From: autodesk!robertj@uunet.uu.net (Young Rob Jellinghaus)
Subject: Re: Imagination vs. VR (was Re: More on MUDs etc.)
Date: 16 Aug 91 03:30:30 GMT
Organization: Autodesk, Inc., Sausalito, CA




In article <1991Aug15.224130.25826@milton.u.washington.edu> fortony@herodotus.
cs.uiuc.edu (Felix Sebastian Ortony) writes:

>This is a very interesting point.  However, in discussions of virtual
>reality, I don't see the meta-involvement of the VR author with the
>user coming into play.  Indeed, once a VR has been 'done', I imagine
>that it's very difficult to alter its facets; how do you add an arm
>to a virtual robot without spending hours at the terminal typing in
>new data?  How do you specify that the floor creaks here and there
>without defining data objects, putting them at specified coordinates,
>and all that?  I don't think VR is any more author-user interactive
>than books.  In fact, I think it's less so.  When I write short fiction,
>I take it to my workshop.  The others read it, comment on it, perhaps
>even scribble on the copies and give them back to me.  Don't make the
>mistake of believing books are immutable, or that language results in
>solid forms.

I see your point about books being mutable, but I have to say I can't
see where they are mutable to the same degree or in the same way as a
virtual reality.  A book is a linear experience; reading it is a process.
You go where the author takes you.

The evolution of interactive fiction and hypertext is the story of
literature being moved into the interactive realm, where the reader can
affect the story by her actions.  The reader and the author move closer
together, both working to create the story.  Granted, the reader of a
conventional book is also creating the story in his mind, but the author
is out of the loop; the author can only put down one static world which
the reader then fills in.  Interactive fiction opens the possibility of
the author's presentation being partially determined by the reader's
reaction.  Open hypertexts, which can be added to, modified, and ex-
tended by the author _and_ the reader, make the collaboration fully two-
ended; the author can change what parts of the story the reader encoun-
ters, and the reader can become an author.  These are the mutable
texts you describe.

VR takes the same phenomenon and extends it to all sensory modalities.
Instead of depicting a scene with words, it can be created in full
illusionary splendor, modeling the way humans interact with the real
world.  I don't believe it will supersede writing, for the same
reasons that movies and TV haven't supplanted books; movies, TV, and
books are all alike in that they are created by an author and left
unchanged thereafter.  Current virtual realities are only one small
step forwards; the world is made, there are certain things you can do,
and that's that.  Your workshop is an example of how the written word
can become interactive, and connect author and reader through a world
they collaborate in creating.  A mature virtual reality network, with
tools that anyone can use to become a "spacemaker" (in Randy Walser's
terminology), with open worlds that people can combine and
interconnect in strange and surprising ways... such a network would
combine the visceral real-time power of movies, the interactive and
collaborative structure of your workshop, and the unlimited inter-
connectivity of hypertext to create a truly magical place-that-isn't-
a-place.

To me, the closest thing to this kind of mature virtual reality that
I've ever encountered is fantasy role-playing games.  In these games,
several people essentially collaborate in telling a story.  The action
is almost entirely in the imagination, but the events are happening in
real time, and no one knows how the story will turn out.  It's every
bit the sort of literary experience you seem to be describing.  VR will
take these games and turn them into full 3-D stereo hallucinatory
experiences.

>Well said.  I still maintain that the imagination engendered by literature
>exceeds the imagination engendered by VR, however, mostly because of the
>far-larger range of degrees of freedom available in language and belief
>about meaning.  "The cat was huge" will always have more user-suppliable
>potential and 'heat', in my opinion, than a picture of a big kitty.

This is true; my picture of Sauron's castle from Tolkein's _Lord of
the Rings_ could not be duplicated on any 100-frames-sec pair of
goggles.  But then again, when I become able to put those goggles on,
erect the castle around myself with a few sweeps of my arms, and start
creating orcs to defend myself against the armies on the horizon... it
will definitely rival the experience of reading the book!

And for those who groan at the return to "games", I point out that
these are not so much games as a new form of art, a new dramatic
medium.  Are movies "games"?  Is writing a book "just a game"?  Is the
story of your life a "game"?  Not to deingrate people who are focused
on "applications", but they are only part of the story... many things
can be written, many things filmed, and many things will be created in
cyberspace.

--
Rob Jellinghaus                 | "Next time you see a lie being spread or
Autodesk, Inc.                  |  a bad decision being made out of sheer
robertj@Autodesk.COM            |  ignorance, pause, and think of hypertext."
{decwrl,uunet}!autodesk!robertj |    -- K. Eric Drexler, _Engines of Creation_