Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!wex@dali.pws.bull.com From: wex@dali.pws.bull.com (Buckaroo Banzai) Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds Subject: Re: "Space" Message-ID: Date: 6 Aug 90 16:45:07 GMT References: <9007250107.AA01311@hitl.vrnet.washington.edu> Sender: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu Organization: Bull Worldwide Information Systems Inc. Lines: 83 Approved: hitl@hardy.u.washington.edu Several people have written to me over the past week or two asking about the idea(s) of semantic dimensions which I've been talking about in this group. This is very flattering, but people always want more info. The only things I've written on this so far are the abstract for the cyberspace conference and the chapter in the book. So here is an I-hope-not-too-long synopsis of the ideas of semantic spaces. First some background: I came to the cyberspace party from the field of software engineering, particularly large-scale software engineering. This led me to have an interest in the visualization, manipulation, and navigation of large amounts of abstract information. Y'see, when you're building VRs for architects or pilots or whoever, you're mostly dealing with data that has a natural spatial (usually 3D) arrangement built into it. Gibson more or less realized this problem when he talked about cyberspace in NEUROMANCER, but he avoided the problem by having the data pyramids correspond to the physical locations of the owning companies. Xerox's rooms implementation also danced around this issue by mapping abstract concepts (computer tools and utilities) onto well-known 3D-spatial concepts (rooms). The problem is that this kind of thing rapidly breaks down in the world of large-scale software engineering. When you have system that's composed of hundreds of source modules, millions of code lines, thousands of test programs, tens of thousands of bug reports and fixes and enhancements (not to mention the mountain of documentation, design, and specification that came before and along with the code) - well, you can see the problem. A number of existing systems try to deal with this by imposing their own order on the information. You put all the data into one central repository, described all in the same way, and look at it only through their tools -- and it more or less works. Of course, if you have some new kind of information that doesn't fit the precanned schemas you're more or less screwed, but that's life, right? This is just the visualization problem. The manipulation and navigation problems are as large or larger, but let's deal with things one at a time. My experience shows that setting up a good visualization structure can suggest interaction means that were not thought of beforehand. So I set out to come up with a theory that would be broad enough to encompass all kinds of abstract (and concrete) data and that would provide general, powerful, and flexible means for visualizing whatever information the user would want. Now it struck me that, in a way, the ordinary spatial layouts we experience are a derivative of the properties of the objects that make them up. Walls are, more or less, vertical flat surfaces. Spheres tend not to be found balanced on the tips of pyramids. And so on. From this, I decided to take the idea of examining the objects of interest and using their properties to determine the space in which they would be visualized. We can map the properties of objects one-to-one onto dimensions of cyberspace. The dimensions reflect some element of meaning (semantics) about the objects; thus, semantic dimensions. An N-dimensional space of these dimensions is a semantic space. I conceive of cyberspace as a semantic space. Because the properties of the objects are (more or less) mathematically describable, we can then say interesting things about the dimensions of cyberspace. For example, there is no reason why cyberspace dimensions have to map (as our experiential three dimensions do) to the real number line - despite the blatherings of a certain idiot in this newsgroup. It would be easy in this framework to have, for example, a quantum dimension which represented the energy states of electrons. In such a dimension objects could occupy only specific points along the dimension, and not be in between. There are lots of issues here, such as: what about ordering? what kinds of dimensions should there be? what about properties that are not confined to a single object, but are the result of object-interaction (such as the property earlier-version-of, an important concept in software engineering). I attempt to address these issues and more in my chapter, but as I am approaching the hundred-line mark, I will stop here and allow anyone interested to ask what more they want to know. -- --Alan Wexelblat phone: (508)294-7485 Bull Worldwide Information Systems internet: wex@pws.bull.com Today is Hiroshima Day. Rest in peace 200,000+ innocents