From: jwtlai@watcgl.waterloo.edu (Jim W Lai)
Subject: Re: Imagination vs. VR (was Re: More on MUDs etc.)
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1991 15:48:30 GMT
Message-ID: <1991Aug21.154830.19935@watcgl.waterloo.edu>
Organization: University of Waterloo



In article <1991Aug21.011630.292@milton.u.washington.edu> eliot@phoenix.
princeton.edu (Eliot Handelman) writes:

>In any case the question is not how VR will absorb
>verbal consciousness so much as the kind of alterations it will bring about,
>what new balance of the senses it will promote, the ways in
>which intelligence will grapple with this new balance, and the sorts
>of knowledge and experience that it will enable.

One (mis?)application I can see is providing drug-experiences sans drugs.
Virtual nirvana, chemical free.  I suppose the answer to this question is
culturally dependent.  VR would certainly allow for a new "notation" for
the representation of music.  I put forth that speech is a subset of song,
and that the written word is merely a (deliberately) poor reflection (lossy
compression) of this, as is current musical notation.

>I don't know how abstract concepts are "transmitted" in ANY medium,
>incidentally. Do you transmit relational concepts like "bigger than"
>to a child? A child learns it somehow, as far as I can tell, through
>the nature of its brain, not because I've told it so. 

The base concepts are learned, not taught, indeed.  However, illustrating
a mathematical derivation is showing a person (or being) how to arrive at
a conclusion given certain shared assumptions.  This would be an illustration
of an emergent property of mathematical proof.  It is not clear to me how a
language-less medium would have a well-defined basis from which to generalize
such abstract concepts.

>;Even no
>;interface is an interface, the transparent interface.  Our environment is
>;the penultimate media, and our senses provide our interface.  
>
>I don't understand what you're trying to say. In what sense is our
>environment a medium at all, and why only the penultimate medium? 
>What does it mediate? When I daydream, what's the interface to my
>daydreaming? What's the interface to me in my brain?

The environment is a medium which can communicate information.  It itself is
information rich, especially the living environment.  It is only penultimate
in the sense that all other media we have require it, whether it be
electromagnetic waves or acoustic.

As for the latter two questions, even neuropsychologists would have a
difficult time giving much of an answer.  The last question assumes that
you are separate from your brain.  Feedback within a system perhaps?