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From: brucec%phoebus.labs.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET (Bruce Cohen;;50-662;LP=A;)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: Sensory Modalities (was Re: Musical Virtual Worlds)
Message-ID: <12229@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 3 Dec 90 18:02:43 GMT
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In article <12146@milton.u.washington.edu> cgy@cs.brown.edu (Curtis Yarvin) writ
es:
> 
> If sound had a greater bandwidth than vision, we'd all have headphones on
> our computers instead of monitors.  Sound can convey some information that
> is unconveyable visually (eg voice tone); vision can convey information that
> sound cannot.  But if you want to start comparing the two quantitatively,
> you'd better talk in quantitative terms.
> 

All true, but unfortunately all this comparison of bandwidth and power is
somewhat irrelevant to humans' ability to extract information from light
and sound.  we certainly can't get > 0.5 megabits/sec. out of the sounds we
here, nor can we get > 1.0 megabits/sec from the light which falls on our
eyes.  Those are just the inputs to extremely sophisticated signal
processing system, which have evolved to throw away the vast majority of
the sensory information coming in, so we can concentrate on the data which
are most likely to be meaningful to our survival.  I've heard estimates
that we are capable of actually acquiring about 100 bits / sec of useful
data from all of our senses.   I won't vouch for the number because I don't
know the methodology used to reach it, but I'll bet it's not off by more
than an order of magnitude or two.

The real reason that we tend to favor sight as a sense is not, IMHO
cultural at all, but based on the biological fact that we have, in the
course of evolution, dedicated far more of our nervous systems to image
signal processing than to sound signal processing.  As a result, we're
capable of extracting a broader range of information ata  higher
acquisition rate from sight than hearing.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Speaker-to-managers, aka
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