3 Issues for Research and Development of Cyberspace

 

Essential Elements for Interactive Cyberspace:

• Persistant storage (objects created remain alive)
• Multiple real-time communication channels
• Text-based communication for non-intrusive work
• Multi-Users having virtual identities
• Places
• Security and ownership
• Asynchronous communication tools
• Generics and tools for ``building''
• Useful objects (in particular information objects)
• Collaborative data visualization and manipulation tools
• Integration with other (all) Internet Services

Issues that came up for the WWW workshop on VEs and the Web:

1. Special properties of VEs
   1. What is the common denominator?
   2. Social text-based VEs vs. full 3-D VR and everything in between
   3. Immersion
2. General architecture
   1. Navigation
   2. Organization of space (consistency, magical features, ...)
   3. Responsiveness feedback)

3. VEs and the Real world
   1. Real world metaphors in design
   2. Integration of external standard available CMC
   3. Interaction with real devices and simulations of real devices

4. Interfaces
   1. Interfaces and clients (kind of)
   2. Interfaces and clients (ease of use)
   3. Intrusiveness
   4. Negotiation of communication channels (between clients)

5. Technical issues I
   1. Low level implementation (languages and formats) (JAVA, VRML)
   2. WWW Integration
   3. (Technical) Decentralization
   4. Responsiveness (speed), network latency

6. Technical issues II
   1. Extensibility and programmability
   2. Scalability
   3. Decentralization (fitting together multiple worlds)
   4. Construction facilities, tools and languages

7. The role of users / user management
   1. VEs as praxis (user defined environment)
   2. User adaptation
   3. Ownership, access and security
   4. Characters/Avatars (including identity)
   5. Customization of different views / multiple views
   6. Communities and social interaction

8. Communication and collaboration
   1. Collaborative Environments for education and work
   2. Virtual work space
   3. Integration of of conferencing and CSCW tools (also integration or abstracting of the "real" world)
   4. Internal CMC
   5. Multiple sessions (parallel comm channels used for different purposes)
   6. CSCW tools
   7. Cooperative (3-D) design tools

9. Objects
   1. Smart Agents
   2. Rich 3-D worlds
   3. Objects in VEs (generally)
   4. Objects in VEs (what levels of details, what info is always needed)
   5. Integration of various data streams (media types)
   6. Consistency of object interfaces
   7. History (walls that "talk")
10. Information
    1. Architectures of representations, ideas, concepts
    2. Living documents / collaborative hypertext

11. Practical Issues
    1. Costs

Virtual Communities and Virtual Worlds:

1. Government
2. User centered VE design
3. Efficiency vs. ``Meeting nice people'' and Communication Overload