Giga Games 1/Giga Games.iso/net/vir_real/faq/publctns/virtualr.lty

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91-07/VR.Rheingold
From: [e-mail] (Bob Jacobson)
Subject: Howard Rheingold's VIRTUAL REALITY: A Review by Charles Tart.
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 1991 01:39:07 GMT
Organization: HIT Lab, Seattle



    Some of you may remember Howard Rheingold as the first moderator
of this newsgroup.  At the time, Howard, who is now editor of THE WHOLE
EARTH REVIEW, in Sausalito, California, was finalizing the manuscript for
his opus, VIRTUAL REALITY, two years in the making.  The book has now
hit the bookstores and is on its way to becoming a relative best-seller.

    I thought that, in honor of Howard's accomplishment, I would
share this clever review of VIRTUAL REALITY by the noted psychologist and
ethnologist, Charles Tart.  Tart, a professor at UC Davis, is best known
for his 1972 classic, ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS, which became a
required text for most psychology students in the 1970s.  (Tart can how
be reached on The WELL at  [e-mail])  Here's Charlie's com-
mentary, in his own words, reposted from The WELL:




    Submitted to "Institute of Noetic Sciences Review"

                  Review of Howard Rheingold's
                         Virtual Reality

                         Charles T. Tart

                    University of California
                     Davis, California 95616

                               and

                  Institute of Noetic Sciences
                   Sausalito, California 94965


     VIRTUAL REALITY.  Howard Rheingold.  New York: Summit Books,
a division of Simon & Schuster.  July 1991.


     If  you  care about the evolution of the human mind  in  our
technological  civilization, this book is must reading.  Even  if
you don't care that much, it's fascinating reading!

     Virtual  reality (VR) or cyberspace, as some prefer to  call
it,  is one of the hottest new technologies of our  times,  still
largely in the laboratory, but probably on the street before  the
end of the century.  I agree with Rheingold when he comments:

     "Virtual reality brings with it a set of questions about the
industries  and  scientific capabilities it makes  possible.   It
also brings with it a set of questions about human uses of  tech
nology,  particularly the technologies that don't yet  exist  but
are  visible  on the horizon.  VR vividly demonstrates  that  our
social  contract  with our own tools has brought us  to  a  point
where we have to decide fairly soon what it is we as humans ought
to  become,  because we are on the brink of having the  power  of
creating any experience we desire.  The first cybernauts realized
very early that the power to create experience is also the  power
to  redefine  such  basic concepts as  identity,  community,  and
reality.  VR represents a kind of new contract between humans and
computers,  an arrangement that could grant us great  power,  and
perhaps change us irrevocably in the process."

     What is VR?

     We have had tiny tastes of technologically generated VR when
we  get absorbed in a TV show or an eyes-closed  phone  conversa
tion, for we tend to think of ourselves as being in the  location
shown in the video or where our telephone partner is.  Yet it  is
easy for this feeling to fade into nothingness.  When you look at
an  ordinary TV screen, for example, the screen occupies about  6
degrees of our visual field.  Our vision ordinarily takes in  150
degrees  or  so  horizontally, so you are immersed  in  the  real
environment  surrounding  the TV, even if the screen is  more  in
focus than the rest of your visual field.

     Psychologically  and physiologically, modern research  shows
that  our brain automatically produces a sense of embodied  self,
and  that embodied self is experienced as being at  the  location
where  our sensory input converges.  Untold millions of years  of
evolution must have gone into hardwiring that into the brain, for
it is very adaptive.  If someone throws a rock in your direction,
it is vital that your brain automatically calculates the  trajec
tory of that rock, decide that it passes through the point  where
you  are  embodied, and get you to duck,  fast!   Creatures  that
don't  have  an accurate sense of bodily self when  the  rock  is
thrown or the predator charges don't reproduce.

     Suppose  you are wearing a helmet or goggles that project  a
binocular TV image to each eye, filling your visual field?   Here
is  Rheingold's  experience in something closely related  to  VR,
telepresence:

     "The  robot  itself looked like the bottom half of  a  large
electric  light pole or a fire hydrant: its body is a  red  metal
cylinder  about 9 inches in diameter.  The upper torso  began  to
get anthropomorphic, with one arm, a two finger gripper where the
hand  ought to be, a neck that is  cantilevered the  proper  dis
tance  behind  and below the visual sensors and which  turns  the
same directions a human neck turns, and twin video cameras mount
ed  where eyes ought to be.  It looks like a machine.  The  huma
noid  resemblance doesn't come from the hardware, but in the  way
the  thing moves when a human is operating it.  It was a  strange
sensation for me, because I was very aware that I was observing a
piece  of hardware.  The weird thing about the lubricated  stain
less steel joints, hydraulic tubes, wire bundles was how it moved
in a way that I am accustomed to seeing humans move and I am  not
accustomed to seeing machines move.

