Pionierat în era tehnologică | Timmy Ghiurau | TEDxConstanta

Early Life and Dreams

• The presentation's title is the same everywhere, summarizing the speaker's journey and origins, which are reflected in Eminem's lyrics "Snap Back to reality Here comes Gravity" (17s).
• The speaker, Timmy Ghiurau, is a dreamer who was born in Oradea, a beautiful town where he grew up, had professors, friends, and people who encouraged him (53s).
• As a young person, he was distracted and instead of pursuing engineering and technology, he wanted to be a rockstar, so he told his parents he was going to study in Copenhagen, but actually went to study music at a conservatory (1m20s).
• However, reality caught up, and he became homeless, sleeping in the airport for a couple of months, hiding from security, and playing his guitar in jazz and blues clubs to make money and attend school (1m34s).

University and Unity

• He eventually listened to his parents and moved to the University of Aalborg, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, where he met other dreamers, including the founders of Unity, a company that creates technology used in almost 90% of games (2m10s).
• The founders of Unity are now part of the third most valuable European company, which started in the gaming industry, and the speaker believed that this technology could be used in other fields such as architecture and simulation (2m43s).

Grandmother's Influence and Neuroscience

• The speaker's grandmother, Ana, who had 13 children and went through many difficult things, was a spiritual person who could read people and had a special gift, which inspired the speaker to study neuroscience and cognitive science to understand how the human brain works (3m6s).
• The speaker wanted to understand his grandmother's "algorithm" and how she could read people, so he studied science, neuroscience, and cognitive science to understand how to read emotions and translate them into technological terms (3m45s).

Eye-Tracking Technology and idrive

• A startup called idrive was working on developing technology for detecting eye movements to help people with disabilities interact with computers, machines, and tablets, but the goal was to go further and understand the emotions people experience while interacting with technology, believing that trust should be built between humans and artificial intelligence (4m34s).
• To achieve this, eye tracking was integrated into various devices such as smartwatches and tablets, and even a game called Fruit Ninja was hacked to be played using only the eyes, resulting in a world record because the eye is the fastest organ in the body (5m6s).
• This experience was taken to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where it was tested by notable figures such as Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, and Palmer Luckey, who founded Oculus and gifted a prototype of a virtual reality headset (5m29s).
• The headset was modified with an eye-tracking sensor to see if it was possible to interact with the technology using only eye movements and to understand human emotions in a gaming situation, allowing the content to adapt to those emotions (5m53s).

Lego and Oculus Acquisition

• The technology caught the attention of Lego, which asked for help in creating a demo for the Lego Star Wars game, aiming to create an experience where players could control the game with their minds and eyes, like a Jedi (6m17s).
• The project was initially successful in the lab, but it faced challenges when presented at a Lego conference with 2000 Danish children, as the technology struggled to calibrate with the children's eyes, mostly blue, which differed from the eyes used in training the system (6m48s).
• Despite the challenges, the project was a success, and after a few months, the company was acquired by Facebook's Oculus, a surprising turn of events that required the involvement of lawyers (7m4s).
• The experience was overwhelming, especially coming from Romania, but with the help of a mentor, the transition to California was made, and a long process ensued (7m33s).
• The initial intention was to use patents only in research or enterprise business-to-business, not in consumer devices, and a three-year struggle ensued to protect the created technology due to concerns about its potential misuse, particularly in monitoring children (7m52s).
• The fear was that the technology could be used to monitor people, as the eye is considered the mirror of the soul, leading to a bitter taste with the technological world and a temporary shift in focus to fashion and music (8m0s).

Fashion and Music

• Upon arriving in Scandinavia, the question arose as to where the Vikings were, as only hipster youth with skinny jeans and specialty coffee were visible, prompting a collaboration with fashion houses to create avant-garde concepts and Scandinavian influences (8m35s).
• The collaboration with fashion designers led to the realization that the same principles applied to creating experiences and games were being used, and the focus shifted to creating a character or environment (9m1s).

Volvo and the Intersection of Creativity and Technology

• An opportunity arose to work with Volvo, where the goal was to create self-driving cars of the future, requiring a deep understanding of the driver, passengers, and various scenarios, particularly when surrendering control to the vehicle (9m30s).
• Throughout the journey, the question of whether creativity or technology was the primary focus arose, but ultimately, it was discovered that both could be combined, and innovation occurs at the intersection of critical and creative thinking (9m52s).
• The importance of understanding limitations and the "box" in order to think outside of it was learned, and the value of knowing the steps to take from vision to solution, including the need to perfect each step, was emphasized (10m15s).
• A crucial lesson learned was the importance of deciding what not to do, as having a tool in hand can lead to seeing everything as a potential application, and the need to understand one's domain and limitations was highlighted (10m47s).

