On the empowerment of people in VR

The missing part of the equation regarding the exchange of information on the web is people. To be sure people post to Knowledge centers and retrieve from the same but these acts rarely involve another person. Essentially the world wide web is a huge warehouse of content but not necessarily knowledge.

knowledge noun
[S or U] understanding of or information about a subject which a person gets by experience or study, and which is either in a person's mind or known by people generally.

Knowledge is information applied by a person to a decision. Knowledge is, more often than not, acquired through relationships. It is the establishment of relationships that makes the transfer of knowledge person to person possible. The advent of Virtual Reality Environments, at long last, enables the use of relationships for transfer of knowledge.  More over it enables relationship formation by-passing formal introduction and the limits of distance.

The principle of the six degrees of separation (also referred to as the "Human Web") refers to the idea that if a person is one step away from each person they know, and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth.

Here is a classic example of how it worked:

A co-worker approached me a few years ago and asked if I knew what happening at the French Open now. He could find lots of web sites on what happened yesterday but not now. I entered ActiveWorlds and asked the question on a crowded GZ (Ground Zero aka arrival point). A person on the GZ contacted an acquaintance via email and shortly I received an answer in chat albeit in French from that acquaintance.  I activated Bablefish and entered conversation and data transfer with a man in Paris at the Open with a lap top attached to the French Television feed.

On the surface that is not too impressive. Consider the deeper implications. Using only one question I established a relationship with a person I never met.  He used an existing relationship with his acquaintance to allow me to establish a relationship with the Frenchman. In two degrees of separation I had data from the French Open not available to the general public and on an ephemeral link existing for only a few hours. In short the human web easily trumped the standard way of finding information by using a search engine. I would never have found this link with a search engine. Clearly, involving humans in the finding of information can allow knowledge to flow in torrents. When the transfer occurs in an information room wherein users can create and adjust link displays it is possible for virtual reality to generate a new phenomena – the information storm.

Using information Rings in Information Rooms

Visualization is Key

The most important consideration when using ring structures in an information room is the range of vision of the Avatar.  View points originate in the center of the room may be stacked creating different vistas from different platforms along the "Y" axis. This is important to the relevance of  information content information in each ring.  Where two rings have related content the view point of the avatar should include both rings.  This is governed py the size of the ring and verticle distance between the rings. Visibility of content is controled by the placement of central platforms and the up and down movement of the avatar along the "Y" axis.

Let's start with an overhead view of an information room using ring structures.

As stated earlier, a seeker on a quest for information is all about looking and not about navigating. The seeker needs less key strokes to look not more.  For this reason, the seeker in an information room should be in the center of a circle so as to surround him with choices.  This placement allows the use of the left and right arrow key to spin around left or right.  If a spin is continuous all information selections will repeat.  While this is useful for a single plane of view it is restricted to the vision window the user has on his monitor.  It is a bit like the window on a tank great forward look no side view.

The ability to move up and down allows for additional rings of information at various altitudes.

This example shows an arrangement of text and picture objects in information rings at various altitudes.

We will now look at the structure from the user point of view.  This first view is from the vantage point of the first and lowest level.  The user can see picture ring 1 and text ring 1 in the picture.

In this next picture the user has moved up a level.  Notice that picture one ring is no longer clearly visible but text rings 1,2 and 3 are visible along with picture ring 2.  As you can see new information is available while part of the last set is still visible.

As the use goes up to another higher platform all picture rings are no longer visible but text ring 3 from the last set and a new text ring 4 appears.

Finally, on the last and highest platform the user can only access text ring 5.

As you can see there is a large amount of information available through the use of only three operations: the left and right turn and a click to go up.  Clearly the key strokes necessary to use the room are very simple and do not distract from the seekers quest by imposing distracting key use.

Careful planing is necessary to insure the the masking and discovery of information rings allows the user to refine the search so that each ring has a logical flow by category class or type.  Also the choice font and colors should be considered as important information triggers.

Scripting tool update

The scripting tool used for creating sign objects and organizing web addresses for use in information room underwent a major overhaul.  the most significant change is the ability to control specific fonts, font size and special effects. Also edit is the capability to create teleports scripts for use in ActiveWorlds based web pages.

The major advantage of the tool is the capability to organize web resources in different categories when creating sign objects and information rooms.

The tool supports the collection of Web resources and will generate the action scripts on sign objects thereby significantly decreasing the amount of time it takes to construct and populate an information room.