4-D Computing: Life comes at us Polydimesionally

Joe RaimondoDesign Anticipation

http://www.designanticipation.com

My Intellectual Godfather

Theodor Holm Nelson—Inventor of Hypertext

“…imagine if the computer had been invented by the movie industry…”

The Past

“We need a user interface to manage performance across 5

dimensions.”

Try to think in 5 Dimensions.

NOW!

The Past

“We need a user interface that supports a true multi-dimensional approach to enable people’s effort to be captured and processes across dimensions of client work, operations, and for capturing knowledge.”

The Past

We operate multi-dimensionally (in life-x,y,z, and t), but do we think multi-dimensionally?

If we do think multi-dimensionally, then do our information tools reflect this?

Yes and No

The Past

Multi-dimensional Interfaces 1991-present

“It’s a Trap.”

The Past

Spotfire: 3-D Visualization tool 3-D via 2-D with no t

Bridging Past to Present

1st assumption of computing design: ScarcityForce the user to compromise to the device

Batch tasks and processesProcess over UI and UX at all costs

Until very recently, motion, movement and physicality were not considered in computing design

Bridging Past to Present

Important shift: From task processing to Agent DesignCurrent Design model supports isolated, serial tasks then models, renders, and manipulates them in a 2-D field, aka Windows

The WIMP Paradigm cannot transfer to an agent processing

Putting the user in a 4-dimensional field is critical for enabling agent design and processing

A Point of Inspiration

Bucky Fuller’s Geoscope: One device that allows us to “recognize formerly invisible patterns and thereby to forecast and plan

in vastly greater magnitude than heretofore.”

“… he’s got the whole world…” Imagine having all the world’s data in your handMany of you do nowBut what can you DO with it, now?

What’s missing?What would it take to build an agent generation and processing system that provided an accurate map of our goings-on and movings-about?

It probably wouldn’t be something you’d build with a 2-D display and a mouse (you can and you do, but it’s hard.)

The PINEAPPLE

A fruit-y device—you want to eat it Pineapple Is Not Emulating APPLE A poly-dimensional transceiver A device to drive “agent design

spheres” Intrinsically collaborative

Drives use of a poly-projector to interact in quasi-3-D graphic space

Enables development of collaborative event-scenarios

Birth of a device

+ =

Original Paper/Design developed February 2003

The Polyopticon

A prospective design for a 4-D computer

Componentry

Accelerometer array—novel x,y,z percepticon unit

Flexible OLED display Axially mounted motherboard Patented 4-D input-output and time transducer

Soft, see-through keyboard Input/Output componentry for networking, cellular communication, GPS

“Poly-projector” outputs cell components to a projectable surface

Poly-room—360° by 360° room with users on a floor in the center

4-D Computing

Life really comes at us Poly-dimensionallyDimensions within dimensions—they

become pliable within different contextsHow do we think about designing

devices that reflect this poyldimensionality?

We are shunting our exquisite hunter-gather sensory system down two narrow dimensions

Manipulating the t dimension still escapes current design paradigm

Uses For better or worse, everybody loves DARPA

Design is for any complex command-and-control application: military, utility, media, financial

Uses“Bloomberg of the future”

Remote for the 1,000,000,000 channel universe

The true Personal Digital Assistant of the future – a PDA for an agent-driven, Semantic Web

An Agent Design Device

The Polyopticon™ allows users to pull and push applications in context and in real-time

Whither Data Walls?

•Ignores the triumph of the device• What do I make “mine” here?• Where is there a “time” in this interface?• Does i

Final Thoughts

“…Furthermore, the sources of Black Swans today have multiplied beyond measurability. In the primitive environment they were limited to newly encountered wild animals, new enemies, and abrupt weather changes. These events were repeatable enough for us to have built an innate fear of them. The instinct to make inferences rather quickly, and to “tunnel” (i.e., focus on a small number of sources of uncertainty, or causes of known Black Swans) remains rather ingrained in us. This instinct, in a word, is our predicament.”

- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan, p. 61