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今日已是麥金塔電腦問世後的第 25、26 年,那是一起驚奇且具有發展性的歷史事件,不只是人類─電腦介面,更是整體電算技術的大事,它徹底地改變人們對電算的認識,對電腦的認識,他們如何使用電腦和誰及多少人能利用它們,這在當時可是徹底的改變,事實上,早期的麥金塔研發團隊,在 '82、'83 及 '84 年時,必需從基礎開始寫出整套新的作業系統,這是一則有趣的小訊息,但我認為其意涵早就被遺忘或遺失之類的那就是 OS 是種介面,介面即是 OS,它們就像是「亞瑟王」中,土地與國王,不可分離,一體兩面,撰寫一套新作業系統並非一件任性的事,那不只是編撰一些繪圖例行程序,當時也沒有繪圖例行程序,連滑鼠和驅動程式都沒有,所以那純粹是基本功,但過了四分之一個世紀之後,我們看到了所有基本的支援科技狂飆發展,記憶體與磁碟容量已倍增到 10,000 到一百萬的單位,處理器速度同樣倍增,網路,我們完全沒有網路存在於麥金塔推出的年代,而那已成為單一最顯著的觀感,關於我們如何與電腦共存,當然,今日的繪圖技術僅需花 $84.97 從 Best Buy 購買,你所擁有的繪圖能力就遠超過十年前你要花上百萬元向 SGI 購買的同級商品,所以,我們已經歷了不起的科技進展,另一方面,我們還有網頁,還有愈來愈熱門的雲端,後者真是棒到不行,但從介面是基礎的角度看來,那好像被忽略了,我們忘了發明新的介面,當然,近期我們已看到許多的介面變革,人們也開始察覺到這個層面,但下一步呢?我們要朝哪個方面前進?
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We're 25, 26 years after the advent of the Macintosh, which was an astoundingly seminal event in the history of human-machine interface, and in computation in general. It fundamentally changed the way that people thought about computation, thought about computers, how they used them and who and how many people were able to use them. It was such a radical change, in fact, that the early Macintosh development team in '82, '83, '84, had to write an entirely new operating system from the ground up. Now, this is an interesting little message, and it's a lesson that has since, I think, been forgotten or lost or something. And that is, namely, that the OS is the interface. The interface is the OS. It's like the land and the king in "Arthur"; they're inseparable, they are one. And to write a new operating system was not a capricious matter. It wasn't just a matter of tuning up some graphics routines. There were no graphics routines. There were no mouse drivers. So it was a necessity.
But in the quarter century since then, we've seen all of the fundamental supporting technologies go berserk. So memory capacity and disk capacity has been multiplied by something between 10,000 and a million. Same thing for processor speeds. Networks, we didn't have networks at all at the time of the Macintosh's introduction. And that has become the single most salient aspect of how we live with computers. And, of course, graphics today: $84.97 at Best Buy buys you more graphics power than you could have gotten for a million bucks from SGI only a decade ago. So we've got that incredible ramp up. Then, on the side, we've got the Web and, increasingly, the cloud, which is fantastic, but also in the regard in which an interface is fundamental, kind of a distraction. So we've forgotten to invent new interfaces. Certainly we've seen, in recent years, a lot of change in the regard. And people are starting to wake up about that. So what happens next? Where do we go from there?
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問題,如我們所知必需要處理一個字,「空間」,或一個簡單的片語,「真實世界的幾何學」,電腦及程式編寫語言等,我們與其溝通及灌輸它們的方式,在面對空間時都變得非常令人厭煩地愚鈍,它們不懂真實世界的空間,有趣的是,那正是我們所經常佔有與互動的空間,它們也不理解時間,但那是另話,如果開始和它們解釋空間會發生什麼事?可能的結果是,你會得到像 Luminous Room 的東西,Luminous Room 是一套系統,在此系統中,輸出與輸入空間假設會相互辨位,這是一個奇妙、簡單,尚未探索的觀念,使用滑鼠時,你的手垂下放在滑鼠墊上,那甚至不在你正談論的平面上,映像點顯像在螢幕上,這個辦公室內所有牆壁、地板、天花板、寵物、盆栽及室內所有的東西,不僅能被顯示出來,還能感應,那意謂著輸入與輸出是在同一個空間,賦予它像這樣的能力,那是在實體容器內的數位存儲,同樣地,就像置於真實世界容器中的真實世界物體,無論你放入何物,最後都會同樣得出,這是另一項設計小實驗,這個小辦公室還知道一些其他的招數,如果你拿出一塊西洋棋盤,它會試圖理解出你可能的意圖,而如果它們覺得沒事幹了,棋子最後會不耐煩,並跳開。
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The problem, as we see it, has to do with a single, simple word, "space" or a single, simple phrase, "real world geometry." Computers and the programming languages that we talk to them in, that we teach them in, are hideously insensate when it comes to space. They don't understand real world space. It's a funny thing because the rest of us occupy quite frequently and quite well. They also don't understand time, but that's a matter for a separate talk.
