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From: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: who does it... // State of the art today?
Message-ID: <20952@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Fri, 25-Sep-87 19:22:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.20952
Posted: Fri Sep 25 19:22:16 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 27-Sep-87 08:11:18 EDT
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Reply-To: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster)
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley
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Well, Professor Thomas Cheatham, senior faculty in Computer Science
at Harvard used to say that if you want to do direct brain input, just
use the optic nerves: that are a piece of brain tissue that's pushed
its way through the skull to get a better view.

On this subject, Air & Space magazine (a Smithsonian subsidiary) this
past summer had an article on state of the art heads-up displays and
the future cockpit.  The idea, common in flight simulators, is track
the position of the eyes, and use your computer's processing power to
fill in the details of the image where the user is actually looking.
Combine this with with a good pair of Sony WatchMans, and a decent
inertial tracking system, and you've got a consensual illusion
generator: The computer re-projects your environment onto your video
shades with whatever insertions (or deletions) you've programmed. As
long ago as the early '60s you could wear a helmet on an articulated
arm and walk around a room populated by 3-d computer graphics. As your
head and eyes move, the computer just reprojects the graphics onto the
screens in front of your eyes. (This was described in Bertram
Raphael's history of AI (called "The Thinking Computer" (I think.)))

Our Air Force is considering using a version of this technology for
pilots targetting "fire and forget missiles": The image on the
plexi-glass cockpit gets superimposed with telemtry data. Just look at
a target, press the fire button, and hunt for the next target.

For the home, this idea is best combined with the 3-d "gloves"
described in the current SigCHI proceedings. These gloves measure the
bending of the joints of the hand and send the data to your computer.
They also have little piezo-electric effectors on the fingertips.
Imagine it: your computer projects the master synthesizer keyboard
in the air in front of you (it is really left and right video images
on the heads up display glasses you are wearing, but it looks like
it's just labeled buttons glowing in the air in front of you.)

As you punch the buttons, the effectors in your gloves push back just
a bit, so it feels like you've made contact. You punch a few buttons
and whole sections of the synthesizer pop into existence. (with sound
effects if you want them.)

Or, imagine the 3-d analog of the Macintosh desktop, with window cubes
floating in space for you to walk around, drag into place, or squeeze
and stretch to more convenient sizes to watch the processes going on
within them (run your finger toward yourself along the left top edge
of the "window cube" to zoom in (magnify) the image run your finger
away from you along the edge to zoom it out.)

A group of people, with networked comuters can share the same computer
space. (if I'm in the same room with you, there is no problem, If I'm
in a different room you might see a computer generated silhouette of
me with my digitized face.)

We have the technology, we can do all of the above today. Now for the future:

All of this is possible today and cheap tomorrow. To take it really
far out, if you combine this with the emerging nano-technology
outlined in Drexler's book "Engines of Creation" then imagine this:

Already, I can go into "computer clay mode" and shape light with my
fingers. The computer is watching my gestures and leaving a glowing
scultpure in the air as I move. Couple that with "zoom" and "shrink"
and all the tools of a standard CAD system and you've got a great 3-d
design system. That's all standard "in the labs today, the office
tomorrow, and the closet the day after" technology. Add Drexler's
nano-tech and I can say to that glowing sculpture: "be steel", "be
polystyrene" "be glass", "be foam with properties I'm selecting from
this menu floating by my left shoulder" and it is that. Form a chair
out of light with your fingers, and then sit in it.

If I've sparked your interest a little, well keep in touch:

--- David Phillip Oster            --A Sun 3/60 makes a poor Macintosh II.
Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --A Macintosh II makes a poor Sun 3/60.
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