Intellectual production are the main engine of the economy, as considerably bigger part of the gross world product is being earned with intellectual work than with handwork. Handwork is being done in our three dimensional physical environment and produces tangible results. While the intellectual work produces intangible, i.e. virtual results, and being done in a non-physical, thus virtual environment.
Four critical directions for
virtual environment technology
Intellectual production are the main engine of the economy,
as considerably bigger part of the gross world product is being
earned with intellectual work than with handwork. Handwork is being
done in our three dimensional physical environment and produces
tangible results. While the intellectual work produces intangible,
i.e. virtual results, and being done in a non-physical, thus
virtual environment.
While
our society in a last couple of thousand years has pretty succeeded
in adapting its physical environment to its production and living
needs (terraforming, roads, buildings, machines), the environment
for the intellectual production remained premature and accessible
to the highest intellectual elite. This situation begun to slowly
change with the invention of computers and emergence of ICT. More
and more people get access to the environment where the
intellectual production takes place, which is not only good for
these people and for raising volume of the intellectual production,
but also for prosperity and stability of the whole
society.
Yet, the
virtual space is far from being an easily inhabitable and workable
environment. It is still in the stone age era - pretty
inconvenient, dangerous and demanding relatively much of human
unproductive effort to survive there in. What should we do to
change this situation to the better?
Big Four
In my
opinion, to make the virtual space a "livable" and productive
environment and afford mass usage of virtual environment by
organisations and individual users we should catalyze the following
technology developments:
I.
tools to easy build, evolve and maintain
private and corporate virtual environments;
II.
tools for easy reproduction (I would even dare
to say copying) of our real world environment and physical objects
in virtual environment;
III.
allow to 'physically' merge-on-demand of
virtual environments;
IV.
provide possibility to embody our own bodies in
virtual environment.
Number I is evident, progressing pretty
well, and does not need any special elaboration.
Number II is something which will help
to dramatically increase the efficiency of our intellectual
production, and will be of unmeasurable value for the entertainment
industry.
Number III is not really touched in the
theoretical literature, let alone in any of the existing or planned
implementation of virtual environments. Every manufacturer of
virtual environments cares only about its own fenced garden,
locking users in there, totally controlling the environment and
earning some money this way. Interconnection is now only
primitively realized in a very limited possibility to transfer an
avatar from one fenced garden to another. In my opinion the big
commercial and social value lies in providing possibility to
interconnect any virtual space with any other
(one or more).
Number IV is an implicit novelty as yet
not even being considered in discussions about the directions of
development of the virtual environment technology. While this one
can be a "killing application" of, the catalyst for, and the
driving force behind, the evolution of the virtual environment
technology.
While most experts have a consensus in
that people will have to use avatar in virtual environments, I
believe in the near future this will only partially be the
practice. Otherwise and to the contrary, people themselves will
inhabit and do in virtual environment many things they do now in
real life, and much much more than that.
This point isn't about merely
controlling your computer with your body (like in 'Minority
Report'). This isn't only about playing 3D-games (like World of
Warcraft). This isn't about seeing a video image of the person you
are talking to (like in video conference).
It is about:
-
being present in a virtual environment
yourself;
-
possibility to control your movement in virtual
space;
-
controlling objects in virtual environment,
which can be anything - 'things', connections, applications,
communication means, creativity tools, visualized information and
data streams, and more;
-
possibility to transform the surrounding
virtual environment at will;
-
new way of seeing and feeling the reality -
from within the artificially created universe.
In short, this is all about a new
unprecedented level of interaction and perceptual
experience.
Real life value of Big
Four
When these four basic directions of the
virtual environment technology develop to some mature level, they
can add real value to all aspects of our life: business and work,
social and entertainment, education, ecological situation, and,
probably most important, new consciousness.
Here below a non-comprehensive overview
of possible value added scenarios are considered. Of course when
the technology is in place, people will invent lots of other
applications we now even cannot think of - creativity of people has
no boundaries.
1.
Value for commerce, work, R&D.