So what happens if you start to explain space to them? One thing you might get is something like the Luminous Room. The Luminous Room is a system in which it's considered input and output spaces are co-located. That's a strangely simple, and yet unexplored idea, right. When you use a mouse, your hand is down here on the mouse pad. It's not even on the same plain as what you're talking about. The pixels are up on the display. So here was a room in which all the walls, floors, ceilings, pets, potted plants, whatever was in there, was capable, not only, of display, but of sensing as well. And that means input and output are in the same space enabling stuff like this. That's a digital storage in a physical container. The contract is the same as with real word objects in real world containers. Has to come back out, whatever you put in. This little design experiment that was a small office here knew a few other tricks as well. If you presented it with a chess board, it tried to figure out what you might mean by that. And if there was nothing for them to do, the chess pieces eventually got bored and hopped away
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學術界認為這樣的作品過於輕佻,所以我們建立了超嚴肅的應用程式,像這個光學原型的工作臺,牙膏蓋置於硬紙板之上,搖身一變成為雷射,分光鏡與透鏡由實體物件構成,系統便投射出雷射光束路徑,如此一來,我們便造了一個無介面的介面,你能如在真實世界中操控一般,也就是說,用你的雙手來操控,同樣地是一個擁有數位風的數位風口,從右邊向左邊流動,這並沒有很了不起,因為我們並未發明這套數學運算,但如果將它放到 CRT 或平板展示器上的話,攔截一個任意的物件並沒有太大意義,一個真實世界的物件,在此,真實與模擬世界融合在一起,最後,終要拔出所有的阻礙,這個系統稱作 Urp,專供城市規劃師使用,我們將從建築師與城市規劃師那兒收刮來的模式返還,而我們當初還堅持要他們使用 CAD 系統,然後再於中途提供機器與他們呼應,如各位所見,它投射出數位光影,如果再加入像這種逆轉時鐘的工具,你還能控制天空中太陽的位置,這是 8:00 AM 的光影,影子在 9:00 AM 時變短些,你可以隨心所欲地控制太陽位置,中午的光影最短,以此類推,我們還建了一系列像這類的工具,這種光影間的學習,連小孩子都會操作,就算他們根本不懂什麼是城市規劃,要如何移動建築,只要伸出手就成了,一支原料棒讓建築物變成像 Frank Gehry 風格的建築,能映射出所有方向的光,是否會照瞎所有路過的行人及高速公路上的駕駛?這種劃區工具能連出建築物與馬路間的距離,看你是否會被劃區委員會告上法庭之類的。
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The academics who are overseeing this work thought that was too frivolous, so we built deadly serious applications like this optics prototyping workbench in which a toothpaste cap on a cardboard box becomes a laser. The beam splitters and lenses are represented by physical objects, and the system projects down the laser beam path. So you've got an interface that has no interface. You operate the world as you operate the real world, which is to say, with your hands. Similarly, a digital wind tunnel with digital wind flowing from right to left. Not that remarkable in a sense; we didn't invent the mathematics. But if you displayed that on a CRT or flat panel display, it would be meaningless to hold up an arbitrary object, a real world object in that. Here, the real world merges with the simulation.
And finally, to pull out all the stops, this is a system called Urp, for urban planners, in which we give architects and urban planners back the models that we confiscated when we insisted that they use CAD systems. And we make the machine meet them half way. It projects down digital shadows, as you see here. And if you introduce tools like this inverse clock, then you can control the sun's position in the sky. That's 8:00 AM shadows. They get a little shorter at 9:00 AM. There you are, swinging the sun around. Short shadows at noon and so forth. And we built up a series of tools like this. There is inter-shadowing studies that children can operate, even though they don't know anything about urban planning, to move a building, you simply reach out your hand and you move the building. A material wand makes the building into a sort of Frank Gehry thing that reflects light in all directions. Are you blinding passers by and motorists on the freeways? A zoning tool connects distant structures, a building and a roadway. Are you going to get sued by the zoning commission? and so forth.
