From: bross@nas.nasa.gov (Bill Ross)
Subject: VR '91/SF: Monday morning
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 91 03:28:20 GMT
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center


Here are some impressions of the SF conference last week: sound bites,
out of context factoids and observations, from my goggles.


Organization: if you ever sign up for a Meckler conference and you
are from academia or government, be sure to ask if there is a special
rate. I didn't & wound up paying $200 extra. When I asked a Mecklerite,
she gave me credit for Meckler purchases after subtracting a $75 
"cancellation fee."


Howard Rheingold, Journalist

Avoided repeating what's in his book.
Theme: possible dangers of VR.
Reactions to VR:  USA, popular enthusiasm. Europe, aghast.
Making amends for passing on 'teledildonics': 'disinfotainment' as 
in smart bomb movies; simulation as news/reality. Who can you trust.
"On the other hand, if we've got 20 billion people, I don't know
if we want them to leave their apartments."
Q: language is a VR - why be so concerned about abuse of VR now?
"You can talk all day long ... but 5 minutes of the right sound bites
will make people do things that rational discourse can't."

Myron Kreuger, Designer & a founder of VR

Introduced as "a hero person on the Mount Rushmore of VR."
Human interface is an esthetic issue, not a technical one, and is
grudgingly added, more often for the lay user than the insider.
E.g. the tether used with glove/headmount induces fear of tripping 
- easy to fix, but not a priority. If NASA had developed tv we would
have missed the cultural/entertainment aspects. We should respect
the freedom of tv's early history as pay-for-view becomes the norm.
On his own works: "expectation was the medium ... laws of cause and
effect composable from moment to moment."
Stagecraft is not enough: the play, no matter how poor, is required.
Image of the most important business person in a company gesturing in 
goggles in a corner. Current project: following silhouette of a
hand on desk for a non-glove interface. Apparently he has never had
sustained access to workstation-level hardware. Don't believe in
gesture as sign language; interested in speech recognition.
"I'm old enough to be living in the future I was warned about."

Joseph Henderson, Epidemiologist: wound evaluator for military

Database: Viet Nam wounds, classified according to region (head,
thorax, extremities, ... skin) and severity (0..6). 3 most important
regions for causing death used as axes, and cases plotted as colored
points in a dark, rotatable cube in a Mac interface. Click on a point
and a window pops up containing the cases associated with it. These
cases can be gone into further, including bringing up slides of the
wounds on videodisc and playing interviews and bringing up schematics
about the incident. "To tell you the truth, I don't know what to do
with it." Trying to bring humanity to the definition of problems.
"When we make a reality, it should do more than let us fly around
and say Gee Whiz." It took 4 years.
Q: Cyberspace is continuous, hypercard discrete.
A: You may be right.