seguine@girtab.usc.edu (Christopher Seguine) (04/26/91)
The following is a ROUGH DRAFT of an essay I am writing for an ethics class I have.... It has not made its way thru the spelling/grammar checker yet so please bear with me... And excuse the crazy formatting.... Its been a nightmare trying to xfer this from my amiga 2 the lame usc main frame... Anyway I hope this will provoke some conservation....I will also try and post a review of the cybercon sometime soon.... Christopher Seguine seguine@girtab.usc.edu The Virtues of Virtual Reality Christopher L. Seguine Based on the proceedings of the second annual Cybercon SCENARIO I Adam is about eight years old, he has been deaf since birth and uses sign language to communicate. Although he can understand what anyone is saying to him by reading their lips, there is no way he can communicate with anyone who does not understand sign language, short of writing his words down. Until now. Adam sports a dataglove which is attached to a computer, now when he signs, his representations are converted into speech by the computer. Adam is now no longer impaired by his hearing disability, and is able to communicate with anyone he wishes. SCENARIO II Adam's older brother Rocco was a pilot in the air force. Rocco use to take Adam to the park on weekends and tell him how he loved to fly because of the feeling of freedom and oneness with nature. This past fall with tensions mounting in the gulf Rocco was enrolled in a special training program. For eight hours a day, five days a week Rocco was one of many students who sat in a state of the art simulator. This was not your ordinary computerized practice of take offs and landings. This machine sported 120 degree stereoscopic vision, binaural audio, multi-input sensor tracking, and motion feedback. When Rocco put on the Cyber Helmet and the simulation commenced, he was no longer in the CyberSim room on the air force base, he was in a F19 flying over the Persian Gulf. After a week or so of training, Rocco no longer went to the park with Adam, in stead they stayed in side to play Nintendo. Rocco said he loved to play with Adam, because the computer was just not as challenging as a human opponent. War broke out and Rocco was stationed at a base somewhere near the Saudi Arabian border. Rocco would write Adam telling him how his bombing raids into Iraq were so much better than that stupid Top Gun game they played on Nintendo. He also sent Adam a copy of a scoring chart he used to tally "points" for the missions he went on. A point for killing a soldier, ten for a tank, fifty for a populated neighborhood, and minus one for killing one of his own men, although this was updated later to zero because he felt that he should not be penalized for someone getting in his way. In his last letter to Adam, Rocco wrote that he was only two hundred points shy of the one million mark. Rocco never broke a million, his plane was destroyed by an enemy missile. Rocco wrote, "the only problem with this game, is that no matter how many points I earn I can never get an extra life." Ethics in a Virtual World? These scenarios presented above, although fiction, are possible given the technology we have today. With the development of any new technology there are benefits, and there are unfortunate side effects. My belief is that we should not abandon a technology because we believe it may be misused, however we should be aware of these adverse effects and try to eliminate or at least minimize them. The following is an attempt to point out the current state of Cyber, as seen by me, a multitude. What is CyberSpace, Virtual Reality, TelePresence, etc.? It turns out that most people find it easier to describe the technology behind how it works, rather than what it is. This is a bad sign. Cyber Space is one of those slippery words that is hard to describe because it is a lot of things, sort of like multimedia, that term has been around for a long time and people still can not give a clear definition. Anyway, cyberpunk science fiction writer William Gibson defines it in "Neromancer" as a "consensual hallucination...A graphical representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system...Unthinkable complexity" From the literate to the scientific, John Walker of Autodesk defines cyberspace as "that which provides the user a three-dimensional interaction experience that provides the user the illusion he is inside a world rather than observing an image." The problem is that people are extending VR to be everything from the HoloDeck on Star Trek to your answering machine. All though in someways this could be true, what I will be discussing deals with the strictest sense of the definition, my definition. Cyber Space is a completely immersive computer generated environment that the user may interact in/with. How does it work? The user "jacks" into a computer using a pair of EyePhones. EyePhones are a set of monitors that you wear on your head that resemble a diving mask. The two monitors represent left and right views, a high tech version of the red/blue glasses of the sixties. Your movement is tracked by a sensor called the Polhemus, it tells the computer where you are looking, and what you are doing. As you turn your head the digital landscape follows. You interact with the environment by using a DataGlove or DataSuit, which is basically fabric covered with sensors to describe your gestures to the computer. You also wear headphones through which the computer generates binaural audio (3d sound) that gives you sound cues to where objects are. You get