and one fine morning…
Archive for November, 2008
if i were the keys, then where would i be?
Nov 29th
So my thought previously was that if you made a 3D computing environment that people navigated as pseudo-avatars, you’d be able to give users a better, more “virtual-realistic” experience. However, the second advantage that I saw was that as a human moves at (augmented) human speed through the environment, the computer, moving at a much higher speed (and in fact facilitating the human speed) could anticipate the movements and desires of the user and juggle system resources appropriately. For example, as you walk toward your word processing desk, the OS begins to load the word processor. It’s not that we need a faster processor, but maybe just a smarter one that covers up its slowness more smoothly. I also think we’ll see a bigger blurring of the lines between OS and application. The concept of an application “running” or “quitting” seems like it should soon be antiquated.
Maybe this isn’t necessary. Maybe people want a 2D environment for their computing. After all, if writing is 2D, then how the hell would making a 3D computer help with any important computing functions? All it would really do is make the interaction a little bit more fluid and fun. But people pay for that. People care about that. If you go to a coffee shop and open up a Dell or a HP, it doesn’t say anything. If you open up an Apple, it does. (This is where Dell and HP owners will stop reading because I am having a bad attitude or something.) Anyway, I think that there are arguments to be made for computer in a certain environment just for the image of it. I think that a sexy 3D operating system might fit that.
But still, maybe it’s not even desirable. Maybe there are better ways to go about things. As far as I can tell, there are two ways of doing things. One is objective, one is subjective.
In the objective sense, we can continue to bind computing to objects, and proliferate those objects. Good examples of these from the past and perhaps future are personal computers, wireless cards, iPhone, GPS navigation, and Microsoft Surface. In science fiction, these types of computers are well exemplified in Star Trek, where the computer is an object to which anyone can talk. It facilitates communication, food, and all of everyday life on the Enterprise. The computer is an object with physically ubiquitous access points.
In the subjective sense, we can bind computing more directly to subjects, and make the subject the access point to computing. One simple example of this is the pacemaker, if we can liberally think of it as a bio-computer that the user wears. Or a cochlear implant! In Card’s Ender’s Game series, Ender wears a bug in his ear to hear from, and subvocalizes using subtle jaw/throat movements to talk to, a remote computer (entity). In The Night’s Dawn Trilogy, Hamilton has dreamed up a neural nanonic computer implanted in the base of the skull, that users can use to enhance reality, datavise experiences (as in televise, but straight to the brain, rather than through a TV, so you feel like you are actually there). In The Golden Age Trilogy, Wright has conceived of telepresence, so that people actually live in matrix-like pods where their bodies are cared for, while they are telepresented to places to which they could not physically travel. Finally, in my personal favorite visual interpretation, the anime DennÅ Coil lays a veneer of virtual reality over the physical reality, which is accessible only to those wearing special glasses, which interpret the signals of the virtual, visually and aurally.
For the time being, I think that humanity will most likely continue to go down the path of the objective technology. However, in the next half century, I imagine we’ll see more of an integration of technology into the subject, both for medical and augmentation purposes. The innovations of the iPhone and the Wii in their use of both reading finger movements and orientation using accelerometers may actually be a good staging point for future ideas.
nervous like a knife fight
Nov 24th
People started writing long ago, and the basic idea behind writing was to express ideas with characters. Out of pragmatism, characters are all two dimensional, because it’s impractical to write in three dimensions if paper is planar. The act of writing leaped from the quill to the computer screen with a brief stepping stone of printing in between, so it makes sense that now, we have computers that are two dimensional. We have windows, which are like sheets of paper, and we can stack them in different orders with different pieces of paper on top. Yeah, but why stop there?
I have in mind a 3D environment for computing. Rather than a desktop, on which all your papers sit, why not a more natural environment? The computer screen is physically planar, but it need not display only planar images. Where do you work? Where do you think you should work? Maybe in a garden studio? Maybe in a studio apartment? Maybe on a rooftop? Maybe in a cubicle? Maybe in a lab?
Look, the advantage of the computer over reality is that when you lose something on the computer, you can just search for it. And with apps such as GoogleDesktop, you can search inside the documents, deeper than just the titles. The advantage of reality is that you can arrange your office, room, or garden however you want. Some people like things to be cluttered and warm. Some people work better in cold fluorescent cube farms (maybe?).
Since we can’t google reality (yet) I think that we should design an operating system that is a framework for virtual reality. Applications and files are stored in virtual physical locations that have names based on what you want the system to look like. Let me paint a picture for an artist who would love to be working outside.
You turn on your computer and the screen displays a well-rendered picture of a CG garden. It is 3:30 in the afternoon in reality, and so the garden is lit by a 3:30 sun. You want to check your email. Since you are old-school, you’ve bound your email to a mailbox just on your left as you enter the garden, since email is the first thing that you check. You open the mailbox, and it’s sorted already, because it’s virtual…we can just DO that. Some of the emails are bank statements and bills, but you don’t feel like dealing with them right now. You toss them on your desk, which happens to be across the garden. But it’s virtual, so your ninja star throw lands the letters perfectly on the desk. You want to be sure to remember them, so you highlight them. They softly glow as if lit from inside to show that they are important.
It’s time to do some work though, so you walk across the garden to an easel which you have bound to Illustrator. As you walk closer, the OS notices, and begins to launch the application. You work for a while. The interface for Illustrator is like a HUD from a video game that pops up over the screen. As you’re working, you get some new mail. A ding from behind you lets you know, in rendered 3D sound (advances in stereo sound now have determined how to render things to sound above you, below you, in front of you, and behind you. This is not a fantasy technology yet, though the rest of this is).
I am not sure the best way to navigate a 3D environment that you can manipulate and bend as you wish. A mouse is fine, but I think that there are other things that would work better.
If you look at a picture with 4:3 resolution, you see 4:3. If you switch to 16:9, you see more of the edges. Imagine a continuum of this, that you adjust as you move around, so that your environment bends around you. At maximum bend, you can see nearly behind you. At minimum, you can see just a cone in front of you (standard video game). Think fish eye lens, but only laterally. (maybe??)
I need to eat dinner now, but I think that this is the future of OS. It’s more like reality, more customizable than a desktop background, and still allows for a rigid hierarchy of file systems, but with a much more pleasurable GUI. Most of the technology is there from gaming. It’s just a matter of turning your OS into a game.
PS: Think of what video chat would be like when someone is sitting in your yard, and you are sitting in someone’s living room! All it would take is a binocular camera, and you could render someone in binocular vision!