Glasshouse by Green Phosphor is a gateway which can take a database query or a spreadsheet and place a 3D representation of it into a virtual world. Users can see data, and drill into it; re-sort it; explore it interactively - all from within a virtual world.
Glasshouse produces graphs which are avatars of the data itself.
Virtual worlds are environments where avatars can observe and
interact with eachother.
This is a wonderful advance for human to human interaction; and
it is also a wonderful advance for human to program
interaction. Imagine a useful program residing somewhere on
the Internet… and to interact with it, all you need to do is
invite its avatar into a virtual world with you. The avatar of
the program is its 3D user interface.
Imagine the program is architectural software and it
can generate into the environment anything you are
designing. Suppose you have it put a house into the virtual space,
and all the components of the house are interactive - you can
click on a door and change the type of door; you can click on
the floor and choose a new kind of tile from an actual
inventory database out there on the net. Imagine interacting
with a molecular model of a protein and when you click on
various amino acids and ligands they present menu options for
modifying the model or cross-referencing with others.
Imagine a program which searches the web for you. The program's
avatar looks like a librarian and follows you around, and when
you say "find me the most authoritative website on
bodybuilding" it injects a web page into the virtual environment.
Imagine interacting with software as you would with a personal
assistant.
All this is possible through the use of protocols such as CICP
and MXP, which allow external entities to
place interactive content into virtual worlds. All the logic and
machinery stays outside the world and just the user interfaces
(objects) go inside the world for you to interact with. This
is the vision that led me to create CICP - and the particular way
Green Phosphor is using CICP is to create interactive
representations of data.
Green Phosphor's product is called Glasshouse,
and it is a gateway which can take a database query or a
spreadsheet and place a 3D representation of it into a virtual
world. Users can see data, and drill into it; re-sort it;
explore it interactively - all from within a virtual world.
Glasshouse produces graphs which are avatars of the data itself.
We've tailored the system for the use of biotech companies,
specifically for drug discovery and development. Dr.
David Resuehr, a molecular biologist, recently joined
Green Phosphor as our Chief Scientist. We've just now entered
our marketing phase - for more information please visit
http://greenphosphor.com/?location=Biotech.
The power of interacting with data in 3D has to be experienced
to be believed. Some day soon many people will have jobs which
require SQL skills and virtual world skills; these "data
wizards" will turn information into intelligence within the 3D
environment. They'll facilitate a data-driven decision-making
process which will hopefully reduce some of
the short-sightedness and stupidity we've seen lately in many
of our critical institutions.
Jani: What do you refer to when you say:
"…will hopefully reduce some of the
shortsightedness and stupidity we've seen lately in many of
our critical institutions."? Could you give an example?
Ben: I have a couple examples which I'm sure
won't offend anyone and a third which may. First off I believe
that visualization of money in/money out could have
turned authorities on to the fishy accounting
Enron was up to, and caught them earlier.
Perhaps better visualization would have revealed
Madoff's ponzi scheme as well. It's a matter
of seeing the big picture; money must come from somewhere and
be tied to intrinsic value at some point. My third example is
similar, but rather than money in/money out it is about energy
in/energy out. I believe proper visualization of the process for
producing ethanol fuel, including energy cost of fertilizer,
would reveal the uselessness of subsidizing cornbased ethanol
as an alternative to fossil fuels. Much of the value of looking at
data has to do with getting in touch with history rather than
trying to look at realtime feeds with everfiner granularity.
There is tremendous value in looking at the past in objective ways
- and the best objectivity comes from hard, unadulterated
data. Combine data visualization and visible process
simulation with massive collaboration - crowdsourcing, masterminds
formed by teams - and the human race can be more
intelligent.
Jani: I'd like to get a quote from Dr. David
Resuehr.
DrDavid: For science, the 3-D environment may
really have a very prosperous future. We know that the
discovery of many drugs was more or less coincidental like for
instance when Fleming discovered Penicillin.
Others were specifically and tediously designed, tested
and created. Insufficient testing can - as it happened with
Thalidomide - have terrible consequences. During the 50's
and early 60's thousands of children in Africa and Europe were
born with severe malformations because their mothers had been
given this drug against morning sickness.
What does all this have to do with virtual worlds and 3D
environments? The connection lies in the fact that molecules
are not flat but have a (sometimes very elaborate) three
dimensional structure. Here is the anecdote:
Thalidomide exists in two isomers (enantiomers), which
are mirror images of each other, like your right and left
hand. The problem was (as was found out later) that one of the
versions, the 'S' enantiomer, was teratogenic [causes
malformations]; but the 'R' enantiomer was an effective
sedative. I like to refer to the 'S' enantiomer as the "evil
twin". Had the developing scientists been able to display and most
of all discuss this and its possible implications with their
peers, maybe they would have been more diligent and could have
prevented the release of this cocktail and its devastating effects
for thousands of people. Clearly it is impossible to recognize
and tell apart a "bad" molecule from a good one by just
looking at it, but having it dangling right in front of your nose
in cyberspace may make you think about it a little more
thoroughly and prime discussions about it.
DrDavid: Virtual worlds like Wonderland
and OpenSimulator offer never before available possibilities
for researchers from all fields to interact with each other and
display and scrutinize their data in new and more intuitive
ways. This platform also offers a link from the people in the
lab to the people at the desks and enables everyone to give their
input, from wherever in the world they are - many brains are
better than one and sometimes it may take a non-scientist to
come up with a great idea; after all it's about collaboration
and working as one strong team.
DrDavid: A long-term goal is, in collaboration
with bioinformatics and cell biology specialists, to create a
complete virtual cell. If we can accurately display and
simulate cellular pathways, we may be able to better
understand drugs' molecular actions, explain adverse effects,
predict risks, and discover potential therapeutical targets for
the development of new drugs.
Ben: I believe one of the keys to intelligence
is the elimination of bias and preconceptions. This
elimination opens the door to truth. One of the great features
of looking at raw data in a virtual world is you can start
without any labels or explanations of what the data is. You
simply see the patterns, the outliers… then click in and see
what the actual datapoints are, and be prepared to accept what
is revealed. I'd like to close by mentioning a pilot project
in Second Life which is using the free version of Glasshouse
to show the effects of various companies' customer loyalty
efforts on revenue. The data was provided by Leslie
Pagel and the graphs are on display at Gronstedt
Group's Train for Success2 region. Here's a slurl:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Business%201/211/48/33.