feedback through tactile sensors in the suit which allow you to feel when you make contact with objects. I'm sure it will not be too long before there will be smell stimuli running into every user's nose also. Who has it? Right now VR needs real fast computers, they cost a lot of money. Who has the most money? The military, they have the money and the best toys. Next step down is business, companies such as AutoDesk and VPL are defining new market places One more step down, are universities. More and more educational institutions are beginning to experiment with this new technology, even USC has a set up, unfortunately it is dedicated for graduate research, ie no one knows what to do with it. Finally, in the basement, literally, are the artists, people trying to experiment with whatever they can get their hands on. What is being done? The military are pretty much well represented in scenario two, they are using VR based flight simulators. Industry is doing everything from allowing you to tour your new home before its built or to explore space through the body of a robot. The artists, well, they are breaking the rules, breaking the hardware, and basically extending the boundaries of this new medium. Wow, this sounds great...Where do I insert my quarter? What is the problem? Where do I begin? The military are training killers, the pioneers of this technology are elitists, how is it going to be controlled, should it be controlled, etc, etc etc.... First of all too much emphasis is placed on the writings of Gibson. Yes he was one of the original cyber punk authors, but he is a fiction writer, and not a very good one at that. We should not concentrate are goals on one man's view of the future, we need to encourage new and different views of how this technology will evolve. Many of the people involved with this new medium are very concerned with preventing its misuse. The problem is they envision restrictions on its use in order to prevent its misuse. This is not an answer. The problem is not with this particular technology, it is with the society in which it is based. Will there be CyberPorn and VirtualViolence? Undoubtably yes, unless we can somehow start a consciousness raising in society itself. Why should Cyber Space be any different than the reality that created it? Who is going to be in control in Cyber Space? Obviously not politicians, they are too busy in their own little world. Should anyone have more power than anyone else in Cyber Space or should it be a collective entity? Who will make the laws, what will they be based on? How will property ownership work? Can you own virtual property? Real world laws need to be updated to the electronic age. Currently our judicial system is years behind the times. Law enforcement has little information about laws in the electronic community, which makes for great injustices. Currently a search warrant is needed to tap a phone line, however it is perfectly legal for a police officer to go to Radio Shack and buy a scanner and tap into cordless or cellular phone conversations without the need for a warrant. Electronic crimes happen day due to the helplessness of the police. Batles rage in court over copyrights on such things as "look and feel" of user interfaces. It is about time the legal system be brought into the information age. Caution must be taken with these new technologies. We are just starting to realize the full extent of the damage by the industrial era. We have no idea what the expansion into these new realms will lead to. Will there be an ecological movement necessary in the virtual community? With all the information we are now learning about VDTs is it wise to have these two monitors practically attached to our eyeballs? Also just as in the beginnings of cinema, audiences were frightened out of their seats by trains coming right at the screen, what will happen when a train actually runs you over in virtual reality? Heart attacks or psychological effects? These are things we are going to have to take into account as we develop this technology. VR is going to lead us to new levels of conciousness. Not the acid trip conciousness that sixties left over Timothy Leary is proposing, but enhanced visualization skills. Just as we can represent 3d information on a 2d piece of paper, should we not be able to represent 4d information in 3d? Will our senses be lifted to news levels of sensitivity? For example if one is in VR and is constantly given the ability to see magnetic fields, once he removes the goggles will his senses pick up on this ability and be able to see the fields in reality? There is already so much information available to a single human being, will the cybernauts of the future take full use of the technology and interact with it? Or will they sit in their chair and be a virtual couch potato. For example when we receive those annoying robotic advertisement calls on the phone, we hang up. However everyone of us is bombarded with commercials on TV and we sit back and take it, content. Will this conditioning lead over to Cyber Space or will the public realize their power and make use of it. On the subject of power, the automobile was suppose to empower everyone way back when that was invented. It did not. Then they told us that television would give power to the average citizen. It did not. Then they said that the personal computer would. It did not. Now they are saying it about VR, how can we make this vision come true? How can we encourage people to make use of this technology? We can do that by educating them. However there is a problem. The