tonight on kqed newsroom, in a fierce fight for a northern california congressional seat, a democrat is making inroads on republican turf. we speak with democratic challenger, kermit jones. and it is being described as a virtual universe for work, like, and more, but what exactly is the metaverse, and how will it shape our lives in the year to come? our panel of experts offer their predictions. and, we venture into san francisco's past and tonight's edition of something beautiful. coming to you this friday,

october 21st, 2022, hello, and welcome to the show. this is kqed newsroom and i am priya david clemens. we begin tonight with a race in california's third congressional district , a mostly rural district that leans right. dr. kermit jones, a democrat, is running against republican kevin kiley, who is currently a state assembly member. verifying for a seat in the u.s. health house of representatives. there district stretches from plumas county, through sacramento suburbs, and into parts of el dorado county. kevin kiley declined to join us tonight. you are a medical doctor and somehow you decided you were going to leave that behind and run for political office. why? >> i think the biggest thing i think about in terms of my decision to run was in dition to being a medical doctor, i served in the medical military

and that opportunity i had to protect our values and constitution overseas and also represent us overseas is one of the reasons i tried to do that type of representation again in this position. i think there are a lot of people in our district who are not getting a fair shot and we have a lot of things that are really important on the ballot right now. we have our democracy on the ballot and we have women's access to reproductive health on the ballot and we have healthcare on the ballot. when i think of all the people i was proud to serve and protect as a member of the armed services with my two deployments to iraq, i look at this is another opportunity to do that if they give me that opportunity. >> why do you think your district needs you? >> i have the experience and leadership that a lot of our politicians do not have. i think people right now are ready to get beyond partisanship. they are tired of the games.

they are tired of looking at a party as one person and are tired of people saying they're going to do something then do something else. my record as a physician, i have treated over 20,000 patients. i wanted to be a doctor since i was eight, and then also i have that record of leadership. to be honest, we did not always agree when i was in the military, but we got the job done. we came together as democrats, republicans, and independence, and that is what we did. i think people are oking for that type of commitment in this position, as well. i tell people in the district, if they give me the honor of serving again, i will represent them regardless of what they call themselves and regardless of whether they voted for me or not. >> the district you're talking about your dazzling conservtive and if you're talking about not being party or beholden to any particular party, tell me about some of the ways in which you feel your policies reach across the aisle. >> i focus on those things that actually affect people's lives.

just to give you an example, when was the last time you hurt your physician ask your political affiliation when you came to see him or her. are over. >> exactly. that is not what the hippocratic oath is about. i focus on those things like a federal fire insurance plan. we have people in our district paying thousands of dollars for fire insurance. we have programs at the state level that are going to make it so that people can pay less, but we need to do it so we have tax rebates so people can actually harden their homes. i care about issues like crime in our district, as well. i have been endorsed by the police officers union. i just secured the endorsement of the head law enforcement in our state, the attorney general. these are things i think people trust veterans that know the importance of service to do this, and that is why i am going to focus on issues that affect everyone regardless of clinical affiliation. >> some of the apps that are for and against you said you

would defend the police. does that accord with your vews? >> here is my personal opinion on it. people should run ads and they should do messaging that gives people the truth to vote on. my oonent is not doing that. he had an opportunity to come here today and straighten the record, and he decided not to. i think we should improve the ability for people to go to police academies. we can get good people in law enforcement. that is what i've heard from some of the sheriffs and i think people are looking for candidates that actually do what they say. úthey don't do o and then do something completely different. >> let's go back to what you're saying about police funding. there is a real concern right now for voters across the state in terms of crime and crime rates, what is happening here with open-air drug dealing, for example. what is your stance on how legislator should support police officers, police

presence versus changing the way policing has happened over many years. what actions would you take? >> some of the things i think we need to focus on is making sure that law enforcement has the tools it needs to get the job done. there waan election in san francisco recently when people were not happy with the district attorney here and the way things were being done. those tools meet making it so that police can communicate with the communities they police. we make sure if they have body cameras that we give them federal funding for that and we respect them for the job they are doing. i was talking to you prior to the camera turning on and when i look at the tv during 9/11, i saw a lot of first responders and law enforcement, police officers, firemen and women going to the twin towers and never coming back out. i think that was a period in which we were together as a country. w focused on the things that matter and if we get back to

