Chapter 3: The Phone App
Location: Outside of White Hall, WVU, Morgantown, WV
"Are you sure you want to grab coffee before your lecture? I'm not sure we'll have the time to get the good stuff and make it back." As someone who always tries to be early for things, the tight timeline added an extra layer to my new anxiety.
Julian chuckled. "Marcus said you could be a bit obsessive when it comes to being on time."
I narrowed my eyes at that comment. "I thought you said Marc had told you almost nothing about me."
"Nothing important," he said, trying to show off his charming smile. "I was really hoping to get you to relax a little. You seemed…well, scared of me."
"I see," I said with a sigh. "That's not entirely wrong," I confessed, feeling my face start to radiate with heat. "But in this case, I wanted to be a little early because," I said as I raised my eyebrows in a question. "I would like to sit in on your lecture?"
"Oh. Now I am the one feeling nervous," he stated with a light chuckle.
"I honestly don't know what you are lecturing about—especially to undergrads," I added sheepishly.
"If I said yes, would you be my assistant?"
"For the lecture?"
He nodded.
"That has less than a 1% probability," I said firmly.
Julian laughed. "I never imagined you would be so shy."
I scrunched my nose. "It's not that I'm shy. I mean, I am, but this has more to do with the fact that I rolled out of bed this morning thinking I was going to be behind a closed door all day with minimal social contact."
"You mean you're dressed well enough to escort a VIP around campus for a few days, but not enough to stand in front of some undergrads?"
"What do you mean 'a few days'?"
"You know, I think you're right," Julian said with a sly grin. "Let's go back in and make sure you get a good seat."
Location: G20 White Hall, WVU Morgantown
The large lecture theater seated 200 people in a steep wedge shape. At the front of the room, a flat area covered in a thin blue carpet and a mic'd solitary lectern created a designated speaker space. To the left was a sturdy, foldable table, usually reserved for a Teaching Assistant. But this morning it had four chairs aimed toward the lectern.
On the wall at the front of the room was a sliding puzzle of chalkboards and white boards with additional boards behind them such that up to six of the boards could be seen at any given time. Of course, there were also three mounted, overhead projectors that could be used individually or together.
And to the left of the wall of boards and behind the TA table, was a wooden door that led to an office area for professors and guest lecturers. It served as a "green room" of sorts, which I had seen a few times when I had been charged with fetching drinks for some of the past lecturers.
After entering the lecture hall at the highest point of the room, I moved to a standing-room-only area behind the top row. Julian gave me a challenging look then grabbed my hand and pulled. "No. That won't work for me."
He continued to bring me all the way to the front and lowest row, pointed at the center seat and said, "I expect you to be sitting there when I come out." Then he turned to go through the small door in the front corner of the room where I could hear him greeting someone as the door closed behind him.
What the hell was that? Did he just treat me like an unruly child? I really, really wanted to be incensed by his behavior, but I just couldn't bring myself to. Instead, I found that I was blushing.
The room filled quickly and, as expected, there were several people standing in the back and outer walls, while others sat on the sides of the steps. The 200-person lecture hall was probably hosting 300 people with even more crowded around the doors behind the top row.
Several times, I considered giving my seat to someone else, but I knew Julian wouldn't like it. Wait… what does it matter if he doesn't like it? It's not like he's going to punish me. I mean, would he? What would that even look like? As I thought about it, the loud chatter in the room faded into the background.
Then I saw a beautiful, older black woman come out of the door and step behind the lectern. She read a short bio on Julian in her soothing voice that became slightly pinched over the audio system. The people in the little room must have been able to monitor that AV, as well, because Julian didn't come out of the room until he was invited to speak, adding dramatic flare.
When he stepped into the room, there were audible gasps, whispers and a rising cacophony of audience noise. I wasn't sure if it was because they knew him or because he looked like he stepped off of a Cucinelli runway show for high-end, business-casual menswear. Regardless, he gave me a roguish smile that almost said "Good girl." But then I couldn't stop thinking about what would have happened if I wouldn't have been there.
As soon as he started speaking, the room quieted on its own.
