Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!mintaka!ogicse!milton!hlab
From: williamb@milton.u.washington.edu (William Bricken)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: 2ndCyberspace Conference
Message-ID: <1991May20.090324.9906@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 20 May 91 06:52:01 GMT
Article-I.D.: milton.1991May20.090324.9906
References: <1991May20.053159.18067@milton.u.washington.edu>
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Here are some comments to amplify Randy Farmer's very diplomatic
posting on 2ndCyberSpace:

Damn it, Cyberspace *is* a technical subject.  No one should have to
apologize for sharing the technical details, that is what conferences
are all about.  And good cross-disciplinary papers at Cyberspace
conferences will enhance our knowledge both of our central interest in
the virtual and of a speciality domain which intersects with the
virtual.

My puzzlement at 2ndCyberspace was "How come no one is talking about
the same thing?"  Why was *the virtual* so different across
disciplines?

Is cyberspace really so amorphous that it readily incorporates models
of society as mummies?  So ill-conceived that it is defined by some
minor characters in a small work of science fiction?  So ambiguous
that photos of the Iraq war combine with clips from a Walt Disney
movie to anchor its essence?

This is what I tell my Virtual World Development class: If you are not
an implementer, you must express your worlds formally in order to be
understood.

Try this example: Imagine a virtual cube in space.  Grab a pair of
diagonal vertices with each virtual hand and pull.  What happens?

The point is that the answer is not consensual.  Strongly held
intuitions vary across people.  What happens is task dependent.  What
happens is idiosyncratic.  What happens is computational.

A common ground for what happens can be negotiated across
participants.  Negotiation requires a common language, but the
*computational process* implementing cyberspace constrains the choice
of languages.

Which is to say: If you want to talk about cyberspace, and hope to
make sense, then you must be prepared to talk mathematically.  (Yes, I
believe programming is specified by mathematics, in its broadest and
most intimately imperfect sense.)

The painted-into-a-corner test: Can a literary or social critic say
anything about cyberspace?

1) An existing cyberspace could be evaluated as a literary experience.
It would have been great to see Virtual Seattle analyzed for dramatic
tension.

2) Responses to cyberspace experiences could be described
sociologically.  It would have been great to see the 200+ VR articles
analyzed for ethnic biases.

3) Cocktail party stories about cyberspace could be criticized
literarily.  It would have been great to know just how much
misinformation is embodied in the urban folklore of cyberspace.


If "cyberspace" is defined as all media and all literature and all
imagination and all sorts of things, then let's meet after the circus
to talk about the work.  If it is not all things to all people, then
let's define taxonomies, let's focus on communal definition of what it
is that we are spending our lives building.

What we heard a lot of at 2ndCyberspace was contempory criticism of
<fill-in-the-blank>, and that fill-in-the-blank happened to be
"cyberspace".  The philosophical position was more important than the
content, so it really didn't matter if we didn't develop a group
understanding of cyberspace, so long as our politics matched.

Now, I believe that cyberspace is something to be explored and
experienced.  Something that will require conceptual pioneering, to
dwell, to learn, to report.  I believe that the cyberspace is more
important than current theories of criticism, that it will redefine
criticism as we explore it.  We really need information, not analysis.

I'd suggest focusing the content of the next conference on the
definition and mutual understanding of the subject matter.  The
central idea is a convergence of vocabulary; the important point is
that presented papers should help the convergence by paying particular
attention to the *intersection* of fields.

Here is one possibility:

DEFINITIONS

        Cyberspace:  
            electronically mediated experience.  
        Virtual Reality:  
            broad bandwidth first-person participation in cyberspace.
        Artificial Reality:  
            third-person virtual reality.
        Virtual Worlds:  
            virtual reality configured and presented for natural perception.
        Virtual Body/Virtual Environment: 
            the coupled subjective/objective components of virtual worlds.
        Presence:
            the goodness measure of experience in cyberspace

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS

        Participant:  
            environmentally interactive sentience.
        Inclusion:  
            subjective experience of environmental closure.
        Information: 
            comprehendible symbolic structure.

Using this vocabulary, cyberspace is electronic information which
mediates by inclusion the experience of participants; it is being
inside symbolic structure.



William Bricken