that point in which we realize law enforcement is here to help us, we work together to keep ourselves safe, then i think we will be in a better place and those are the types of policies that someone could expect if i am elected to congress. >> another concern you have mentioned briefly is fire prevention and fire insurance. tell us about the state of fire preparedness? >> it is not as good as it could be. we have a lot of fire safe councils in our district are doing everything they can. i have written some operas about this. i had a tele town all last week where we talked about the factory you have people who know what the right thing is. if people can create the defensible space, if the federal government will actually do its jobs in terms of fuel reduction, that it lowers the risk, sometimes up to 40% and that is why i tell people i'm not beholden to any

party. i'm not a politician so i'm just as comfortable pushing back or holding the biden administration accountable as i would any other republican that is running for office or is in office. >> i heard you say you do not actually think president biden's decision to school loans is when you would've been on board with. >> i wouldn't have. it is not that i don't sympathize with people struggling with studentloans. i went into the military after 9/11, which did pay for half of my med school and i understood that i owed them five years of active duty. i was proud to serve. we have a lot of other people that are struggling to find jobs or are working in jobs where they cannot go to college, so i think it's more of an equity issue. we have on our website a plan called the citizen scholars program in which i think people can trade community service to pay for school or pay for other types of things because we need that. the military is t for everyone but i want us to be together as a community and people to feel as if we are

being fair when we're doing things like loan forgiveness. >> you had a very comfortable life working as a doctor. you like to hike. you had an eight-year-old child. there are plenty of other things you could be doing with your time. why choose to step into this fray, which is fractured, hard, slings and arrows everywhere. why do this? >> going to iraq was hard. being in service was hard but i was proud to do that and i would be proud to this. i've been a doctor for about 18 years, seen over 20,000 patient . i talk about the story how one of those patients i fought for was my mom. she was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer even though she never smoked and i felt that your right that i could be a doctor for the next 20 years of my career but i would not be doing for my patients what i feel like i could do at the federal level. i think we need precht to sugars and congress. when i look at some of the bills that come out of congress with respect to healthcare or the assembly, i'm heart broken.

like i said, my opponent was on the record voting for things that could lower the cost of pharmaceuticals in our district . he was on the record as saying he would have voted against capping the cost of medicare medicines, and i was just going to say, and capping the cost of cancer medicines, which is very personal to me. >> dr. kermit jones, thank you for your time here today. >> thank you. i appreciate it. >> turn now to the metaverse and you have likely heard the term which refers to a collection of 3-d digital worlds and augmented reality in which we can connect with others to shop, work, create, and play games. if you have seen the sci-fi movie ready player one, you can imagine a bit of what the metaverse might be like, but it is still forming, so does anyone really know?

tech giants are betting big that it will change our lives forever. just look at facebook changing its name to mehta, and analysts say that metaverse instry is expected to boom by hundreds of volumes of dollars over the next decade, but building out a digital universe is far from certain. there are major obstacles to overcome from creation to adoption. tonight we are talking with several people engaged with this emerging technology. sami khan is the ceo and founder of a virtual platform called atlas earth. rachel mets is a senior writer coring virtual intelligence. thank you all for joining us. >> i feel like the more i learn about the metaverse frankly the more concerned i am about it. i used to think it was putting on goggles like this and then you would go into sort of a virtual disk to digital simulation and

interact with others there but it sounds like it's broader than that. >> yes, i think it kind of depends on what definition people want. úthere is the sci-fi concept of a metaverse and in my mind, that is much more into virtual reality and going different places with a headset on your head but also being able to physically be moving around at the same time in going from one place to another in vr. i think what we are seeing now is a lot of companies working on expanding that concept to include augmented reality, which could be through glasses, it could be through your phone and other types of screens, as well. screens that we have today like a lap stop screen for instance, to expand the way we use computers and tech knowledge he to all sorts of places in our lives. >> are we merging with technology here? are we all connecting and becoming the board? what is this about? >> i think there is a lot

happening and it really comes down to what the end customer wants so everybody has a different taste of the different benefit that they get that we believe in enhancing people's real-world experience. for us it is holding a digital layer on top of the real world. we are not the only ones doing that. nvidia is doing that to teach self driving cars how to drive better. when we look at zuckerberg and mehta, they are doing it in what i and would say is more akin to the ready player e sensory deprivation tank with their glasses on, but i think everybody is a little bit different. >> i agree. there would be no one solution that suits all. different applications would have a different portions of different reality or augmented application. >> and we are in the very different proto-days.

