October 19, 2005 01:14 | Cyborg / Social / WebTech

Immersive Web

About a week ago I went for chinese food with Michael. We hadn't seen each other in a few weeks and Mike had just returned from what seemed like a very exciting trip to Europe. He recounted parts of his trip and his recent move, and once we had finished, the carbo-coma kept us in our seats. As I poured us some more tea, I said to him: "so, I've been thinking about this thing lately... the Immersive Web."

Disclaimer: I am fully aware that there are loads of people who have been thinking about this stuff for a long time, who naturally know waaaay more than I do, etc etc. And while I've taunted Joi about his recent World of Warcraft "research", I trust implicitly that he knows what he's doing and doing it for good reasons. (No seriously. But I just had to link that PotatoChopped picture ;)

In a nutshell, what I mean by Immersive Web, is the combination of everything we know about 3D, virtual reality, networked "video games" and Open Source software projects, Open Standards, interoperability, accessibility, "self publishing", sharing and the whole kit-and-kaboodle linked with URLs.

Michael got really really excited and made it very clear that he definitely thought this was a very very important topic and one he had been thinking about for a long time. I knew he had some involvement with the 3D/games stuff through GameCode, but didn't realize it was something he held so close. Sometimes stuff goes over my head... or... in one ear and out the other... ;) I should also add that Michael's web-handle is mtl3p: "Montreal third place".

Fast forward to this afternoon: I am sitting in the conference room at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, at the tail end of a Fellows meeting and the topic slowly shifts to "virtual worlds like Second Life and such". Some words fly out of my mouth, some hand gestures are made, some glances are thrown and all of a sudden I have volunteered Ethan and myself to write a 2 page paper on how/why Berkman should get involved in online virtual spaces, or something like that. Wahoo!

I shoot an email to Michael telling him such. Thirty minutes later he replies: "wow." "Goes fast doesn't it" I send back. A few minutes later my phone rings and it's him of course. "So, you at home? Whatcha doing?" "Dude, I'm at Berkman..."

Hehehehe. Then something funny happened, and I did something I haven't told him I did yet. Michael starts explaining why he thinks that my naming it "Immersive Web" is very very important. He is VERY excited as he is explaining this to me... so I switch my phone to speaker mode, letting Ethan listen in. ;)

Now, Michael does a really great job of explaining the socio-politcal and cultural ramifications of all this stuff and the naming, but I also needed to express an actual scenario of how I see an end product of "Immersive Web".

It came to me in two pieces; the first on the way to dinner, talking with Ethan, and the second walking back to the hotel after dinner, talking with Rebecca.

First of all, it should be relatively easy for me to upload and setup my own little "virtual place" on a server somewhere, the same way I can upload and install a weblog today. It shouldn't matter which "vendor" or "package" or "distribution" I choose, it should be able to be part of the greater community; the same way it doesn't matter, as Rebecca correctly pointed out, if I use Movable Type, WordPress, TypePad or Blogger to blog: I can still publish HTML and various RSS feeds, leave comments and have comments left for me, be aggregated and searched and most importantly, I can link and be linked to (that's what the Web *IS*).

Ethan pulled at the logic and we arrived at the question: "ok so what do we do with this?" 3D chat avatars are hold hat. Yawn, been there done that, right?

I emailed a scenario of use to Michael stating thusly:

"Let's say I want to share with you what it's like to stand at Hachiko Square in Shibuya, Tokyo. In a full featured and flexible immersive web environment, I could pull together various "media" from my personal archive and construct a very personal view/experience, pulling together perhaps a Google Earth/Map type of geo visualization, stitch in a bunch of photos I may have taken, a few other people have taken (pulled in dynamically via RSS feeds of tags from Flickr for example, and made available to me), play a recording I may have taken while there (or one someone else took and that I pulled down off the web, perhaps CC licensed?)... Imagine I could actually go and grab a premade virtual wireframe framework of that whole area, and "pin on" it my memories to share with you ... and whoever I gave the URL to it to."

(I should rewrite that to make it less redundant and to the point... it was stream of consciousness...)

Ethan pointed out : "but I can do that on a webpage now!" Yes and no. You can assemble all the bits and pieces but until you stitch them into an "environment", a situated and explorable "space", they remain just fragments, barely held together with some sort of narrative context which depends on the storyteller's story telling ability.

(Granted, very few people can create stunning 3D environments in even the simplest 3D CAD or game authoring system, but give any child a glue gun, a marker, some materials and a wall or four and watch the world he/she creates for you! Also, not every weblog is a impeccably designed masterpiece... most are straight default templates with a photo here and there...)

