Message:
Cyberspace
Posted by Sanjay Chandrasekharan on December 13, 1999 at 4:31 PM
Cool! Just what I was looking for!
I am interested in Agents and couldn't think of an appropriate interface to place them in.
I was trying to think in terms of video games and other media spaces.
Now I can imagine where Agents can exist. Maybe even how. One aspect the cyberspace interface brings to the fore is the limitation of the mouse as an interacting device.
I think cyberspace is the killer app for the haptic devices that are in the making. For instance, see:
http://haptic.mech.nwu.edu/links/ They provide for a more space-like experience, compared to the one-finger, one-way experience provided by the mouse.
Even from a perception point of view, haptic devices nicely complement visual interfaces. This is because touch and vision are highly interlinked sensory modalities.
If I ask you to imagine touching a snake, you can imagine accurately how touching a snake would feel like, even though you have never touched one!
This is because vision stands-in, does a lot of the work, for the touch department. The traditional interfaces capitalise on this overworking tendency of vision a lot.
For instance, in designing buttons that push out. The inclination is to push it down. But this model breaks down when you have a space. A space with objects needs to be "experienced" in a more deeper sense of the term.
This involves the space giving feedback to the user. And that is exactly what the haptic devices do! I am kind of disappointed by your focus on objects, and the mention of Agents as a bell/whistle.
But any break from the webpage model is welcome! Sanjay
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