HyperReality

Paradigm for the Third Millenium

Nobuyoshi Terashima, John Tiffin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134507955
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

'HyperReality is a technological capability like nanotechnology, human cloning and artificial intelligence. Like them, it does not as yet exist in the sense of being clearly demonstrable and publicly available. Like them, it is maturing in laboratories where the question "if" has been replaced by the question "when?" and like them, the implications of its appearance as a basic infrastructure technology are profound and merit careful consideration.' - Nobuyoshi Terashima
What comes after the Internet? Imagine a world where it is difficult to tell if the person standing next to you is real or a virtual reality, and whether they have human intelligence or artificial intelligence; a world where people can appear to be anything they want to be. HyperReality makes this possible.
HyperReality offers a window into the world of the future, an interface between the natural and artificial. Nobuyoshi Terashima led the team that developed the prototype for HyperReality at Japan's ATT laboratories. John Tiffin studied they way HyperReality would create a new communications paradigm. Together with a stellar list of contributors from around the globe who are engaged in researching different aspects of HyperReality, they offer the first account of this extraordinary technology and its implications.
This fascinating book explores the defining features of HyperReality: what it is, how it works and how it could become to the information society what mass media was to the industrial society. It describes ongoing research into areas such as the design of virtual worlds and virtual humans, and the role of intelligent agents. It looks at applications and ways in which HyperReality may impact on fields such as translation, medicine, education, entertainment and leisure. What are its implications for lifestyles and work, for women and the elderly: Will we grow to prefer the virtual worlds we create to the physical world we adapt to?
HyperReality at the beginning of the third millennium is like steam power at the beginning of the nineteenth century and radio at the start of the twentieth century, an idea that has been shown to work but has yet to be applied. This book is for anyone concerned about the future and the effects of technology on our lives.

Part I

Technology

1

The Definition of Hyperreality

Nobuyoshi Terashima

Editors’ introduction

HyperReality (HR) is a technological capability like nanotechnology, human cloning and artificial intelligence. Like them, it does not as yet exist in the sense of being clearly demonstrable and publicly available. Like them, it is maturing in laboratories where the question ‘if?’ has been replaced by the question ‘when?’ And like them, the implications of its appearance as a basic infrastructure technology are profound and merit careful consideration.

In this chapter Nobuyoshi Terashima defines HR. He does this by specifying the elements involved and their relationships and by discriminating HR from associated technologies. This is a schematic description of HR for those seeking the technological roots of the subject. Terashima then proceeds to illustrate the definition with examples of HR and to survey some of its possible applications. Finally, he examines some of the key technologies that will need to develop for the use of HR to become common practice.

Introduction

The concept of HyperReality (HR), like the concepts of nanotechnology, cloning and artificial intelligence, is in principle very simple. It is nothing more than the technological capability to intermix virtual reality (VR) with physical reality (PR) and artificial intelligence (AI) with human intelligence (HI) in a way that appears seamless and allows interaction.

The interaction of HI and AI is a developing function of communications and telecommunications. The interaction of PR and VR in HR is made possible by the fact that, using computers and telecommunications, images from one place can be reproduced in 3D virtual reality at another place. The 3D images can then be part of a physically real setting in such a way that physically real things can interact synchronously with virtually real things. It allows people not present at an actual activity to observe and engage in the activity as though they were actually present. The technology will offer the experience of being in a place without having to physically go there. Real and unreal objects will be placed in the same ‘space’ to create an environment called a HyperWorld (HW). Here, imaginary, real and artificial life forms and imaginary, real and artificial objects and settings can come together from different locations via information superhighways, in a common plane of activity called a coaction field (CF), where real and virtual life forms can work and interact together.

Communication in a CF will be by words and gestures and, in time, by touch and body actions. What holds a coaction field together is the domain knowledge (DK) that is available to participants to carry out a common task in the field. The construction of infrastructure systems based on this new concept means that people will find themselves living in a new kind of environment and experiencing the world in a new way.

HyperReality is hypothetical. Its realisation as an infrastructure technology is in the future. Today parts of it have a half-life in laboratories around the world. The experiments that demonstrate its technical feasibility depend upon high-end silicon graphic workstations and assume broadband telecommunications. These are not yet everyday technologies. HR is based on the assumption that the technological trends on which it is based will continue (see Figure 1.1), that Moore’s law will operate, that computers will get faster and more powerful and digital information superhighways will provide megabandwidth with and without wires. Nanotechnology makes feasible the idea of wearable computing. Voice recognition, image recognition, gesture recognition and writing recognition are developments that lead toward the barrier-free interfaces that are at the heart of HR. VRML (Virtual Reality Modulating Language) chat worlds such as Community Place and Active Worlds give a first idea of what a HyperWorld could look like. Distributed VR, Augmented VR and Mixed VR are conceptual steps towards HR. Machine Learning, Navigation Agents and the developing association of intelligent agents and avatars are movements in the direction of AI in HR. All that is lacking is the kind of integrating vision that this book seeks to supply.