Volvo and Personal Impact

• The individual initially disliked corporations and cars, but believed in startups and innovation, aiming to promote rapid progress (11m18s).
• During a visit from their father, they drove a Volvo S90 from Sweden to Oslo, listening to their favorite songs and showing their father a button they had created that could be used by 2 million people (11m30s).
• The individual realized the significance of their work at Volvo, which focused on safety, and was inspired by the company's vision (11m59s).
• They mentioned a camera system that could detect if a person was having an epileptic episode, intoxicated, or distracted while driving, potentially saving 2 million lives (12m4s).
• The individual has been working at Volvo for 10 years, starting in a small room that eventually became an innovation lab with 120 people exploring new technologies beyond cars (12m39s).

Volvo Innovation Lab and 360c Concept

• The lab tests various technologies, including batteries and energy sources, and aims to think outside the box (13m3s).
• A video is shown, highlighting the importance of travel and how it has shaped the world, with the automobile being a key factor in this change (13m30s).
• The video suggests that while efficiency is important, it shouldn't come at the cost of empathy and human connection, and proposes the idea of using autonomous technology to provide a space for people to live their lives on the move (14m47s).
• The 360c concept is introduced, aiming to provide a seamless link between origin and destination, allowing people to live their lives without the stress of travel (15m17s).
• The project was initially conceived 10 years ago and aimed to challenge the focus on efficiency, instead seeking to give people back their time (15m34s).
• Research has shown that when people have a level of autonomy, they tend to use their time to scroll through their phones, highlighting the need for a different approach to autonomous technology (16m7s).
• The goal is to understand humans better through technology, provoke empathy, and shift focus from individual safety to societal and planetary safety, which translates to Cyber Security, Healthcare, and sustainability (16m32s).

Societal and Planetary Safety

• The concept of societal safety can be linked to Cyber Security and Healthcare, while planetary safety is associated with sustainability (16m46s).

Bauhaus Inspiration and VR Integration

• The inspiration for the laboratory came from the 1920s Bauhaus movement in Germany, where artists, architects, designers, politicians, and philosophers collaborated to create innovations (17m5s).
• The Bauhaus philosophy has influenced many modern designs, including the iPhone and the curved shape of the Dav soap, which combines aesthetics and utility (17m22s).
• The laboratory aimed to deconstruct the car and its sensors to explore new possibilities and change the culture and philosophy surrounding technology (17m32s).
• The introduction of VR technology from the gaming industry to the automotive industry has enabled the testing of various scenarios, such as selling cars through virtual reality and simulating events on the road (17m52s).
• The laboratory's work involves testing and simulating various scenarios, including unexpected events on the road, to improve the car's ability to adapt and react quickly (18m11s).
• The Volvo x90 is the first car the laboratory worked on, from sketch to production, which took 10 years and involved numerous tests, research, and certifications (18m43s).
• A tool was invented to streamline the design process, allowing designers to test and swipe through different concepts and scenarios, including rare and hazardous events, using virtual reality (19m12s).
• The use of virtual reality has enabled the laboratory to test and simulate scenarios that are difficult or impossible to replicate in real life, such as an elk crossing the road (19m35s).
• A collaboration with a Finnish firm, Vario, was established to design and develop a car using virtual reality, which has a 60 times higher resolution than regular virtual reality, allowing for testing of lights and ergonomics, and resulting in a 60% faster development process (20m13s).
• The use of virtual reality in car design is not new, as Volvo has been using it since the 90s, but it was previously very expensive and inaccessible (20m57s).
• A childhood dream was fulfilled by appearing on the TV show "Mythbusters" with Adam Savage, where a real Volvo and a virtual one were tested side by side, and the experience was not "busted" (21m18s).

Mythbusters and The Point Labs

• The experience on "Mythbusters" gave more courage to move forward and explore how to convert information into knowledge, knowledge into utility, and utility into behavior change through design, and ultimately change the world and culture through art and storytelling (21m37s).
• A laboratory called "The Point Labs" was built to look into various areas of society, including policy makers, collaborating with the European Union, and designing what the future might look like in 2050 and 2070, across different industries such as energy, mobility, architecture, culture, and museums (22m7s).
• The goal is to create a vocabulary to describe the future that everyone wants, and to achieve this, inspiration was drawn from the Bauhaus movement, with the aim of creating a "Bauhaus of the 2020s" (22m43s).

Grandmother's Wisdom and the Importance of Vision

• The presentation ends with a slide of the speaker's grandmother, who unknowingly wore a Nike headband, and a quote from Habakkuk 2, which says to write the vision clearly on a tablet so that it can be passed on (22m54s).
• The goal is to help people dream again, but it took 10 years to understand the verse correctly (23m39s).
• The verse was studied in its original Hebrew form, and it says to write the vision in capital letters so it can be seen clearly while in pursuit and shared with others (23m54s).
• Writing the vision in capital letters completely changed the perspective, as it serves as a reminder of the purpose when moving rapidly towards a goal (24m3s).
• In recent years, the pace of progress surpassed the clarity of the vision, leading to forgetfulness of the reasons behind the actions (24m10s).
• Returning to the origins and rewriting the vision in capital letters allowed for clear communication and sharing with others (24m18s).