     The  human  operator  sits in a control station  that  is  a
little  scary to observe and a little scarier to operate.  I  sat
in  something  that  looked uncomfortably close  to  a  no-frills
dentist's chair.  The display is head-mounted, but it is a "sword
of Damocles" display that uses a mechanical device - a goniometer
- to track head movements, rather than a magnetic sensor like the
Polhemus.   Along with the mechanical linkages, there is  a  long
arm  with  a counterweight attached to the  head-mounted  display
(HMD).  The HMD is clunky and clamped onto my head fairly  tight
ly; the eyepiece was secured with a chinstrap.  When I was seated
and helmeted, I stuck out my right hand and the arm-hand  control
was locked around my limbs in a manner uncomfortably  reminiscent
of handcuffs.  At that moment, I was blind to the world and  free
to move my neck and arm but nothing else.  When I moved my  hand,
arm, or fingers, the movements were reproduced almost  simultane
ously  by the robot across the room.  I wasn't able  to  transmit
motion  in  every dimension I am accustomed to use: the  arm  has
three degrees of freedom, the neck has seven degrees of  freedom.
But the constraints didn't carry as much weight with my awareness
as the possibilities.  Just being able to pick up a wand with  my
robot body and thread it through a hoop 12 feet away and feel  as
if I did it myself, was far more impressive than the fact that  I
couldn't dropkick the wand through the hoop.

     When the apparatus was switched on, I began to look  through
the  eyes  of the robot.  The world looked like the  world  would
look  if I was located twelve feet to the left of my body,  where
the  robot  was located.  I reached out my arm, craned  my  neck,
opened  my gripper, and picked up a small rod.  It took me  about
five  seconds  to figure out how to poke the rod  through  2-inch
diameter hoops that were set around me at various intervals.   It
took  about 10 seconds to be completely comfortable with my  con
trol of the robot......"How easy it is for a well-tuned human  to
adapt  to  a  machine," I wrote in my notebook as  soon  as  they
unstrapped me.

     The  strangest moment was when Dr. Tachi told me to look  to
my  right.   There was a guy in a dark blue suit and  light  blue
painted  shoes reclining in a dentist's chair. He was looking  to
his right, so I could see the bald spot on the back of his  head.
He  looked like me, and abstractly I understood that he  was  me,
but I know who me is, and me is here.  He, on the other hand, was
there.   It doesn't take a high degree of sensory  verisimilitude
to  create a sense of remote presence......It was an out  of  the
body experience, no doubt about it."

     What you see on the TV screens dominating your field of view
tends to become not pictures on screens but visual reality.   The
arm  you see in front of you may, at some intellectual level,  be
the robot's arm, but it quickly becomes your arm.  After all,  it
moves as you will it, you feel it move, you see it move.

     Consider now the images dominating your visual field.  There
is  no reason that they have to come from cameras at  some  other
real-world  location:  a  fast, powerful  computer  can  generate
realistic, three-dimensional images too.  Suppose you find  your
self moving around in a room in your robot body (but remember, it
quickly  becomes  your  body).  If the images  are  detailed  and
realistic enough, does it matter whether a real set of cameras is
focused on a real room in which a real robot moves a real arm  to
grasp real objects?  The room, your hand, your body, the  objects
in  the room may just as well be virtual objects, that  is,  they
exist only as electronic patterns in a computer and as neurologi
cal patterns in your mind.

     Technically,  the VR images I and most others  have  experi
enced  to date are just plain stylized and grainy, yet  experien
tially,  they are already fairly real, even  at this crude  state
of  the art.  Yet they are good enough to trigger the feeling  of
being there: our natural brain functioning helps out the  comput
er.    By  the  turn of the century the image  quality,  in  more
senses than just visual,  will be very real indeed.

"Cognitive  simulation  -  mental model-making - is  one  of  the
things  humans do best.  We do it so well that we tend to  become
locked  into  our own models of the world by a  seamless  web  of
unconscious beliefs and subtly-molded perceptions.  And computers
are  model-making  tools par excellence, although they  are  only
beginning to approach the point where people might confuse  simu
lations  with  reality.  Computation and display  technology  are
converging  on hyper-real simulation capability.  That  point  of
convergence is important enough to contemplate in advance of  its
arrival.   The day computer simulations become so realistic  that
people cannot distinguish them from non-simulated reality, we are
in for major changes."

