>> Narrator: Live from San Francisco, it's TheCUBE. Covering Samsung Developer Conference 2017 brought to you by Samsung. (techno music) >> Hello there and welcome to the special exclusive coverage of Samsung Developer Conference 2017 here at the Moscone West in San Francisco, TheCUBE's coverage. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media and co-host of TheCUBE. We're here with Leah Hunter: author, thought leader, covers technology design, women in tech, a variety of things author at O'Reilly's Safari Books, Fast Company, Forbes, among a lot of other things you've done. Welcome to TheCUBE conversation here at the Samsung Developer Conference. >> Thank you. I appreciate it. >> So, Samsung obviously is tied with Google. We saw Google onstage. The story we're seeing here emerging is the edge of the network of mobile devices. That means the humans involved. That means the consumer and the technology are intersecting. This has been a big part of TheCUBE coverage, we've been looking at this for a while. We were just in China talking with Alibaba Cloud and the design ethos culture. Not just creating user experience, that's been out for a while, but it's not about speeds and feeds anymore. It's about enabling human interactions, we're seeing some bad stuff now. The fake news, all that bad behavior, but now, all the data's out there. This is a big part of the developer design now coming forward. What's your thoughts? >> Well, there are two ways that I see that playing out really powerfully and that it can play out powerfully. One, ethnography and social science is getting embedded into what people are creating now and I'm thrilled to see that, because we're at the beginning of a lot of new technologies, augmented reality is one of my specializations, and we're, you know, sure, it's been around for 60 years if you're counting that way, 15 really deeply, but we're just at the cusp of it really taking hold for consumers. And there's this opportunity for anyone developing AR specifically to build social science ethnography user research into their team to create things in a way that is, like, start as you mean to go on. We can be wise about what our future world looks like. And the second thing is around art. You know, when I came here and I sat down, you mentioned at Alibaba there had just been a conversation about art. Well, in my latest book I interviewed someone who is an artist. His name is Alex Mayhew, he did a bunch of work with Peter Gabriel, he's a digital artist who just happened to slide into technology. And because his background is in something entirely different, he approaches AR in a really different way. He just did something for an art museum in Ontario that's really fantastic and worth checking out. You can actually look up the exhibit. It's called ReBlink. I'm going to write about it, but it's there now. >> Well, you've been covering technology many ways, now you're onto AR, and also you're seeing the front range if you will of these new concepts. But before you get it there, define what ethnography is for the folks that might not know what it is. (laughs) >> Thank you. I forget, okay, so I define ethnography as kind of like seeing the world like a five year old. There's an author that I love, her name is Keri Smith. She writes children's books. I found the first copy of this at the Teat Museum. It's called How to be a Life Artist. But her books are all about close observation, collecting everything, paying attention to the world, and finding everything interesting. Being curious in the same way you do when you're a five year old. Well, that's essentially what an ethnographer does in a business context. They observe, they interview people, they go around and collect data the same way that anyone who's on the data side is doing it with numbers. They do it with quotes and observation and pictures and then aggregate that into a story. >> That brings up a great conversation we're seeing here at the Samsung conference as a trend, a mega trend if you will, and that is the blending of analog and digital. Or, they say, physical to digital. Whatever they want to call it. Internet of things is the tech buzzword, >> (Leah) Yeah >> Internet of things being the senses on devices, or wearables, or things of that nature. That is defined as the edge of the network. This is the big wave that's forcing things to be different at the tech level. So this is where this blending comes in. It's the consumerization of tech. This is a big part of these consumer companies who have to kind of get their act together on cloud computing, and a lot of tech detail. So it's coming down from the edge, the infrastructures being redefined, or replatformed as we say. How do you view that, and what does your data show for you around how companies are reacting, what are the consumer expectations? >> Well, I'm going to speak to what I'm seeing in the world because I approach the world like an ethnographer. I wander around, and I collect interesting bits of things, kind of like a magpie. >> (John) Yeah. >> One thing that I saw this week, or I saw two things that were very interesting. I was just in New York, and I walked past an area where it was branded Amazon, but it kind of looked like a carnival. And I was like, what is going on here? And basically, Amazon