"Good morning, everyone. Full disclosure, I came here to recruit someone for my R&D division. And the next thing I knew, I was asked to give a few lectures on a possible future built around the Internet of Things."
Julian propped himself up on the lectern, his eyes sweeping the room before inevitably settling on me for a fraction of a second. "But to talk about the future of IoT, we have to stop thinking about it as a collection of gadgets," he said, his voice carrying effortlessly even without leaning into the mic. "The future isn't about your toaster talking to your fridge. It's about the concept of Ubiquitous Sensing—of turning the entire world into a high-fidelity, synchronized map of information."
He stepped away from the lectern and walked toward the sliding whiteboards, grabbing a black marker. "Most of you think of a network as a way to move data from point A to point B. I want you to think of it as a scaffold. If every device in this room is synced to an atomic clock and yet they sometimes go out of sync by a millionth of a second, those discrepancies give us data. Even data that can be used as a type of sensor."
A student in the third row raised his hand, looking skeptical. "Mr. Vane, even with 6G, the latency and environmental noise make that level of precision impossible outside of a lab. You can't account for the 'unseen' variables in real-world noisy and messy environments."
"A fair point," Julian said. "Currently, that seems like an insurmountable hurdle… Which is why I prefaced that I was speaking on a possible future for IoT."
"And, I don't know about you," Julian continued. "But the most exciting part about the future is that someone in this very room could present a theory that seems crazy or fantastical—or even something inspired by a love for anime."
A wave of quiet laughter ebbed through the audience. My face, of course, was beat red. And I swear he looked at me with pure enjoyment.
"But that very inspiration may lead to an entirely new horizon that also seemed insurmountable at one time."
A student from the back of the room yelled, "Go Beyond Plus Ultra!" making every otaku in the room laugh.
I covered my eyes with my right hand, wishing I could crawl away unnoticed. So Julian decided to walk up to me and ask for my phone. I handed it to him almost immediately without a thought.
He held it up to show the object to the audience. "50 years ago, a mobile phone was referred to as a "bag phone." It was called that because it looked like a basic phone receiver attached to a battery in a bag about the size of airplane carry-on luggage."
He wiggled the phone in the air to draw attention to it. "Now, we call this a phone and…"
Julian paused and handed the phone back to me. "Would you mind unlocking this, Miss Patricks?" Julian asked before every eye in the room turned toward me.
I had disabled facial recognition out of security concerns. So I swallowed hard and put in my 16-character unlock code.
"Thank you. Now let's see what kind of photos she keeps on here."
I started to stand up. "Wow… they must be really naughty to get that kind of reaction. I'll have to look at those later," he said garnering more laughs from the students. "Okay…. Okay… let's see. Uhm… Lonna? Where is your phone icon?"
More snickers.
"It's under social apps," I said quietly.
"She said she keeps her phone icon in the social apps category, and it is… two screens down even in her social apps." He held it up again. "Remind me what we call these things?"
Several members of the audience answered "phone" as I watched him put mine in his pants pocket.
WTF? Is he holding my phone hostage so I won't take off after the lecture? I sunk lower in my seat.
Julian went on to give other examples and interact with the students in a brainstorming session. He encouraged the audience to think about other uses for current tech and what an upgraded version of that tech might be able to do. He even used data collected from audience members. Then he prompted them to think about ways they could use the information and what other data points could help them develop one of the hypothetical devices they had just come up with as a group.
Despite his sadistic enjoyment of my embarrassment and his confiscation of my phone, I found myself mesmerized with how easily he explained such high level concepts and how engaged he kept the students.
"The near future of IoT," Julian concluded, "is a system so precise it can tell you when the geometry of your own living room has changed by a millimeter. Now, think about what you, yourself, will be able to do with that level of information."
He gave me that same roguish smile from earlier. "Any questions?"
The audience clapped and a swarm of students surrounded him. In the confusion, I slunk out of the seat and walked up the stairs to the exit. Just before I completely left the room, I looked back and gave a little wave when I noticed he was looking at me.
He responded to my disobedience with an amused grin.