Figure 1.1 Technology trends contributing to the entitation of HyperReality.

The project that led to the concept of HR began with the idea of teleconferencing in virtual reality. It was the theme of one of the first four labs at ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research) in Kansai Science City. Likened to the Media Lab at MIT or the Santa Fe Institute, ATR has acquired international recognition as Japan’s premier research centre concerned with the telecommunication and computer underpinnings of an information society. The research lasted from 1986 to 1996 and successfully demonstrated that it was possible to sit down at a table and engage interactively with the telepresences of people who were not physically present (Figure 1.2). True, their virtual personas, which we now refer to as avatars, looked like tailor’s dummies and moved jerkily. However, it was possible to recognise who they were and what they were doing and it was possible for real and virtual people to work together on tasks that required manipulating virtual objects (Terashima et al. 1995; Terashima 1993; 1994a; 1994b; 1995b).

Figure 1.2 Experiment at ATR: Real and virtual people interacting in the construction of a virtual model of a shrine.

The technology involved comprised a large screen, a camera, data gloves and glasses. Virtual versions were made of the people, objects and settings involved and these were downloaded to computers at different sites. Then it was only necessary to transmit changes in position, shape and movement in addition to sound. As long as one was orientated toward the screen and close enough not to be aware of its edges, interrelating with the avatars appeared seamless. Was it possible to extend the screens? Why not a room where some of the walls and parts of the ceiling and floor were, in effect, screens? A mirrored wall can give the illusion of an extension to a room. Looking at oneself and others in the mirror can give an eerie feeling of seeing other people in an extended place. Could careful matching of virtual rooms on to the walls of real rooms give a similar effect?

The effect of mixing virtual reality and physical reality can also be generated by using glasses and gloves. This requires glasses with a dual function. First, the function glasses normally have of adjusting light reflected from objects in the wearer’s line of vision, to make what they are looking at clear. In other words to help people see physical reality. Second, the function of projecting images of virtual objects derived from a computer. In other words to show virtual reality. The trick then is to interlace the virtual and real images so that they make sense together. There are head-mounted display (HMD) systems that do this (Bajura, Fuchs and Ohbuchi 1992).

Most humans understand their surroundings primarily through their senses of sight, sound and touch. Smell and even taste are sometimes critical too. As well as the visual components of physical and virtual reality, HyperReality needs to include associated sound, touch, smell and, although the idea is on the back burner for the moment, even taste. The technical challenge of HyperReality is to make physical and virtual reality appear to the full human sensory apparatus to intermix seamlessly. It is not dissimilar to, or disassociated from, the challenges that face nanotechnology at the molecular level, cloning at the human level and artificial intelligence at the level of human intelligence. Advanced forms of HR will be dependent on extreme miniaturisation of computers. HR involves cloning, except that the clones are made of bits of information. Finally, and perhaps the most important aspect of HR, it provides a place for human and artificial intelligences to interact seamlessly. The virtual people and objects in HR are computer generated and can be made intelligent by human operation or they can be activated by artificial intelligence. Communication in HR could become an endless Turing test.

Hyperreality Concept Schemata

Definition of HyperReality (HR)

HyperReality (Terashima 1995a; Terashima and Tiffin 1999) is a technological capability that makes possible the seamless integration of physical reality and virtual reality, human intelligence and artificial intelligence: HR = the seamless integration of (PR, VR, HI, AI) where PR = Physical Reality, VR = Virtual Reality, HI = Human Intelligence and AI = Artificial Intelligence.

HR makes it possible for the physically real inhabitants of one place to purposively coact with the inhabitants of remote locations as well as with computer-generated imaginary or artificial life forms in a HyperWorld.

A HyperWorld is an advanced form of reality where real-world images are systematically integrated with 3D images derived from reality or created by computer graphics. The field of interaction of the real and virtual inhabitants of a HyperWorld is referred to as a coaction field (CF).

Definition of HyperWorld (HW)

HW is a seamless intermixture of a (physically) real world (RW) and a virtual world (VW). HW can, therefore, be defined as (RW, VW).

A real world consists of real natural features, real buildings and real objects. It is whatever is atomically present in a setting and is described as (SE), i.e. the scene exists.

