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From: jwtlai@watcgl.waterloo.edu (Jim W Lai)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: so called cyberspace conferences
Message-ID: <13119@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 17 Dec 90 07:09:26 GMT
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In article <1990Dec15.073629.20435@cpsc.ucalgary.ca>
sharp@cs-sun-fsd.cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Maurice Sharp) writes:
>"The line of product innovation marks the practical availability of
>the various stages of new technology, and it lags the line of
>invention by 16 years, and in its turn is lagged by the line of low
>cost products by 16 years. Thus there is a 16-year gap between
>invention and significant application, and a 32-year gap between
>invention and mass production"

>The bottom line is it is still too early for hard theories of
>cyberspace and VR. Wait for 10 or 15 years, then we may see some.
>Until then, we will have to be happy with design principles. More an
>art of cyberspace/VR creation than a science.

My opinion is that these invention gaps apply better to hardware than to
software.  The windowed interface that we see on PCs today was pioneered
by Xerox Parc in the 1970s.  The mouse was invented in the late 1960s, I
believe.  User interaction is less easily developed because it is partially
an art as well as a developing science.  Software is not driven by economies
of scale in that mass release (i.e. mass production) is readily possible
given a widely-used hardware platform.

I guess my point is that VR software/applications should be considered
distinct from a VR platform.  In the typical examples, the "software"
(signal processing) aspect is relatively trivial, e.g. HDTV.  Trying to
assign times to software and user interface development is riskier than
mere hardware development, partially because there is no simple measure.