people involved with the development of Cyber Space systems right now are elitist. They say they want everyone involved but lets look at the facts. Before all this media hype, most of these people were computer nerds, now they are hip cyber punk stars. If this technology is demystified they stand the chance of going back to being computer nerds. Obviously they do not want this. They shout we want freedom of information, and education of the multitudes. In reality they charge into the thousands of dollars to attend these conferences, and for some of them you have to be selected to attend. Literature and documentation is both scarce and expensive, if you can find it video coverage of these conferences usually ranges in the thousands of dollars. These conferences need to be made available to the public, we need to get fresh ideas for outside the industry. If you ask a software programmer if his software is user friendly, he will unfailingly say yes. If you ask a user of that software you may get a different story. I heard a recent comment that the video game industry has failed us as a medium. I believe that to be totally false. Working as a game counselor I had a good deal of interaction with children involved with video games. For the most part I believe video games did the job they were suppose to do, they got children and adults interested or at least involved with computers. The problem is the industry failed. Kids would know secrets that I did not, and I was payed to play the games. On the other hand, kids were very interested in how the games were made so they could make their own, however they did not have a clue. Unfortunately in the customer service department at this particular company no else did either, besides me. So for every child who I set on the straight course of how to create something themselves, there were many who remained clueless. There are tons of magazines and literature flooding the market on what is coming out next year, but nothing to answer every kid's question, "How does it work, or How do I make one?" The industry is only thinking in the monetary terms of make it while you can, in stead of looking towards the future. This mentality needs to change if ideas such as Cyber Space will succeed. The ethics of ambiguity? It is human nature to try and define everything with definitions based on physical world properties. The sky is blue, an orange is round, etc. However these terms do not transfer over to internal things such as emotions or feelings. What exactly is sadness? There is no true definition, in stead we associate meanings or experiences to the term. As technology advances we continue to gather insight to our inner selves. Cinema has enhanced our ability by giving us imagery references to associate with emotions. With the development of virtual reality what will that lead to? Society currently bases its morals on ideals and doctrines dating back hundreds to thousands of years, what is to say that they still are applicable to modern day. With the state our world is in, it may indicate some problems with these morals. Why not base our morals on science in stead. For example, we respected the beliefs of quantum physics, in which everything is connected to everything else, killing someone or something would be insane, because in reality you are killing part of yourself. Through cyber space we will be able to explore these new ways of thinking. So what does this all mean? Will Cyber Space be a military brain washing propaganda device? Will it be the ultimate arcade game? Will it be a new tool for communication? The answer is yes to all three, The virtual worlds of tomorrow are being shaped today, we must ignore the novelty, and proceed with excitement and intelligence. Any doubts that there will be a Sony CyberMan in the near future?
kilian@poplar (Alan Kilian) (04/30/91)
>From: seguine@girtab.usc.edu (Christopher Seguine) >SCENARIO I (Adam uses a glove to sign which gets translated into speech) This is the coolest application I have ever heard for VR technology. Very very very cool. Congratulations. Now Do you think that this will EVER get done? I sort of doubt it really. >SCENARIO II (Adam's brother becomes a war monger.) Is this really any different than normal military training? I don't think so. Soldiers have been trained to kill people for a few thousand years. Some things never change. VR is simply another tool to make people do what we want them to. (In my obviously pinko opinion) >Ethics in a Virtual World? >It turns out that most people find it easier to describe the >technology behind how it works, rather than what it is. This is >a bad sign. Sign, sign everywhere a sign. Blocking out new paradigms, gettin' work done. >Many of the people involved with this new medium are very >concerned with preventing its misuse. Way too concerned. Concerned to the point of inaction. "Let's just talk about this and no one will get hurt" because nothing will ever get done. >The problem is not with this >particular technology, it is with the society in which it is >based. Will there be CyberPorn and VirtualViolence? I really hope so. If I had a holodeck I'd be in there all day having sex. >Undoubtably yes, unless we can somehow start a consciousness >raising in society itself. And I'll oppose you all the way. >Who is going to be in control in Cyber Space? Obviously >not politicians, they are too busy in their own little world. >Should anyone have more power than anyone else in Cyber Space or >should it be a collective entity? Who will make the laws, what >will they be based