Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!batcomputer!cornell!rochester!kodak!doering
From: doering@kodak.com (Paul F. Doering)
Subject: Virtual manipulation
Message-ID: <1991May13.174958.10492@kodak.kodak.com>
Sender: doering@kodak.kodak.com (Paul F. Doering)
Organization: Kodak Research, Rochester NY
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 13 May 91 17:49:58 GMT

In <y9JT27w164w@bluemoon.uucp> and several ancestral messages,
bbs@bluemoon.uucp (BBS Login) and others have been discussing human/computer
interfaces in which the user would be able to reach a hand into virtual space
and manipulate virtual objects. Although the concept seems to have arisen with
respect to "physically" managing file folders, etc, it clearly could (would)
apply as well to process-control functions: turning a gas valve,  lighting a
lamp, and other real-world analogs. An objection cited the lack of feedback
through the sense of touch and predicted difficulty in mastering the technique
relying on sight only, a reply to which dismissed the problem by expressing
confidence in the human ability to adapt. (I hope I've been faithful to the
correspondents in this summary.)

We don't do awfully well in compartmentalizing our learning. In jest, someone
warned during the 3-D movie craze of the fifties that we'd all get so used to
not having to dodge illusory objects hurled into the audience from the screen
that someday someone would get conked by a real bottle falling from a real
medicine cabinet. Raise the ante in the current debate: what will be the
real-world consequences of training a user that a hand is a suitable agent for
"picking up" a hot ingot? My point is that in designing an interface we must be
as concerned with habits carried away from it as we are about intuition
brought into it.  (Insert here the standard boilerplate about responsibilty in
programming.) So the question: can anyone refer us to a study (not a
hypothesis) in which an investigator quantified the extent to which remote
control or remote sensing has been unwittingly transplated as behavior back
into the real world?
-- 
  =========================     ======================================
   Paul Doering (for self)         Man will never arrive,              
      doering@kodak.com               man will be always on the way.   
  =========================     =============== -Carl Sandburg =======