is doing pop-ups, I believe they said in 18 cities, they just started in New York, but it's a pop-up where you can text in, and you can buy an item on Amazon that you can't get anywhere else. In this instance it was a Nintendo. You go and you pick it up in this physical space that kind of operates like a carnival and has circusy lights and beautiful trucks and whatever. But I thought that that was the coolest blend, and they also gave me their marketing materials that kind of looked like a ticket to a carnival. But I liked that, because it was a new way a digital focused company is operating in the physical world, to your point. It's a new way of blending those. And Amazon doesn't necessarily have to do it. It's just smart marketing. But it also shows the way that companies are pushing from the internet into the physical world. Now that's also happening in reverse. There's a company I really like called Shimmy that basically uses Kinect sensors to measure your body and make custom-made swimsuits for women. They're using that digital information and they're sort of, like, pushing it, so, yeah. >> Yeah, this is a big thing, I mean, this is about reimagining the future. And I think developers, this is a developer conference, so they tried out all the shiny new toys, Bixby, which is personalization now, IOT, which is kind of a geeky message, but ultimately the developers and the ecosystem partners of Samsung have to create the future together. So the question for you is around how you see the ecosystems developing. I see developers learning more about the real world. Less being behind the wall, if you will. Being the super geeks coding away. You're seeing developers on the front lines. And I think that's super important. I do want to get it noted here that you got a book coming out. >> Yes. >> So tell us what you're working on, cause it's going to ship in December? >> Yeah, I... >> What is the book about? I mean, obviously it's chroniclizing this new wave. What is the book about? Tell us a little bit about the book you're writing. >> So I wrote a book, my last book was about industrial augmented reality specifically, and it was sponsored by PTC, so you can actually go and find it for free. They wanted something that would work around industrial AR, and I wrote it in editorial independence so it is truly my perspective, but what was interesting about that at the time I wrote it, I discovered industrial AR was the most powerful place to play, because there were real world examples of AR actually helping people. >> John: Yeah. >> Now, I've broadened that look to see okay, Goldman Sachs said that there's going to be all this growth. Are the areas that they're looking at, things like education, real estate, you know, construction, is there actually growth there? So it's a broad look at a AR. And it's on O'Reilly's Safari Books. >> John: Well, that's interesting. One of the things that's interesting, you know, I've seen many waves myself, I've been through a bunch of cycles. It used to be the consumers that would lead the trends. But you're bringing up an interesting point around AI, augmented reality, even virtual reality. The innovations coming from the enterprise side. So, industrial IOT is really hot right now cause people are connecting physical plant and equipment. You see drones and it's mostly about industrial, AR's industrial because the use cases are so obvious. >> That's right. >> Not necessarily the consumer side has it yet. So it's almost flipped the entire world around. >> But, with, you know, Pokemon Go, that did sort of give consumers the scent, a scent of, okay, this is what it is you know, with AR kit, it hasn't completely lived up to our expectations, but there has been a flurry of activity around people experimenting to see how it can be applied in a consumer way. And, frankly, you know, there are people like DHL who are starting to roll it out in a way that is somewhere between industrial use and consumer in a broad way. So it's moving there. It is nowhere near ready for it yet. >> Leah Hunter here. A thought leader, writer, author, and a new book coming out. I'll give you the final word. What are you up to? What are you going to do after this event? What's next for you? What's the next couple months look like? Obviously, you've got to jam hard on the book, get that done, what else you working on? >> (laughs) I'm an interesting person to ask that question. I produce a television show called Created Here. I'm flying to Austin after this to interview artists and musicians and shoot our next episode of the show. Then we're going to LA and then New York. >> And where are you based out of? >> Me? >> Yeah. >> San Francisco, New York, a little bit Paris, and some New Orleans. >> You're on the plane a lot. >> I am. I like my life. >> Well, you've got a great life, and obviously great work you're doing. Come by TheCUBE studio in Palo Alto, give us an update on what your findings are as you go get that new perspective of art, artistry, artisans are really going to be the craft, we believe that TheCUBE will be the future of intersecting with technology. More exclusive coverage here in Moscone West in San Francisco, this is the Cube's coverage of Samsung Developer Conference. We'll be right back with more coverage after this short break.