President biden is visit to Ground Zero in new york. He calls to the for the country to come together. This is the sun rising over the 9 11 memorial in new york. Memorial events for the british victims are taking place in london, with the uk prime Minister Boris Johnson insisting people refuse to live In Permanent Fear of the terrorists. We can now say with the perspective of 20 years that they failed to shake our belief in freedom and democracy. They failed to drive our nations apart. In other news, lawyers for the woman whos accused Prince Andrew of sexual abuse, claim theyve successfully served him with legal papers. Now on Bbc News, heres click. This week were putting on our next gen specs, strapping on our Brain Controls and entering the metaverse. Just a normal day in the office, really. Hey, welcome to click. Let me hit you straightaway with a buzzword that you might� ve heard being thrown around recently. Are you ready for a buzzword . Always ready. The metaverse. What you think of the idea . Mark Zuckerbergs Vision that it wont be long before we are working, playing and living in this whole virtual universe. It reminds me of Second Life from about 15 years ago, remember that . I do, i do. This was an early realisation of the Sci Fi Idea that has been around for as long as i can remember. But the Tech Wasnt up to it, then. No, it wasnt. But of course, things have moved along. We look a lot better online than we used to. I guess it balances out the ageing bit but the last 18 months have felt a bit like living in a virtual world, so i have got mixed feelings about this because is it actually the last thing that people want right now . Or could it potentially help with some of the isolation and other challenges . Well, zuckerberg seems to think we are ready. Hes talking about facebook evolving from a social Media Company into a metaverse company, which begs the question, what are you on about, mark . Well, here with metaverse 101, Marc Cieslak invites you to enroll in click� s meta versity. What do Pop Star Ariana grande, Facebook Ceo Mark suckerberg Facebook Ceo Mark zuckerberg and Epic Games ceo tim Sweeney And Video games all have in common . They have all recently been cited as heralds of the metaverse. The metaverse has been described as what comes after the internet. In its simplest terms, its a social hardware users can interact with Each Other as avatars across a host of digital worlds. Is any of this starting to sound familiar . A lot of companies are talking about creating a metaverse in that they want to become a platform where people can exist at all times. They want to create social spaces where people can come and hang out with their friends, they can watch movies, they can do everything that they would do in normal life but within that platform. Almost like the movie ready player one, in a way. This is the oasis. Its a place where the limits of reality are your own imagination. Stephen spielbergs 2018 adaptation of ernest cline� s novel of the same name tells the tale of a downtrodden Teen Hero who escapes the dystopian sprawl of a near Future America by spending as much time as possible online in a multiplayer virtual world. A place which mashes up characters and Pop Culture themes from movies, comics and games. It was another Sci Fi Novel that coined the phrase metaverse, though neal stephenson� s 1992 book snow crash, which also has a hero whos got a crummy life who escapes into a virtual world, the metaverse. Hollywood Style Vr does sort of exist today, championed by an australian outfit called zero latency. The closest we have to free roaming vr is this spatial Virtual Reality Set Up from a company called meetspacevr. I have a backpack here which contains a computer, a Vr Headset and this rifle, which has controllers in it. The headset looks for markers on the floor to figure out where it is in three dimensional space. Here, im solving puzzles in a mind bending aztec temple. I dont have any sensation that the floor is moving, but my Brain Kind of thinks that it is. Gunfire. I can sample Shooting Stuff in the Vr Version of Blockbuster Action Franchise far cry. That was intense with the headset and headphones on i am completely immersed in these virtual experiences. Part of the reason were hearing so much about the metaverse is because technology like this now exists. Richard was there at the Very Dawn Of Multiplayer Experiences in 1978. He was one of the brains behind the worlds first multiplayer virtual world, the Text Adventure multi user dungeon, or mud. Now a professor of Computer Game Design at the university of essex, he believes there is a specific set of rules which define the idea of the metaverse. Ok, so the metaverse is essentially a marketing concept. We have universes which are self contained realities, then we have multi verses, which are realities that you can move between, so they are effectively the same reality. And then we have a metaverse, which is all one reality but it has got a whole bunch of other ones interconnected. So, as an example, something like World Of Warcraft is a universe, you cant take anything into or out of World Of Warcraft. It is self contained. Something like roblox, or roe blox, however you want to pronounce it, is a multi verse in that your character can move from one interior world to another interior world. The metaverse, however, means that you can move from one universe to another universe, so you can, in theory, have a character in a metaverse which would move from World Of Warcraft to Eve Online final fantasy 1a. Of warcraft to Eve Online to final fantasy 1a. That is the theory. Whether it will work in practice is another matter. You need a pretty big space to experience vr as elaborately as this but perhaps the metaverse will be experienced in different ways. Some would argue that the first seeds of the metaverse are being sown in contemporary Video Games. Earlier this summer Ariana Grande became the latest performer to put on a series of virtual concerts inside the popular online multiplayer game fortnite. So Epic