people are creating content for these virtual worlds in a way we have not seen before so let's get into a little bit of what you're doing. you seem to be able to convince people to buy fake land in fake worlds. why do they do that? >> at the surface it sounds far- fetched, but what we have done is give people an entry point that is accessible both of the literal and figurative terms. literally everybody has a phone in the pocket. 600 people have downloaded games like pokc basically a game built on the real world so when we introduced atlas earth and said you could buy a virtual representation of your house or where you work or where you play, these are places where people have emotional attachments and they are so easy to do when the phone is in your pocket.

with atlas earth, we are validating people's locations based on your phones location, and it is up to the end customer to on that parcel of land. the second thing we have done is gamified it . we don't actually lead with the term, metaverse. we're just letting people buy the land. austin, texas is my current place of residence. if you own the most land there, you can become mayor of austin. this type of thing is what i think is leading people psychology and why they want to adopt her platform. there is more than just i am here to buy land because land is what is valuable. we are moving it to more of a gamified process where people are enhancing their experience

by doing all these other things on top of the land. >> when they are moving into these virtual worlds, they are buying fashion. there buying virtual skins so they can look different. this is your world in which you are selling fashion online. you have worked for some big brands. i remember hearing that there was a gucci handbag that sold for more, for $4000, in the virtual world that its real- life counterpart. >> fashion and the metaverse is not that much different from fashion in real life. it's about having an image of self and having a dream or aspiration. in the metaverse it is the same thing. dressing up your extension of yourself. we're still doing the same thing of p ration and image and self expression. >> okay. we're talking a little bit about the games, the fashion.

rachel, help us broaden this out to the other applications you are seeing out there for these emerging technologies? >> there is a lot of interesting uses out there if we can stick with a lot of the vr side of things, more of the immersive side of the screen and wearing a headset. i think medical applications is one people have been researching for a really long time. there is interesting research and how it can really capture your attention during procedures. wound care kind of stuff, both with adults and children, that is one i have talked to people about. >> you are talking about for the patients. i always thought it was being used in medical settings for doctors to learn how to do procedures. >> yes, that is an additional way it could be used and that would be more of an augmented ú you could do certain simulations in vr. i coule how that would be useful to people and i think some people are working on that.

we could use a hollow lens type headset for example to augment what you're seeing in front of you. that is certainly an idea that has been floated. i don't know how it will translate to in operating rooms , but that is just one example. >> there have been for many years now, military applications. u.s. space forces using this technology now on education has been another area. >> there are a couple who have sought out doing a.d.d. for children, going to the metaverse to train them to put their headset on for a few minutes a day and then they get feedback to help children with a..d.

alternative to drugs. >> interesting. and you are using it as well for activism. >> yes. we want to open up the web tree and activism, to explore that portion, and fashion. like i mentioned earlier, self- expression. can we use metaverse fashion to express our social views? >> tell us specifically about this women's march you have coming up. >> we are organizing the first ever women's rights march in the metaverse for november 1st. this is to drive awareness and to engage younger people and traditionally underrepresented people who cannot access the actual march. >> it sounds like there is not just -- it is not just the work you are doing in terms of activism. we are also seeing out of ukraine that people are protesting through these virtual worlds and ways to start to come together.

