From: bluefire@well.com (Bob Jacobson)
Subject: Re: HUMAN-FACTORS: Immersion Studies
Date: 19 Sep 1996 00:40:34 GMT
Message-ID: <51q4q2$a0i@filth.well.com>
Organization: The Well, San Francisco, CA


I have to agree with Ed.  It's just too soon to know what to do with
immersion.  How many people, after all, have been in an immersion
space?  About 5,000, or maybe 10,000, if we are generous?  And how 
many in a _shared_ immersion space, where one could actually get work
done with others?  Half that many?  And for how long, and how many
times?  Mere fractions of the above already-small numbers.

I think a more important question is, what are people giving up by
working in non-immersion spaces, like on computer monitors with 
keyboards?  Is anyone really happy with this garbage?  I can watch TV
with serious attention for maybe two hours; then it's sleepy-time,
glazed eyes and all.  I can handle the monitor, with interactivity,
for maybe twice that.  Even when I'm bright and shiny, however, I
can only do so much focusing my attention on this emitter of all 
sorts of terrible radiation and glaring light.  And if I look away,
it's gone.  What type of groupwork can really be done in such a
limiting environment?

When someone is brave enough to answer the latter series of questions
and challenge all the hype about computers, graphics, voice recogni-
tion, and all the other hype about "heightened productivity" using
computers -- maybe for writers and insurance-policy form-fillers --
then and only then can they raise intelligent questions about immersion,
which is what we were born to, with five senses and stereo sight.

Bob
bluefire@well.com (Bob Jacobson)