordinary scene where Neo is shown these vast fields where humans are being farmed, but. And they're all in pods. But the idea is that the first humans would have got into the pods of their own volition. We will potentially migrate into sort of VR because it appeals to us more. And I think the lessons that we're seeing in social media about how powerful that digital connectivity has become, once that is three dimensional and real enough to allow for an authentic and connective experience between one human and another or multiple humans in community, you're going to really see a shift change in digital society. Coming back to the point of implementation and let's say, ownership and creation of sites and avatars, augmented reality, are people aware how much responsibility they need to take when they are active in creating these? Because there seems to be. Everything is at a pace when it's got to be done regardless, and nobody seems to take responsibility for the outcome, as he was saying with the teenager. So for me, what I'm beginning to notice is there's a lot of people spilling out their thoughts, their feelings, everything, like a two year old, like a five year old, you know, and they just talk and talk and talk about their feelings and every single feeling is, or none of their feelings are regulated. So by virtue of it spilling out, as you were saying, with the teenager, it becomes this sort of tsunami of vitriol, as he was saying, on other people, but nobody stops it. Do you think it's time that people took notice and started regulating a lot more everything that's happening on the virtual world, the world and technology generally. And if so, who would have to do that? Yes, exactly. Who becomes the gatekeeper? This is, it's such a fine line between what is free speech and what is kind of, you know, sort of regulation or what regulation is necessary because this, it stretches across so many different ideas. My feeling, based on what I see is that we are in this sort of slightly primordial part of our social digital evolution where these things are acceptable because there is still this sort of, as I said, this fourth wall. You're this anonymous person on a computer that disagrees with someone in New York, for example, and you can have it, you can fight it out, but never see each other. But actually, as the sort of 3D digital world becomes more homogenized and people actually have almost a sense of a physical presence in virtual space that may engender more better sort of codes of human behavior. I think, you know, I definitely think there needs to be more done to, if not regulate, to try and kind of allow for greater degrees of empathy and for the importance of sort of, sort of an empathetic leaning etiquette across, because we seem to have lost Ability to disagree with people and still like them. And that is played out across sort of every social media platform that I've seen. But. But ultimately, I hope that perhaps we're just in this sort of adolescent stage where digital community is still kind of a little bit heavily egotistical. You can see the rise of celebrity on things like Instagram has attached itself to this, but that maybe we will grow as actually the significance and utility of 3D space, digital space becomes part of our society more. And that, you know, you will actually suddenly you'll be an avatar and you'll be able to encounter the person, you know, in digital space. And then that sort of digital society will have to. Will hopefully abide by sort of more positive codes of etiquette and social norms that we see in physical society. Because, yeah, it's a bit frightening to think of it otherwise. And if people, if this isolation continues, do you think if augmented reality were to accelerate, do you think people would enjoy stepping into a sort of quasi social space, a social pub? Will augmented reality create your own pub at home potentially? I think so. I think so. I think, you know, as I said, we need to be slightly realistic about the capabilities of the technology. And actually. But it's. These ideas are not so far off as to be kind of, you know, beyond the realms of consideration. So, yeah, I think it's definitely something. And as I said, it comes down to authenticity of experience. Like the idea that digital experiences can't be authentic is a misnomer. So, yeah, these things are definitely coming. And we're seeing the. You know, there are already sort of platforms that exist that operate in this way. They're just than just not so in public view because people aren't completely engaged it. But a more widespread usage of these. Yeah, absolutely. So if you had an opportunity to walk into one of these realities, which one would you choose? Charlie? Great. What are the options of the reality? Sorry? Would you choose. If you could choose a reality, an augmented reality, so like a pub or a bar or a nightclub or a shopping mall, what would you choose? Can I choose the real thing? I don't want to be in a. No, do. By all means. I like the fact that you're a real person in that respect. I hold on to that. I think it's so valuable that we have you doing that. Walter, what would you choose? Well, this is why I kind of got into this space. Like, I absolutely believe in this era's ability to sort of communicate art and culture in extraordinary ways and allow for what the Internet's sort of greatest strength is, which is distribution, sort of getting content around the world in the blink of an eye. So what would I choose as a, you know, gosh, I don't know, a bar on the surface of the moon maybe, or Mars. You know, you're going to be able to create these environments where people will be able to sort of come together. And it's why. So the communication of art through kind of digital means is such an interesting and potentially kind of, you know, groundbreaking idea because it really will allow for so much more. Okay, I'd meet Walter in the Museum of Mars. That sounds. I do allow that one. Yeah, that sounds really interesting actually, doesn't it? We could all meet up there in different times and things. Yeah, that sounds. Just reminds me of the Queen's Gambit when she was playing chess out there. And I quite like that idea of learning various games like that. So we're coming to the end and I cannot thank you both enough for joining me on this program. But do you think it has more potential for healing or to hurt the individual? Charlie? I think at the moment, sadly, it's doing a lot more hurt. You know, there are a lot of negatives, but I think it definitely has the potential. And, you know, I started Network because I saw that potential in using technology for healing or for good. So I think there's definitely, you know, particularly with everything happening, it was designed to make us more connected. But it's definitely, you know, what you said at the beginning about solo isolation, I think this time of creating more connectivity has definitely increased this sort of solar isolation and rise of loneliness in a time of connection. But I think that, you know, despite all the sort of negatives which, you know, won't go into that, I think people can see, you know, we can turn it into a, you know, force for good. And we need to sort of, you know, shift the trend ourselves and use it as a solution and use it for good. Whether it's, you know, to just to view the art on Mars or whether it's young people and, you know, opportunities or whatever, you know, it might be to sort of help with that. So I think it's for us to do that and to do that with young people. And yeah, I love that. I. Sadly, we don't have enough time, Walter, to ask you, but I think, Charlie, you've covered quite a lot there. I do think that we have opportunities to help people heal through connectivity and virtual reality. And the work you're doing is absolutely fantastic, both of you. So I'd just like to say thank you to you, Charlie, Charlie Stein Cohen and Walter Pace for joining me today on technology. Is it healing or does it hurt the individual? Thanks so much, Maria. It was a pleasure.