A virtual world is whatever is present in a setting as bits of computer-generated information. It consists of the following:

• SCA (Scene shot by camera): Natural features, buildings and objects that can be shot with cameras (video and/or still), transmitted by telecommunications and displayed in VR.
• SCV (Scene recognised by computer vision): Natural features, buildings, objects and inhabitants whose 3D images are already in a database and are recognised by computer vision, transmitted by telecommunications and reproduced by computer graphics and displayed in VR.
• SCG (Scene generated by computer graphics): 3D objects created by computer graphics, transmitted by telecommunications and displayed in VR.

SCA and SCV refer to VR derived from referents in the real world whereas SCG refers to VR that is imaginary. A VW is, therefore, described as: (SCA, SCG, SCV). This is to focus on the visual aspect of a HyperWorld. In parallel, as in the real world, there are virtual auditory, haptic and olfac-tory stimuli derived either from real-world referents or generated by computer.

Definition of a Coaction Field

A coaction field is defined within the context of a HyperWorld. It provides a common site for objects and inhabitants derived from PR and VR and serves as a workplace or an activity area within which they interact. The coaction field provides the means of communication for its inhabitants to interact in such joint activities as designing buildings or playing games. The means of communication include words, gestures, body orientation and movement, and in due course will include touch. Sounds that provide feedback in performing tasks, such as a reassuring click as elements of a puzzle lock into place or as a bat hits a ball, will also be included.

The behaviour of objects in a coaction field conforms to physical, chemical and/or biological laws or to laws invented by humans. For a particular kind of activity to take place between the real and virtual inhabitants of a coaction field, it is assumed that there is a domain of knowledge based on the purpose of the coaction field and that it is shared by the inhabitants.

Independent coaction fields can be merged to form a new coaction field, termed the outer CF. For this to happen requires an exchange of domain knowledge between the original CFs, termed the inner CFs. The inner CFs can revert to their original forms after interacting in an outer CF. So, for example, a coaction field for playing cards could merge with a coaction field for bedside nursing to form an outer coaction field that allowed a nurse to play cards with a patient. The patient becoming tired, the CF for card-playing would terminate and the outer CF would revert to the bedside nursing CF.

A coaction field can therefore be defined as: CF = {field, inhabitants (n>1), means of communication, knowledge domain, laws, controls}.

In this definition a field is the locus of the interaction that is the purpose of the coaction field. This may be well defined and fixed as in the football field of a CF for playing football or the tennis court of a CF for playing tennis. Alternatively, it may be defined by the action as in a CF for two people walking and talking, where it would be opened by a greeting protocol and closed by a goodbye protocol and, without any marked boundary, would simply include the two people.

Inhabitants of a coaction field are either real inhabitants or virtual inhabitants. A real inhabitant (RI) is a real human, animal, insect or plant. A virtual inhabitant (VI) consists of the following:

• ICA (Inhabitant shot by camera): Real people, animals, insects or plants shot with cameras, (transmitted) and displayed in VR.
• ICV (Inhabitant recognised by computer vision): Real people, animals, insects or plants recognised by computer vision, (transmitted), reproduced by computer graphics and displayed using VR.
• ICG (Inhabitant generated by computer graphics): An imaginary or generic life form created by computer graphics, which may have human or artificial intelligence, (transmitted) and displayed in VR.

A VI is described as: (ICA, ICG, ICV). The term avatar is now popularly used for ICG and ICV.

Again we can see that ICA and ICV are derived from referents in the real world whereas an ICG is imaginary or generic. By generic is meant some standardised, abstracted non-specific version of a concept such as a man or a woman or a tree. It is possible to modify VR derived from RW or mix it with VR derived from SCG. For example, it would be possible to take a person’s avatar that has been derived from their real appearance and make it slimmer, better looking and with hair that changes colour according to mood. Making an avatar that is a good likeness can take time. A quick way is to take a standard body and, as it were, paste onto it a picture of a person’s face derived from a photo.

An ICG is an agent that is capable of acting intelligently and of communicating and solving problems. The intelligence can be that of a human or it can be an artificial intelligence based on neural network, knowledge base, language understanding, computer vision and image processing technologies. The implications are that a coaction field is where human and artificial life communicate and interact in pursuit of a joint task.

The means of communication relate to the way that coaction fields in the first place would have reflected light from the real world and projected light from the virtual world. This would permit communication by written words, gestures and by such visual codes as body orientation and actions. They would also have sound derived directly from the real world and from a speaker...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Definition of Hyperreality
• 2 The Hyperreality Paradigm
• 3 Hypervision
• 4 Virtual Humans
• 5 Artificial Life in Hyperreality
• 6 HyperTranslation
• 7 The Hyperclass
• 8 Hyperleisure
• 9 Hyper Millennium
• Index