Games getting such high quality acts is such a legitimising thing. It is really saying to the industry and beyond that that fortnite is notjust a game. It is a place for people to come together and the importance of that is, you know, drawing in these acts that are sort of outside the usual Gaming Industry like Ariana Grande. Grandejoins a long list of artists to play a gig in the game, including the likes of Djs Diplo and marshmello. Uk band easy life, and us hiphop artist travis scott. But so far Ariana Grande is probably the biggest and most mainstream act to perform in the game. So i think the metaverse is something thats going to get us closer to simulation and shared understandings with Each Other in a virtual space, like never before. And i think that is something that we are at the very beginning of. I know it has become a word that has become very popular lately. Were still defining it and that is pretty exciting. I think everybody� s going to put their own take on it. Games give us a glimpse of what a potential metaverse might look like but there is a bigger question driving the recent interest in this idea. And that is who or what will have control over the platform . Imagine back in the day when we had the internet, there were companies vying to be the internet. There were about five of them in america. Information providers, they call themselves. Ultimately it didnt work. They had to accept that the internet was stand alone platforms all communicating, but the metaverse, that is another thing entirely because if you control the platform then you control all that goes on within it. So if everybody did pile into roblox and they did all build all their worlds in roblox, then roblox would own the metaverse. So obviously the likes of Google And Microsoft would not like that to happen. They would like to be the ones who own it. What we experienced over the last five years or so, in particular during the pandemic, is a recognition of the behaviours that are now here. Virtual words are common, they are popular. They are diverse. We are now at that part where the metaverse starts to feel very real. Even if its fruition remains distant. Fortunes rise and fall in the world of technology. Companies taking those first steps down the long road to creating the metaverse might not even be around when and if the idea becomes reality. Come on. Where are you at . Hello. I hope youre having a good Week And Welcome to the week in tech. It is the Week Twitter is testing a soft Blocking Feature which removes followers without letting them know. Apple wallet added capability to store drivers licenses us states. Apple wallet added capability to store drivers in some us states. And spotify rolled out blend, which selects songs to match two peoples tastes in music at the same time. El salvador has made Cryptocurrency Bitcoin legal tender amid protests and technical glitches. The salvadoran government says using bitcoin could save fees on money sent from abroad but some are worried about cryptocurrency� s Stability And Ease of adoption. This was illustrated on the day as bitcoin� S Price at one point crashed by 20 . Two robots have been deployed in singapore to discourage poor social behaviour. The robots use cameras to detect people smoking in prohibited areas, flouting covid measures or parking bikes improperly. And finally, mit turned on a massive high temperature Superconducting Magnet called spark as part of its research into fusion power. With a Field Strength of 20 tesla you are looking at the most powerful Magnetic Field of its kind ever created on earth. The project, due for completion in 2025, aims to pave the way for carbon free power generation. I bet the engineers find this project very attractive. These are the first facebook glasses, a partnership with the Luxury Eyewear Brand Ray Ban. Its no secret that facebook has been working on Augmented Reality Glasses that can project images into your eyes, and these glasses. Do none of that. These are basicallyjust a pair of glasses with cameras in. They are actually very similar to the Snapchat Spectacles that were released in 2016, although every time i mentioned that to facebook they insisted this is a very different product. To use them you press the button to take a video, press and hold to take a photo and you can also use voice commands like, hey, facebook, take a video. There are also built in speakers so you can use them to listen to music or make phone calls, though when i tried that on the noisy high street, they were nowhere near loud enough to be remotely useful. So im going to focus on the cameras. The idea behind these is that you can leave your phone in your bag but still have a way to capture little moments hands free as and when they arise and i quite like that as a concept so taking it at Face Value i tried them out over the weekend. I met up with some friends, i went to a concert, i took loads of footage. And then when i came to download it to my phone, the glasses had corrupted and all the footage was lost. So youre not getting any of that. Instead, heres my last minute Back Up Option of meeting a friend for coffee in the park. The specs record these square videos and nothing is automatically posted to facebook or livestreamd. Instead, you download the clips at The End of the day and you can post them wherever you like. Facebook says one Use Case is if you have children, and i can see that being fairly useful because you can put your phone away but still capture some nice moments. I took a video of this dog taking a swim and i think it looks pretty good. Heres the same moment captured on my smartphone and i think the Smartphone Version looks better, but obviously you have a greater selection of lenses on there and probably a bigger sensor. I think the Camera Glasses look ok and if that was the only footage you had, thats better than no footage. Now, i did feel a bit silly wearing these sunglasses indoors to take a video but they do do a version with clear lenses, sunglasses and ones that transition between both. A lot of