F.-
Telepresence -
Networking -Cyberspace
- Telepresence
Telepresence is a variation on visualizing
complete computer generated worlds. This a technology
links remote sensors in the real world with the senses of
a human operator. The remote sensors might be located on
a robot, or they might be on the ends of WALDO like
tools.
Fire fighters use remotely operated
vehicles to handle some dangerous conditions. Surgeons
are using very small instruments on cables to do surgery
without cutting a major hole in their patients. The
instruments have a small video camera at the business
end. Robots equipped with telepresence systems have
already changed the way deep sea and volcanic exploration
is done. NASA plans to use telerobotics for space
exploration. There is currently a joint US/Russian
project researching telepresence for space rover explorat
- "Cyberspace
" is the `place` where a telephone
conversation appears to occur. Not inside your actual
phone, the plastic device on your desk. Not inside the
other person's phone, in some other city.
_The_place_between_ the phones The indefinate place
_out_there_, where the two of you, human beings, actually
meet and communicate." Bruce Sterling.
The word "cyberspace" was coined
by the science fiction author William Gibson, when
he sought a name to describe his vision of a global
computer network, linking all people, machines and
sources of information in the world, and through which
one could move or "navigate" as through a
virtual space.
- The word "cyber", apparently
referring to the science of cybernetics, was well-chosen
for this purpose, as it derives from the Greek verb
"Kubernao", which means "to steer"
and which is the root of our present word "to
govern".
It connotes both the idea of navigation
through a space of electronic data, and of control which
is achieved by manipulating those data. For example, in
one of his novels Gibson describes how someone, by
entering cyberspace, could steer computer-controlled
helicopters to a different target. Gibson's cyberspace is
thus not a space of passive data, such as a library: its
communication channels connect to the real world, and
allow cyberspace navigators to interact with that world.
The reference to cybernetics is important
in a third respect: cybernetics defines itself as a
science of information and communication, and
cyberspace's substrate is precisely the joint network of
all existing communication channels and information
stores connecting people and machines.
The word "space", on the
other hand, connotes several aspects.
- First, a space has a virtually infinite
extension, including so many things that they can never
be grasped all at once. This is a good description of the
already existing collections of electronic data, on e.g.
the Internet.
- Second, space connotes the idea of free
movement, of being able to visit a variety of states or
places.
- Third, a space has some kind of a
geometry, implying concepts such as distance, direction
and dimension.
The most direct implementation of the
latter idea is the technology of virtual reality, where a
continuous three-dimensional space is generated by
computer, which reacts to the user's movements and
manipulations like a real physical space would. In a more
metaphorical way, the geometry (or at least topology) of
space can be found in the network of links and references
characterizing a hypertext (which can be seen as the most
general form for a collection of interlinked data).
Nodes in a hypertext can be close
or distant, depending on the number of links one must
traverse in order to get from the one to the other.
Moreover, the set of links in a given node define a
number of directions in which one can move. However, a
hypertext does not seem to have any determined number of
dimensions (except perhaps infinity), it is not
continuous but "chunky", and the distance
between two points is in general different depending on
the point from which one starts to move.
One of the challenges for the researchers
who are trying to make present computer networks look
more like a Gibsonian cyberspace is to integrate the
intuitive geometry of 3-D virtual reality, with the more
general, but cognitively confusing, infinite
dimensionality of hypertext nets (see e.g. NCSA's Virtual
Reality interface to the World-Wide Web are being
discussed.
- As a description for what presently
exists, the word "cyberspace" is used in
a variety of significations, which each emphasize one or
more of the meanings sketched above.
Some use it as a synonym for virtual
reality, others as a synonym for the World-Wide Web
hypermedia network, or for the Internet as a whole
(sometimes including the telephone, TV, and other
communication networks). None of the uses already seems
to incorporate the most intrinsically cybernetic aspect
of the concept: that of a shared medium through which one
can exert control over one's environment. Control can
apply as well to objects in cyberspace (e.g. when you
alter the information in database through a Web form
interface), as to objects in the real world (telepresence
or teleoperation).