Agency
“It is a terrible thing to
see and have no vision.” – Helen Keller
The computer may have vision, but it has no idea what to do with
what it sees.
agency - how a
result is obtained or an end is achieved
Making an Agent
of the Computer
What does the
computer see?
The proper response to the changing input of our head position is
for the computer to render the world from that point of view.
The mathematical equations that dictate the rendering of the world
require only the position and orientation of the viewer.
However, when we want the computer to understand what we are
looking at, we have a problem:
What does it
feel?
How should we indicate to the computer that our hand is “inside”
of an object?
This also poses questions:
As a result, the situation must be simplified:
How should we indicate to the computer that our hand is “touching”
an object?
Again, this also poses questions:
As a result, the following is true:
What does it
hear?
If our hand is reduced to a center point or a few bulky line
segments, then our ability to communicate with the environment is significantly
less than real life.
We are accustomed to not only moving our hand to objects, but
interacting with them in a complicated manner such as grabbing them, pushing
buttons, moving them on the surface.
Some other mean of indicating our intentions is necessary if we
are not using a tracking system that can monitor the tips of the fingers and a
real-time system that can make sense of those inputs.
As a result, the following is true:
People often ask why we do not use voice recognition in the cave.
If voice recognition is so useful for getting things done then why
don’t 99.99% of the desktop computer users in the world use it?
People will be doing productive work in virtual environments long
before they abandon the visual and motor oriented relationship they now enjoy
with the computer.