1) Accelerated intellectual production:
Innovation, development and intellectual production shall become
fast, flexible and almost free of the usual overhead. This namely
because the most important 'raw materials' and tools for
intellectual production are already, and will remain, mainly
virtual - these are information and software - and easily
reproducible. As these resources will further tend to become
decentralized and free from restrictive property rights, they will
quicker dissipate, and thus will allow quicker intellectual
production turnover.
2) Virtual tools: Virtual tools can be
made as real in virtual environments as tools can be in the real
world. Besides, these tools can be distantly shared between users,
thus allowing to collectively specify, prototype, analyze, modify,
describe things being produced in the shared
environment.
3) Virtual teams and decentralization:
One of the bigger and costly obstacles for quick and qualitative
intellectual production now is to have right specialist
at right time at right place. Proper virtual
working environment which "feels 
like" real can solve this
problem. The solution resides in the inclusion
of ourselves in virtual environment and in the possibility to
"physically" connect individual virtual spaces into one collective
working space on demand.
As the recent practice have already
proved, even nowadays primitive 'pre'-virtual environments seem to
be a great place for innovation and deployment of creative
activities in small and flexible group. These are being established
by individuals from all over the world for a definite period of
time with the aim of creating products, offering services, and
earning money.
This will eventually result in
decentralization of intellectual production and vanishing of many
existing monopolies.
4) Non-ICT professions: User interfaces
are a bane to many "normal" users. For many people computers remain
difficult to use, primarily because of poor user interfaces. Many
technical (non-IT) specialists are forced to become computer
experts not because of their interest in computers but because of
the odd nature of computer programs they need. Virtual environment
will offer the potential of placing the user inside the data.
Rather than learning an obscure control language in order to
operate a simulation, one will be able to simply reach out and push
the data around.
5) Equal chances in deploying your
capabilities: If you are a smart guy or just a right guy for this
right piece of work, no matter how you look like, where you live
and which taxes you will have to pay to whom - these are not the
topics on the list of the virtual team, rather right results within
the given budget and timeframe.
6) Reduction of business travel:
Presently various companies are trying to make use of the necessity
of business to reduce travel costs. While companies like Cisco,
Tandberg, WebEx et al, are trying to convince clients that
teleconferencing is The Remedy against high travel costs, other
companies like Linden Labs promote virtual meetings in their own
virtual worlds where avatars can meet and chat with each other.
While the first option of teleconferencing allows to see real
persons, the 'real' interaction is rather limited due to 2D-like
picture on the static and non-penetrable screen. On the other hand,
the 3D environment of Second Life for example allows spatial
interaction, but not with a real person. Also there you have no
possibility to experience very important parts of the real
communication - facial and gestural parts. The solution again
resides in the inclusion of ourselves in virtual environment and
interconnection of virtual spaces.
2.
Value for entertainment
1) Affordable tourism: Many people dream
"to see the World" but only a very limited amount of them can
afford that. Especially with technologies allowing easy
reproduction of real world places in virtual environment men can
create a totally new industry and help people with realization of
their dreams. Or help them with new unthinkable dreams, like going
into a volcano or 11 km deep underwater.
2) Virtual exploration of the Solar
system or distant part of the Universe: With the current scientific
knowledge of the surrounding Universe it becomes possible to
reproduce actually any part of it in the virtual reality (except
black holes of course) for educational and entertainment purposes.
Traveling to stars, landing on Mars, riding a comet, crossing the
galaxy with any speed you like - everything is possible.
3) Exploring virtual universe itself:
The virtual universe we all together are going to create piece by
piece will potentially
be not less interesting to explore
than this real one we are currently find ourselves in. Outer space
is OK, but will seem to be boring compared to what a human
conscious mind can imagine. Our imagination realized in virtual
reality will bring us farther than our physical boundaries would
ever allow us to in the real world.
