Simulated And Virtual Realities

2 Virtual environments and environmental instruments¹

Stephen R. Ellis

2.1 Communication and environments

2.1.1 Virtual environments are media

Virtual environments created through computer graphics are communications media (Licklider et al., 1978). They have both physical and abstract components like other media (see Chapter 10 for a discussion of the sociological aspects of media). Paper, for example, is a communication medium but the paper is itself only one possible physical embodiment of the abstraction of a two-dimensional surface onto which marks may be made. Consequently, there are alternative instantiations of the same abstraction. As an alternative to paper, for example, the Apple Newton series of intelligent information appliances ...