I also threw in:

"Two things that gave weblogs traction were: "simple" webpage making (post an entry and the webpage is "made for you") and the fact that the created "page" had a unique URI (a "permalink").

The first steps of Immersive Web is about laying the groundwork and making the infrastructure decisions which will eventually allows us "simple" "3D environment making" and giving it a URL..."

Another aspect that Michael is very keen on driving home is the fact that we have learnt over the last 10 years how to manage large scale distributed development of open source software projects. (Need I say it? Linux? Amongst hundreds of thousands of examples...) This is key since 3D virtual stuff, networking protocols, communications standards, programming etc etc etc ... all the stuff we will need to do to make something like an Immersive Web happen will require alot of work by alot of people with a lot of different skill sets.

I think it can be done.

(I am hoping to spend a good amount of time at the USC Interactive Media Department this winter. When I mentioned all this to Scott Fisher, a pioneer in the field of immersive media, his answer was immediate: "sounds good! let's do it!" Awesome. :)

Comments
Wed, Oct 19, 2005, @ 16:05
1- oso

Maybe I'm over-simplifying here, but it seems like what you're really talking about is a design issue - overlaying three dimensional graphics on the everyday content we already navigate through: weblogs, forums, maps, wikipedia.

I agree that online design and UI has a long ways to go, but so does the underlying content. What you're able to do with the Global Voices site, for example, will always depend on the content which makes it up.

When you talk about an open source standard protocol, you're really getting into digital identity issues since users entering this "immersive web" would only gain advantages if they're remembered. And besides, personally, I'd like to keep the resources we have as decentralized as possible. I'd much rather, with a single key stroke, run a script which picks up a weblog's geo data and then zooms into their location on Google Earth (or any other program) than enter a network where all that is done for me.

Besides, who in their right mind would want to experience Hachiko Square if they didn't have to?


Wed, Oct 19, 2005, @ 17:18
2- Boris

Hi David,
No, we're talking an entirely different beast.

By standards protocol I by no means mean any type of centralized system. The opposite exactly.

The fact that you and I understand each other is because we use an open standard called "the english language". The fact that you can read my web page by entering a URL (or clicking on link, same thing) is thanks to a whole stack - the TCP/IP stack in fact, of open standards and protocols, HTTP being the last one on top.

There are number of other issues in what you commented here, but mostl importantly to me is the all-important "smack-in-the-face that is teh fact that this entry is perhaps a bit ambiguous and not in a common context that most people have knowledge of.

(to clarify that context a bit: that entry was not written by Boris-the-webdesigner, but Boris the Internet technology Specialist. Ethan and Rebecca do not appear as the managers of GVO, but as Berkmann Fellows. And most important, the "Web" in Immersive Web is only related to the Web we know know in "philosophy", not technology.

I do of course welcome any feedback youc an provide to help me make my intentions clearer! :D

By the way, I would *kill* to be in Hachiko Square right now.
;)


Thu, Oct 20, 2005, @ 3:48
3- oso

Hmm, yeah, I figured you were light-years ahead of me. (humbly retreats back to 21st century) ;)


Sun, Oct 23, 2005, @ 17:59
4- nonlineari

I understand in terms of what immersive environment is something so important to building about the future of the web, kind of like "ghost in the Shell" but I have come in to a era I think I could no longer put any afford in to playing online games or any type of gaming. Although game theory had been a big topic within New media. And looking at artist like Ben Fry on the aesthetic and other form of generative art is very exciting. From hearing on plato cave, we are immersive enough to understand the potential power in ways of communicating with our avatar.With artist like Stelarc and theorist like Roy Ascott, we have the fundamental concept on connectivity and immersion. What I am most concern with is for example of a total 3D or 4D immersion, is very much like we want to be virtual actors within this virtual space. However is gaming a factor that so prevasive that we are moving to deep into edutainment as part of a game that we play. I see virtual world is still in a different spatial reality, or maybe until I can play a game of basketball with bumps and bruises, I might see the thrill of excitement. Although I did find counter-strike to be exception at one point. but back to immersion, now I am thinking about VRML is the standard in research, but I see the collabrative efforts are important, as of constructing this environment of immersion to become, yes a immersive web space. But even making a comparison of the Anime and new media artists, I think we are quite generic with the actual design, apart from that immersion should be or not be an extension of the physical world would be up to the designers and architects, and are there just going to be a mimesis and mimicry and lure, taking the words of Deleuze on reproducing images in bio-technique. I think all notions of virtual worlds need to have be genderized, (or)with positive and negative, a yin and yang in developing the right language and vision. A balance with our very understanding how to realized the creativity behind the screen.