talk to us about who the people are who are coming into this new world. are these all very far bleeding edge sort of adopters? are those of all here who are a little slower on the tech front going to take a while to come? >> it is a range. over the years as headsets of gotten better and easier to buy, you've gotten more and more people thinking no, this might be cool. mybe i can use it with my kids. it has become less of a risk to buy these headsets, especially as meta has driven the prices down like with the quest two, which you have right in front of you there, so a pretty affordable headset at this point. >> this is about a four or $500 headset and matt has just come out with a new one they announced last week for about $1500. that is more clearly aimed at business users , which is going

to be like a whole other thing they're hoping to get people interested in. i guess we will have to see how that goes. >> i think it is interesting with the release of these kind of hardware is, you know, one of my favorite presentations of new hardware's was the iphone presentation by steve jobs in 2007 where he said i'm bringing you three new products. a product that can help you listen to music, a product that úcan help you make phone calls and and internet surfing product, right? and then he kept saying that and he was like do you get it? it's actually one product. it's called the iphone i think what apple and steve jobs did really well at that time was steering people toward the direction of usage. my fear and concern with a $1500 headset is right now it feels very much like i've built the world's most expensive speedboat and i've put you in the middle of the world's largest ocean and basically there is no land in sight in any direction and so you're kind of like, here is this thing to use, and everywhere i look, people are saying to what

end. what is the point? i thought one case that was microsoft teams, but are we really going to spend $600 to be in a virtual teams meeting versus a flatscreen video call teams meeting and i think these are the questions that experts in the state need to ask. what is the average american or average person going to do? i have to see $1600 worth of value or more than that. my dad is an economist of what they will say is if the value does not exceed the cost i'm not going to do it. for me, that is really the?. we've built for each parcel of land is 900 square feet and built on top of the real world because you have a psychological relationship with it. you can play games to earn free land as you play the games.

the barrier to entry is so low. my concern, and i hope that meta an these other companies highly consider , apple is building an ecosystem where does like look at this new ui. it is not with hard keyboards so developers can use a keyboard specific to their product. they can use an internet camera and internet connectivity and it's really steered technology to say i see what you've built now let me build on top of it. >> there isa question you really have, rachel, about privacy. >> yes, that is definitely something people are concerned about. when you are using these devices, what data about me is being gathered? how is it being used? with the new headset, the quest pro, they can do i tracking and also some facial feature tracking and meta has tried to get ahead of concerns by being relly clear about how they are

collecting data on the device and how you can turn it on or off pretty easily, and it is an opt in process. you can see that meta is striving toward fashion is one of the first use cases, high- end fashion like gucci and valencia are jumping on board in building high-end luxury views, and this could be an abuse case. at the ohzone inc., what we do is empower everyday brands to go in scale into the metaverse by transforming the physical fashion. >> all of these sessions can and are being used for good and for evil. rachel, you have been a silicon valley tech reporter for 20 years. give us some perspective on these emerging technologies.

>> vr and ar and these associated technologies have been in development for a long time but they are still pretty nascent, and i think that companies need to keep in mind that they still have to help consumers understand where they want to use them in the first place. why should i want to put something on my face for instance? my glasses? it's obvious. they help me see. they help me drive. but the headset is a little harder. there could be a lot of issues with using these technologies. sometimes people are harassing other people on the avatars. there is a lot to consider when companies are trying to get companies to use these. >> thank you for being here. >> thank you for having us. >> now let's take a journey in time in another direction. tonight, something beautiful features footage from some of the city's famed spots from th

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>> those images look like a film set. i kind of expected marilyn monroe or gene kelly to start walking dwn the street. can you believe that was 70 years ago? talk about time flying. that is the end of our show tonight. you can find kqed newsroom online arm or on twitter. thank you for joining us. we will see you back here next friday night. have a great weekend.

geoff: good evening. i'm geoff bennett. tonight on “pbs news weekend,” countdown to the midterms -- with a little over two weeks until the election, we get the latest on some key races for governor and senate that could help tip the balance of power. then, ethiopia in crisis -- with peace talks set to begin tomorrow, we look at the fighting in tigray. and a closer look at how the role of women on screen and behind the camera is shaping the hbo hit series "house of the dragon." >> there is a reason to revisit this world of these characters and to really closely examine how women are treated in this society and how those systems either fail them or prop them up, depending on how the power is swinging. geoff: all that and the day's headlines on tonight's "pbs news