     To create VR or cyberspace, then, you visually surround your
cybernaut with a coherent visual space that is interactive.  This
interaction is vital to give the feeling of presence.  You  don't
just see a canned image of some object in VR, you can move around
it and inspect it, stereoscopically, from all sides.  If you have
lots  of money you can build a special room whose walls  are  all
rear  projection screens.  Or, much more cheaply, your  cybernaut
wears  special goggles (Eyephones [TM], as VPL, one of  the  pio
neering  companies calls them).  The goggles contain  a  position
sensor  (such as the Polhemus sensor mentioned above) which  con
stantly tell the computer what direction you are looking in.  The
computer then gives you the appropriate view whenever and wherev
er you turn your head.

     How  do you move around?  In your virtual body,  of  course.
In the simplest form, as in the description of Rheingold's  expe
rience teleoperating the robot given above, all the virtual  body
you  have is an arm and hand.  The most widely used device  today
is the Dataglove [TM], also made by VPL.  In addition to a Polhe
mus  sensor which tells the computer where your hand is in  three
dimensional  space and how it is oriented, sensors in  the  glove
indicate how much each finger and the thumb is bent.  Thus at any
moment  the computer knows where your hand is and whether  it  is
pointing, making a fist, releasing, etc.  This translates into  a
hand  you see in VR, and hand that psychologically  becomes  your
hand  because it does what you want and matches your  sensations.
Make a fist: you not only feel your hand making a fist, the  hand
you see in VR makes a fist.  Open your hand and turn it palm  up:
the VR hand opens and turns palm up.  It is yours.

     Full  body sensing suits are under development,  though  not
yet  commercially available, so the computer will know the  posi
tion of all your arms and legs, and your virtual body will  mimic
all your major body actions.

     Rheingold spent two years traveling around the world to find
the various strands of research and development that are converg
ing to make VR such a powerful technology, as well as tracing its
history.   In a fascinating vignette, we see how Hollywood  could
have  pioneered VR twenty years ago, but it didn't have  the  vi
sion.  Now we have major research projects in Japan, England  and
France,  to name just a few, as well as in the United States  and
in  the  place we would most expect to find it,  California.   In
Japan we see VR technology being linked to telecommunications  to
open the way to seeing each other on the phone as well as hearing
each  other.   In Franc ewe metaphorically listen  to  a  virtual
violin played, movements in the air that will lead to the  devel
opment of new virtual musical instruments beyond what any  physi
cal instrument could ever do.

     I  shall  mention just two practical applications of  VR  to
date:  I  have proposed new psychological  ones  elsewhere.   In
North Carolina Rheingold tells us about a practical  applications
of  VR to research in developing new medicines through  molecular
synthesis.   The molecules you would like to join literally  seem
to  float in three dimensional space in front of you as you  push
and  pull on them from various angles, feeling when  they  resist
union and where you can join them.  Chemists who have worked with
the  system find they can work about twice as fast as they  could
before.  The first medical drug designed this way is now undergo
ing clinical trials.

     Also  in  North Carolina Rheingold tells us  about  the  new
Computer Sciences Building which was designed with the assistance
of  VR.  Consider an architect's job:  she has to have  excellent
visualization  abilities to internally simulate what  a  building
will  look  like  after it is done.   Are  these  abilities  good
enough.   Perhaps  the architect is a good visualizer,  but  what
about the client?  Do they share the same vision?

     The Computer Sciences Building was constructed in VR  before
it  was built.  The people who were going to use it  then  donned
goggles and walked on a treadmill that told the computer how  far
they  had  walked,  which directions they had  turned  in.   They
virtually  entered  the  building, walked  along  its  corridors,
peered out its windows, entered its rooms.  A question like "Will
this  room have too much glare when the winter sun is low in  the
sky?"  could be immediately answered by shifting the sun  in  the
virtual world containing the virtual building so you  experienced
what  the  light  in that room would be like  then.   A  building
feature  was  found to obstruct pedestrian traffic flow,  and  so
altered  before  the actual building was constructed.   It  would
have  cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make that  altera
tion after the building was literally set in concrete.

