From: mark@cs.ualberta.ca (Mark Green)
Subject: Re: Computerized Reality: Better than VR
Date: 	Fri, 19 Jul 1991 12:45:29 -0600
Organization: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada



In article <1991Jul19.165128.21648@milton.u.washington.edu>, weiser@parc.
xerox.com (Mark Weiser) writes:
 
> To be a little concrete: I think that the room of the future will have
> hundreds of inch-sized devices (computer postits), tens of foot-sized
> devices (scrap computers, analogous to scrap paper), and one or two
> wall-sized displays.  All networked, all providing an integrated user
> interface (although I hate the term user interface--it divides us from
> our machines instead of acknowledging the basic interpretive nature of
> knowledge).  It is this vision of the future that I started calling
> ubiquitous computing more than two years ago.  Ubiquitous computing
> was then picked up and changed by others to just mean mobile
> computing, so I have more recently been using the term embodied
> virtuality.  Harder to co-opt.
> 
> Embodied Virtuality--the virtual computer world made available in
> hundreds of physical devices (bodies) all over the room which one
> interacts without thinking twice about it.
> 

Mark (its good to hear from you again), at least some VR researchers
agree with your view of the future.  We need to move away from single
screen workstations that force the user to occupy a particular place
in the office and interact in a very restricted way.  With my telephone,
I am free to move around my office, interact with other objects, such
as memos and reports, while I am using the phone.  The computation system
of the future should have the same flexibility.  I should be able
to invoke a computation from any place in my office and see the results (or
maybe hear of feel the results??) any place in the office.  The computer
should be able to track my motions, without requiring me to be
instrumented or wired.  The walls of the offices should be virtual
information spaces, etc.

This is my view of the future, which is probably not too different
from yours, but what are we going to do for the present??  We both
know that software technology lag behind hardware technology, and user
interface design lags behind software technology.  If we are going to
be able to use this hardware technology when it appears, we need
to start thinking about user interface design and software technology
now.  I can simulate this type of office system using a head-mounted
display and a DataGlove.  This is not an optimal simulation, but it
does allow me to start exploring the user interface design and software
issues.  Note, that Stu Card and his group at Xerox has taken a different
approach to simulating this type of environment, but the overall goal
is the same.  In my view, in the next decade we will have better devices
than current head-mounted displays and DataGlove, but if we don't
start developing software now we won't be able to use these devices.
We also need the driving force to develop the new hardware technology.
By producing example systems new, we will encourage the development
of better hardware technology.