people will have questions about privacy and i can see why theyve branded these Ray Ban stories rather than facebook glasses or insta specs. Ultimately, if somebody is inclined to take hidden Camera Footage in a changing room, they can do that with a phone already. They dont need to spend 300 on a pair of glasses. But even so, i thought they might be a bit more obvious when recording video because they dojust look like an ordinary pair of Ray Bans. There is an led that lights up when youre recording but maybe its too subtle, my housemates thought it was just a reflection on the glasses. It could have been a Red Flashing Recording light, and in comparison the snapchat specs were a lot more obvious when recording. So i called facebook� s head of vr to ask him about privacy. I think we deal with this today. We have got Mobile Phones that people all have cameras on them. And so there is a degree to which our goal is to be, you know, at least more overt than what people are doing today with their phones and i think we have achieved that goal. I mean, if you have your phone out you could be taking pictures with really no way for bystanders to know that youre doing that and people known to have their phones out. So i think the glasses are quite a bit more overt than that. You have the led, an Audio Sound and i have to take an explicit action, either i move my hand on my Temple And Press the button or have to use my voice to say, take a picture. So i think there is a lot more opportunity is really for bystanders to know and this Isnt Something we left to chance. We knew this was one of the most important thing is to get right. One thing that makes me feel really old is that they say when you ask people our age take a photo, and we gesture like this and if you ask teenagers, they go like this. They think youre going to bring back this, going full circle thats right. Absolutely. There has been a lot of talk about facebook bringing out full Augmented Reality Glasses with a display in them. Is this just a sort of stopgap to get people used to the idea of everybody wearing Camera Glasses . Yes, you have nailed it. For us, even going back a year we were talking about previous projects that we have had and we do have Ar Glasses in the pipeline. We really want to have a conversation, a dialogue with consumers around the world on, yeah, what are the standards and expectations they have for the types of computers that we are going to wear. In the future. And this is really our first foray into putting something on someone� s face and were really excited about it and seeing how people react to it. I think it is a great product and i have been using it myself but it is the first in a series of products that give people more functionality and more capability to prepare the glasses. Through a pair of glasses. That was chris talking to facebook. I really was expecting those to be Augmented Reality Glasses. It is not like that technology doesnt exist. There are a smart Swimming Goggles that give you real time data under water. I guess the tech is not quite compact enough to fit inside normal glass quite yet. But maybe one day they will be good enough to interact with the Metaverse And Speaking of interacting, weve been trying a whole new way of controlling things with your mind. So here i am with a strange band strapped to my head looking very proud of myself for switching on a toy lightsaber. But, so what . Well, whilst it looks like a poor mans comic con, i am actually here to experience the future of tech. It is all part of a new industry that wants technology to interface with our brains. What could go wrong . But whilst im playing with star wars toys, Elon Musk is planning to create superhumans by simply surgically implanting chips in their brains. Theyve already released Footage Of A Monkey playing a Video Game with its mind and a real time link to the Neural Activity picked up from a chip implanted in a pigs brain. You dont need Brain Implants to control machines. Headsets like this let you control devices just by concentrating on them so all you need to do is strap on some headgear and use the power of your mind. In principle, it is quite straightforward. The Eeg Sensors on this Headset Measure electrical signals in your brain, deciphering two mental states. Your focus or calmness. Once you reach a threshold for either, an action is triggered. All right, fan, switch on. Hey i switched on the fan. It is like technology telekinesis, isnt it . That is amazing. Yes, of course, we get to a point where we can say like, turn the lights off or on. But to me that has never been what is exciting. By focusing on simply moving things with the mind i think we take away from the real power of the technology which is being able to learn about our mind, being able to strengthen our mental faculties rather than just being able to do things so that we have to do less. The number one benefit we can bring to society and youngsters and the next generation is consciousness of mind. We have achieved far greater than any technology from the previous generation. Much of the Brain Computer Research has traditionally been to help people with restricted mobility and the breakthroughs prove that this could be a game changer. But now there are a whole host of headgear based neurotech Companies Springing Up in the Consumer Space and one of those is a french Start Up who have created a headset that lets you Control Computer interfaces just by thinking about it. So really simply, this is an Eeg Sensor that sits at the back of your head. It measures the electrical activity in the visual cortex and detects what youre looking at. The visual cortex is the part of the brain that processes what we see. When youre looking at specific points on the screen the sensor detects that increase in visual concentration and communicates what button you want to push. A few demos show you whats possible. I can blow up Enemy Squares in games, and use my mind as a television remote control. But the simplest demo actually had the greatest impact. You are asked