on? How will property ownership work? Can >you own virtual property? Come on. "Can you own virtual property?" Do I own the files I keep on my computer right now? Yes. Are they real or virtual files? Virtual. Big deal. >Real world laws need to be updated to the electronic age. >Currently our judicial system is years behind the times. Law >enforcement has little information about laws in the electronic >community, which makes for great injustices. Currently a search >warrant is needed to tap a phone line, however it is perfectly >legal for a police officer to go to Radio Shack and buy a scanner >and tap into cordless or cellular phone conversations without the >need for a warrant. Sounds like you are suggesting that a search warrant shouldn't be needed to tap a phone like. >Electronic crimes happen day due to the helplessness of the police. More nightsticks will solve the problems. Oh by the way when did we stop talking about VR and get onto solving social problems? >Caution must be taken with these new technologies. These new technologies should be pushed as far and as fast as we can. Don't try to solve all of the possible problems on the first cut. Get this stuff developed. Figure it out later. >With all the information we are now learning about VDTs is it wise to >have these two monitors practically attached to our eyeballs? The monitors in the VPL headset are Liquid Crystal Displays and all of the electromagnetic radiation research is being done with normal cathode ray tubes which are nothing like LCD displays. The magnitude of the electromagnetic fields are tiny in LCD displays. >Also just as in the >beginnings of cinema, audiences were frightened out of their >seats by trains coming right at the screen, what will happen when >a train actually runs you over in virtual reality? You will be scared. >Heart attacks or psychological effects? Oh, psychological effects O.K. You will be scared. >VR is going to lead us to new levels of consciousness. And new paradigms of thought and new sensory modalities. You forgot those. >For example if one is in >VR and is constantly given the ability to see magnetic fields, >once he removes the goggles will his senses pick up on this >ability and be able to see the fields in reality? No. The human eye is not sensitive to normal strength magnetic fields. Sorry. >On the subject of power, the automobile was suppose to >empower everyone way back when that was invented. It did not. Ha. The automobile was for rich dudes and dudettes to get around better than the average Joe. Sounds like VR huh? >Then they told us that television would give power to the average >citizen. It did not. Right. See above. >Then they said that the personal computer would. It did not. Right. See above. >Now they are saying it about VR, I see where you are going with this. The answer is "It won't" >how can we make this vision come true? How can we encourage >people to make use of this technology? 1) Make it work. 2) Make it cheap. >So what does this all mean? Will Cyber Space be a military >brain washing propaganda device? Without a doubt Yes. >Will it be the ultimate arcade game? Yes and I can't wait. >Will it be a new tool for communication? Yes. >The answer is yes to all three. >The virtual worlds of tomorrow are being shaped today. >We must ignore the novelty, and proceed with excitement and intelligence. >Any doubts that there will be a Sony CyberMan in the near future? Now you're making sense. Get on with it. And No, I have no doubt that there will bw a "Sony CyberMan" My only doubt is if there will be a "Good 'ol made in the U.S.A CyberMan" -Alan Kilian kilian@cray.com 612.683.5499 Cray Research, Inc. | Getting up early is an absolute drag, 655 F Lone Oak Drive | at least I should suppose it would be. Eagan MN, 55121 | -James S. Kunen _The Strawberry Statement_
jdb9608@ultb.isc.rit.edu (J.D. Beutel) (04/30/91)
>>For example if one is in >>VR and is constantly given the ability to see magnetic fields, >>once he removes the goggles will his senses pick up on this >>ability and be able to see the fields in reality? > >No. The human eye is not sensitive to normal strength magnetic fields. >Sorry. Seeing is more than meets the eye. Sometimes you see what you expect to see, even tho it's not really there. And then there are things right in front of you which you might never notice. Imagine a eyephone/camera/computer which can (somehow) identify hidden weapons (like an experienced police officer) by suspicious bulges in clothing. A rookie could use this visual cue to learn what to look for. With experience the rookie could see what s/he could not see before, but would learn faster with the cueing. How about a similar system for engineers, with input from stress sensors (inside bridges, buildings, or machines)? The VR cues presented in conjunction with the engineer's own senses may allow him/her to learn what to look for. The engineer may begin to be able to see the stressed areas without any input from internal sensors. I expect those wouldn't be the strangest changes in perception. Many suprising discoveries have been made about human perception, so far. VR can be a new tool in experimental psychology, and it may lead to new discoveries--results we could never have imagined because we are so deeply entrenched in the reality we have adapted for ourselves. >>VR is going to lead us to new levels of consciousness. > >And new paradigms of thought and new sensory modalities. You forgot those. Oh yeah--and all that stuff, too. -- -- J. David Beutel 11011011 jdb9608@cs.rit.edu "I am, therefore I am."