     It  is well to remind ourselves too that it is not all  work
and no play, but both:

     "As  Brenda  Laurel put it:  "Reality has  always  been  too
small for human imagination.  The impulse to create an  'interac
tive  fantasy machine' is only the most recent  manifestation  of
the age-old desire to make our fantasies palpable - our  insatia
ble  need  to exercise our imagination, judgment, and  spirit  in
worlds, situations, and personae that are different from those of
our everyday lives.  Perhaps the most important feature of  human
intelligence  is the ability to internalize the process of  trial
and error.  When a man considers how to climb a tree, imagination
serves  as  a laboratory for 'virtual'  experiments  in  physics,
biomechanics,  and  physiology.  In matters of justice,  art,  or
philosophy, imagination is the laboratory of the spirit.""

     I  am particularly excited by the development of VR  because
of my long standing interest in altered states of  consciousness.
In the early 1970s I developed a systems approach to  understand
ing  states of consciousness like hypnosis, dreaming,  meditation
and drug-induced states, but I lacked a good technological model
to make it easier for people to understand.  VR is it, for what I
proposed  was that we live in an internally produced VR, a  World
Simulation,  produced by our physiology and our  particular  psy
chology.  Change some of the fundamentals of the World Simulation
process and you have an altered state of consciousness.  I  shall
be  writing about this extensively in the future, as VR opens  up
many possibilities for exploring and inducing altered states,  as
well as understanding them better.

     I could go on at great length about Rheingold's book, but  I
think I said enough to communicate the excitement.  Like  techno
logical  developments before it - the automobile, the  telephone,
television,  as just three examples - VR is going to  change  our
world in both good and bad ways.

     "The  advent of technology-generated hyper-reality could  be
the  nightmarish "consensual hallucination" described by  William
Gibson in the novel Neuromancer, where the word cyberspace origi
nated.   Or the result might be an increase in human freedom  and
power,  akin  to the aftereffects of printing  and  communication
technologies.   Which way it will go -dystopia or  empowerment  -
depends in part upon how people react to the unmasking of reality
as  a  cognitive-perceptual construct.  People tend to  react  in
different  ways  to the news that reality might be  an  illusion,
depending  on their personal emotional attachment to their  brand
of reality.  Denial, cognitive dissonance, resistance, and satori
are  all  possible psychological reactions to the  truth  we  are
forced  to face in the illusory realm of cyberspace,  in  roughly
descending order of popularity."


References:

(1)Tart,   C.   T.,  Multiple  personality,  altered  states  and
virtual   reality:   The   world  simulation  process   approach.
Dissociation: Progress in the Dissociative Disorders, in press.

(2)Tart,   C. T., States of Consciousness.  El Cerrito,  Califor
nia, 1983.   Originally  published by Dutton, New York, 1975.

=====

From: [e-mail] (Mark A. DeLoura)
Subject: Re: Reading matter
Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1991 17:12:04 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle


    I just picked up Howard Rheingold's "Virtual Reality,"
    which at first glance (all I have had time for so far)
    appears really good.  I thought that I would post the Table of
    Contents to the net, since it is of general interest to all.

    Table of Contents:

    Part One: A Microscope for the Mind
        Chapter 1. "Grasping Reality Through Illusion"
    Part Two: Breaking the Reality Barrier
        Chapter 2. The Experience Theater and the Art
            of Binocular Illusion
        Chapter 3. Machines to Think With
        Chapter 4. The Threshold of Virtual Exploraton
        Chapter 5. Entering Cyberspace
    Part Three: The Reality-Industrial Complex
        Chapter 6. Blastoff at NASA
        Chapter 7. The Birth of the VR Business
        Chapter 8. Cyberspace and Serious Business
        Chapter 9. Reality on your Retina
        Chapter 10. Cool Gadgets and Industrial Policies
        Chapter 11. "Visual, Intelligent, and Personal"
        Chapter 12. Out of the Body
        Chapter 13. The Origins of Drama and the Future of Fun
        Chapter 14. The Feel of Things
        Chapter 15. Homebrew VR
    Part Four: Virtual Reality and the Future
        Chapter 16. Teledildonics and Beyond
        Chapter 17. Cyberspace and Human Nature
        (References)
        (Index)

    The book is 415 pages.  ISBN 0-671-69363-8.

===============================================================================
Mark A. DeLoura    [e-mail]      University of Washington
    "...the paneled room folded itself through a dozen impossible
     angles, tumbling away into cyberspace like an origami crane."
                    --William Gibson, _Neuromancer_