4) 3D holiday memories: Technologies
allowing easy reproduction of real world places in virtual
environment will allow people, instead of nowadays holiday photo
pictures, to take with them and share with others their holiday
memories in a form of complete environment as they could experience
that in their real journey. Or instead of sending ansicht cards
people can send ansicht environments: "We are here now, look in
this beautiful castle with us". This way you can not only share the
small part of the view you have experienced, but share emotions you
have about the environment. And emotions are contagious.
5) Creating your own games: The gaming
industry is steadily growing now with double digit cipher tempo
every year. Even higher ciphers can potentially be realized when
everybody will be able to build her own game in the very own world.
The good example of the Apple apps store, where people, even
non-hardcoders, in no time make fortunes just by coming up with
brilliant ideas and implementing them with available standardized
and easy to use tools, can prove this statement.
3.
Value for social life
1) Possibility to re-gain individual
privacy: Privacy is one of the hottest topics now as governments
aim to control every bit of private information belonging to a
citizen. While citizens, with exception of small groups of
activists, do not even realize the dangers of "nationalization" of
personal information and consequences thereof. Isolation of private
virtual spaces and proper digital defense thereof can help to
re-gain the individual privacy of citizens w.r.t. location,
communication, meeting, watching, listening, reading,
etc.
2) Merging private environment: A
possibility to remotely connect individual virtual spaces can turn
to be interesting for people, not only within office hours but also
in private life. By giving impression of merging of personal "own"
environments a totally new guest-going culture can appear. Being
simultaneously guests of each other is something different than
being a guest of one another.
3) Friends, no matter of distance: This
of course will never replace personal contact, but for people who
are divided by long distance coming together in one space can be of
invaluable importance. Phoning, chatting or even having a videocon
can also be valuable and fun. But inhabiting together a
three-dimensional space cannot be matched. This will allow people
not only to communicate some audio or video information to each
other, but to 'be together' and to 'do things together' despite
geographical location.
4) Therapy: Self therapy or prescribed
therapy in suitable virtual spaces can help many people who cannot
afford this in real life to heal their mental and psychical
disorders. This is also not that new and is being already applied,
although the technology is not yet mature for that.
4.
Value for education
Most humans are visually installed
rather than audibly. Virtual environment allows not only to
visualize lots of information to be taught, but also to reproduce
any physical environment and situation, and provides at the same
time many more possibilities next to pure visualization. It is
being referred to as "Immersion - the state of consciousness where
human awareness of physical self is diminished or lost by being
surrounded in an engrossing artificial environment" (Wikipedia).
There are simple and more sophisticated examples of immersion.
Simple: in a geography classroom you are surrounded by maps on the
walls, practicing judo on tatami you are surrounded by pictures of
fighting judokas. Much more sophisticated is an example of hypnotic
learning. In general, a featured environment is needed in order to
immerse into a learning substance.
5.
Value for ecology
1) Physical transport: Added value for
the ecology lies in reduction of physical transportation of
persons, as well as goods requiring nowadays 'physical presence'
(like models, prototypes, expo goods, etc.).
2) Parallel programming: As power
consumption, and accordingly heat generation, by computers seem to
be of a great concern in recent years, parallel computing promises
to become a green alternative for computation industry. One of the
problems here is not the hardware architecture or the construction
of processors, but the culture and habit of programming. Modern
programmers used to code in one dimension, i.e. sequentially,
step-by-step in a chain. Parallel computing programming however
requires a mind switch to multi-dimensional thinking, visualization
of algorithm streams and complex data dependencies within a
program. Virtual environments and proper tools to be created there
within, can boost the evolution of parallel programming.
3) Less office space: Although being
questioned by some authors, the broadly supported idea is that the
technology of virtual environments can greatly diminish the demand
for real office space, as virtual offices created when necessary
on-the-fly can be much more flexible and can be equipped with
anything required for the modern work space.
What has been described here is just a
glimpse of chances which the virtual environment technology can
help to realize - after all creativity of human being cannot be
overestimated.
For this to take shape, we have to pay
attention to the four main directions of the virtual environment
technology developments listed at the beginning of this
story.
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