From: strength@milton.u.washington.edu (Julian Bleecker)
Subject: Re: VR defined
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1991 22:42:16 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle



In article <1991Oct17.064143.12595@milton.u.washington.edu> rick@xing.unocal.
com (Richard Ottolini) writes:

>Yet another attempt; To paraphase Marshall Mcluhan, both a media and a 
>message.
>
>The media:
>
>"an inclusive computer interface"  (borrowed from an earlier poster)
>eyephones, datasuits, rapid 3-D updates and all that.
>
>The message(s) (several, not mutually exclusive):
>
>(1) Super realism: you feel like you are walking through an imaginary building,
>        human body, etc. more so than any other computer interface.
>
>(2) Surrealism: imaginary worlds, games, that alter conventional physics,
>        strange gravities, time dialations, etc.
>
>(3) Telepresence: remote sensory data collected by a robotic device, e.g. on
>        Mars, made more concrete by using VR media.
>
>(4) Others?

Well, I think you're misunderstanding McLuhan.  The three items you put
under "messages" are actually media.  Medium does not mean strictly 
hardware, it means methods of conveyance which Realism, what you call
Surrealism or for that matter Modernity are.  All of these are particular
paradigms that, say, Art Historians use when classifying the stylistic
method some Artist appears to use.  Think of it this way, just as a
paint brush could be considered a medium, so is the style the artist
uses when applying the strokes.  For this example, the message is the
emotive aspect of the painting - what the artist is trying to convey
in the rendering.  So an advertising artist for Coca-Cola uses pen
and ink (media), applies it in a decidedly Realist style (media) and
attempts to convice people to not buy Pepsi, but to buy Coke (the message).

Now, if you're convinced of the distinction between the Medium and the Message
(and i'm reasonably sure this is the distinction McLuhan tried so hard
to construct) and you really understand it, the most compelling issue is
obvious.  The message is a very touchy issue, particularly with repsect to
VR, let alone TV, radio, the phone, etc.  What will be the content (and if
you say "a realistic (or not) construction of a particular environment" you've
missed the point again) of the Virtual Environments that we build?

Now start your list.  Look familiar?


-julian