vamplew@probitas.cs.utas.edu.au (Peter Vamplew) (04/30/91)
In <1991Apr29.200959.17885@milton.u.washington.edu> kilian@poplar (Alan Kilian) writes: >>From: seguine@girtab.usc.edu (Christopher Seguine) >>SCENARIO I (Adam uses a glove to sign which gets translated into speech) >This is the coolest application I have ever heard for VR technology. >Very very very cool. Congratulations. Now Do you think that this will EVER >get done? I sort of doubt it really. Doubt no more. Work is already being done in this area. My recently commenced PhD thesis is on Machine Recognition of Sign Language, and I know others are also working in the area including Jim Kramer from Stanford who has already developed a system which converts fingerspelling to speech. Expanding this research to full-blown sign language is obviously a long-term goal but at least the work is underway. Peter Vamplew vamplew@probitas.cs.utas.edu.au
kovach@rtc.atk.com (Pete Kovach) (04/30/91)
Peter Vamplew writes - >Doubt no more. Work is already being done in this area. My recently >commenced PhD thesis is on Machine Recognition of Sign Language, and I know >others are also working in the area including Jim Kramer from Stanford who >has already developed a system which converts fingerspelling to speech. >Expanding this research to full-blown sign language is obviously a >long-term goal but at Most certainly it is a popular area. Finger spelling recognition is quite simple and it amazed me that he applied for a patent on it. I know I, and a few others, had developed systems to recognize finger spelling. The sifficult area is recognizing sign language as a whole. Recognizing finger spelling is fairly useless. Can you imagine talking to someone who verbally SPELLED everything - "H-I H-O-W A-R-E Y-O-U". Geeez - a slow conversation to say the least. Also, no one thinks that way and it would be a difficult task just to make yourself finger spell everything rather than sign. It will be interesting to see how people approach the recognition task. I think it will be a great "contest" to see who does the best. I know I hope to be first, but I am sure I will not be. Of well, maybe the best or most affordable. Whatever. -- Peter Kovach Sig - We don't need no stinking sig!
iaf@uk.ac.cam.cl.ely (Innes Ferguson) (05/02/91)
In <1991Apr29.200959.17885@milton.u.washington.edu> Alan Kilian says: >>From: seguine@girtab.usc.edu (Christopher Seguine) > >>SCENARIO I (Adam uses a glove to sign which gets translated into speech) > >This is the coolest application I have ever heard for VR technology. >Very very very cool. Congratulations. Now Do you think that this will EVER >get done? I sort of doubt it really. Something similar has been done already (or is being done). The system I saw didn't use a glove per se; rather it used a full sensor-clad robotic hand that the hearing-impaired user could "mould" into the desired sign. When satisfied the user could "push a button" and generate a synthetic spoken version of the sign. I can't remember who's doing it, what TV program I saw it on, or how advanced it is. Sorry. BTW, this surely isn't a VR application. It's a "plain old" HCI/speech synthesis one. I'm not saying it's easy, but it must be easier than speech recog./understanding given the more constrained form of input (hand signs vs. speech signals). Regards... Innes ============================================================================= Innes A. Ferguson Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Pembroke St., Cambridge CB2 3QG, England, UK. BITNET: iaf@cl.cam.ac.uk JANET: iaf@uk.ac.cam.cl Tel.: +44 223 334421 FAX: +44 223 334678 =============================================================================
mmace@oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu (Mark A. Mace) (05/04/91)
In article <1991Apr26.180325.6387@milton.u.washington.edu> seguine@girtab. usc.edu (Christopher Seguine) writes: >The following is a ROUGH DRAFT of an essay I am writing for an ethics >class I have.... It has not made its way thru the spelling/grammar checker >yet so please bear with me... And excuse the crazy formatting.... Its been First of all, let me state that I am a new to this posting deal, so I apoligize in advance for mistakes. I mainly wanted to say I thought the paper was good, it brought out a lot of important points to be thought about. Unfortunately what is said is completely true. The inventors, and main users are military. This causes the use to be focused on destruction when it could be used for much more humanitarian purposes. I think Candide said it best though with "In the best of all possible worlds...", and forgive me if I misquoted. Mark Mace some really interesting quote should be here if I only had a .sig