to enter a Pin Numberjust by focusing on the buttons to click, and the feeling of control is astonishing. Wow. Where i see it totally exploding is with the combination of ar. So, in a few years from now, we will have Ar Glasses like your glasses right now, they will have ar and they are going to allow you also to be in symbiosis, in immersion with the environment by basically linking your brain directly to the virtual contents and then you will be able to basically control anything virtual, anything augmented. Directly with your brain. I drafted in my Colleague Paul to get his thoughts. Go on, there we go. Yeah there we go. Are you actually doing this . Yeah, i think so, anyway. This is awesome and it turned out that the key takeaway was not put to the headset on too tightly. My head actually feels numb. I feel you cut off the blood supply. How . Ive got pins and needles in my scalp in terms of what this might offer people with restricted mobility who cant move, cant use their arms and need new ways to interface with technology then, look, potentially this is absolutely extraordinary. Does it need a bit of work . Yes. But im tempering that with the fact that Ijust Sat here and controlled things with my brain and thats pretty incredible. But despite some amazing applications, there could be a dark side to this technology. The problem comes when we dontjust measure the activity in the brain but we try to directly influence it. That means we could do things like read someone� s thoughts or change their Perception Reality or even make them act against their free will. My biggest worry is mental privacy. You can imagine using them for interrogation, for example. You ask a question and just by the image the person recalls they can figure out what the person is thinking. Technology companies have jumped into neurotech in a big way and it also means that they are very keen on getting their hands on neural data. And i think that should be protected. It may sound far fetched but Elon Musk is already working towards writing to the brain to augment Human Knowledge and this doctor had taken control of a mouse� s mind. Now he is campaigning for ethical frameworks and strict regulations. This type of technology is so powerful, this goes to the heart of what makes us human which is the human mind. This is the first time that the humanity has technology that enables you to directly tap into the mind in this regard that enables you to directly tap into the mind. This is no another little privacy issue. This is the mother of all privacy issues. This is your mental privacy. This is not going to work, is it . So whilst there a danger that our brains could be manipulated in the future, if my experience of Mind Control is anything to go by, we should be safe, at least for now. That was us. What a fascinating topic. Fascinating but frightening. I know. What do you think about it . What are your thoughts . Thank you. And that is it for this week. As ever, you can keep up with the team on Social Media and find us on youtube, instagram, facebook and twitter. Thanks for watching and well see you soon. Goodbye. Hello. For many of you after a pretty cloudy start to the day, the weather will cheer up later on with some sunny spells breaking through, and we have already seen some sunshine earlier today around North East England quite widely. But to the north of this, Northern Scotland, a different story. Extensive cloud here, some Mist And Fog patches and rain. That rain is due to an area of low pressure. The worst has cleared through the central belt, it should be dry here through the rest of the afternoon, but staying wet across parts of Northern Scotland, especially the North Highlands and probably orkney as well. Along with that it will continue to be murky with Mist And Fog patches around the coast and hills. To the south, england and wales, cloud breaking, sunny spells coming through, often quite a bit of cloud, mind you. Temperatures reaching a high of 23 and for many you it will feel a little on the humid side. Overnight, a Weather Front from Northern Scotland changes its mind and starts moving southward, rain returning to eastern areas of scotland, quite light and patchy, eventually reaching North East England by The End of the night. Elsewhere, a lot of cloud, a few mist and for patchy developing, the Odd Patch of Rain Or Drizzle across the hills and coasts of wales and probably the peaks and pennines as well. Sunday, Pressure Building behind this Weather Front, starting to get northerly winds feeding in, it will feel cooler and fresher across the northern half of the uk. Some of this light and patchy rain first thing, eastern scotland, North East England. Otherwise, a largely dry start to the day save an Odd Spot of drizzle falling from the cloud sheet. Later, thicker cloud working into wales, bringing more persistent rain. A fresher day across northern areas. Temperatures 13 in aberdeen, 15 for newcastle, but still quite humid across the far south, where temperatures will continue to run into the Low 20s in the warmest spots. Monday, our area of High Pressure is still with us. Weak Weather Front still with us, as well. This rain is most likely to be affecting parts of wales and perhaps the midlands, eastern england probably staying dry with breaks in the cloud and sunny spells, but the best of the dry Weather And Sunshine will be across scotland and Northern Ireland and the far north of england. Temperatures for the most part into the high teens. The warmest spots given some breaks could reach the Low 20s. Thats your weather. Youre watching a Bbc News special. Im Laura Trevelyan live in new york, where, as dawn breaks, the world remembers the 2,977 people who lost their lives 20 years ago in the 9 11 terror attacks. President biden will shortly lead a ceremony at the site where the World Trade centers Twin Towers once stood. Speaking earlier he called for the country to come together. At our most vulnerable, in the Push And Pull of what makes us human, 3113 Fire Fighters died on 9 11 as they battled flames