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March 24, 1998
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I finished the IDRI web page yesterday afternoon and got it online. So, today I went over to Zsolt's place (the institute office is a room in his house and the herbarium is a Chevy van) to get him online and show it to him. I figured it would be easy to use one of those free disks that AOL is always sending out. It wasn't. The number of times AOL gave messages about "System Response" or simply hung up the phone (dropped carrier) was uncountable. It was hours and hours before we actually connected to the web page in question. So anyway, we are now trying to figure out how to use hypermedia technology to essentially create virtual forests, based of course on real forests. Yes, I know I just split an infinitive. Of late, my writing has become somewhat stilted and banal, but oh well, what'ya gonna do? I need a sabbatical from my sabbatical. I know I frequently make fun of hypertext because I think people use it bizarrely and to avoid organizing their thoughts, and also because it is way over hyped as a new way of communicating. But wouldn't it be cool if you could click on a map of the forest and see individual trees, click on the trees and see closeups of bark, leaves, cones... and click on the cones and see the seeds inside... Of course, none of this is text; it's all visual images. But I think this is what hyperlinks were made for. My problems with the way the web is hyped have been largely with the notion that text has become irrelevant and that everything can be represented by graphic icons. I've struggled with trying to express what are essentially verbal concepts in pictures and just not been able to do it. When I take a photograph, or manipulate a photograph to express something, I am not conscious of verbal content I am trying to represent. I am thinking in a visual language that expresses different things from verbal language. The times I get tied up in knots is when I try to create something that conforms to what the digerati envision as the communication of the future. I want to be able to use hypermedia to do things I can't do with text and narrative, not to replace text and narrative. And no way in h*, do I want to substitute virtual forests or oceans for real ones. The computer may make my eyes sting like the real forest in spring, but not because of pollen - just because of the bad lighting in my office. The idea that manipulating an avatar through a virtual forest in Japan is in any way equivalent to walking through that forest on my own two feet is absurd. The experiences are not comparable anymore than drinking a glass of water and watching an animation of my avatar drinking a glass of water can be compared. No matter what the advances of virtual reality technology , you will still die of dehydration if the only water you drink is virtual. Luddite? Me? Nope. Just an ordinary person who wants to use computers to do the things computers are good for and still live my real life in my real body in the real world (such as it is - the world is of course completely illusional - merely a series of sense impressions and mental constructs - but I'll leave that to the monks to explain.) | |
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