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如果這個概念看起來很眼熟或好像有點過時了,那就對了,它們是該看起來很眼熟,這個作品已有 15 年的歷史了,這玩意兒是在麻省理工學院及媒體實驗室中,由 Hiroshi Ishii 指導完成的,他是 Tangible Media Group 首席,而這個作品被 Alex McDowell 看到了,他是全球最具傳奇性的製作設計師之一,而 Alex 當時正在籌備一支小成本、有點朦朧、獨立製片的藝術電影,名為《關鍵報告》,導演是史蒂芬‧史匹柏,他邀請我們走出麻省理工學院為他們設計介面,而且成果會用於該影片中,最棒的一件事是 Alex 非常認真地看待逼真的概念,將年代推定到 2054 年的概念,即在片中令人置信的年份,他讓我們在進行這項設計工作時,彷彿只是在進行一項研發,結果是幾乎令人十分滿意地完美,人們仍持續提到《關鍵報告》中的那些鏡頭,尤其是當他們談到新的使用者介面設計時,而那很奇妙地導致我們回頭想將這些概念建立到,我們相信,是未來必備的人類-機器介面上,我們稱之為空間操作環境。
好,現在我們看到一堆東西,很多圖像,只要用一隻手,我們就能有六度的運作自由,六度的導航控制,飛越 Mr. Beckett 的眼睛還蠻好玩的,也可以退回來,穿過嚇人的猩猩,一切都還不賴,我們來做一些比較困難些的展示,我們看到非常多不同種類的影像,我們可以繞著它們飛翔,導航是最基本的關鍵,操作者必需要能在 3D 的環境下導航,一開始時,大部份我們希望電腦能幫忙的都是固有的空間,而那些非空間的部份,通常也能被空間化,以讓我們的濕體更能加以感應,我們可以將這些圖像做很多不同的配置,可以像這樣把它扔出去,我們來重置一下,我們也可以用這種組織方式,當然,這不只是導航,同時也是操控,假設我們不喜歡或極度好奇 Ernst Haeckel 的科學性曲解,我們可以像這樣把它們挑出來,至於分析,讓我們拉回來一些並重新改變配置,我們飛低一些,並轉圈飛行,這是不同的觀看模式,如果你天性偏好分析,你可能想要以以色圖來觀看,這樣圖像就都以顏色和角度分類好了,全描繪上不同的顏色了,如果需要選取物件,3D 與空間,我們在真實空間中追蹤雙手的概念變得很重要,因為我們可以伸入的,不是 2D,不是假象 2D,而是真實的 3D,這裡有些選項平面,我們將進行的是真假二值運算,因為我們真的喜愛黃色與綠色草地上的貘,從這兒到真正上工的世界有套運算系統,這是一小部份我們目前正在建立的系統,還有很多的要素,很重要的一件事是,結合傳統的表格數據和 3D 及地理空間的資訊。
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Now, if these ideas seem familiar or perhaps even a little dated, that's great; they should seem familiar.
This work is 15 years old. So this stuff was undertaken at MIT and the Media Lab under the incredible direction of Prof. Hiroshi Ishii, director of the Tangible Media Group. But it was that work that was seen by Alex McDowell, one of the world's legendary production designers. But Alex was preparing a little, sort of, obscure, indie, arthouse film called "Minority Report" for Steven Spielberg. And invited us to come out from MIT and design the interfaces that would appear in that film. And the great thing about it was that Alex was so dedicated to the idea verisimilitude, the idea that the putative 2054 that we were painting in the film be believable, that he allowed us to take on that design work as if it were an R&D effort. And the result is sort of gratifyingly perpetual. People still reference those sequences in "Minority Report" when they talk about new UI design. And that led full circle, in a strange way, to build these ideas into what we believe is the necessary future of human machine interface, the spacial operating environment, we call it.
So here we have a bunch of stuff, some images. And, using a hand, we can actually exercise six degrees of freedom, six degrees of navigational control. And it's fun to fly through Mr. Beckett's eye. And you can come back out through the scary orangutan. And it's all well and good. Let's do something a little more difficult. Here, we have a whole bunch of disparate images. We can fly around them. So navigation is a fundamental issue. You have to be able to navigate in 3D. Much of what we want computers to help us with in the first place is inherently spacial. And the part that isn't spacial can often be spacialized to allow our wetware to make greater sense of it. Now we can distribute this stuff in many different ways. So we can throw it out like that. Let's reset it. We can organize it this way.
And, of course, it's not just about navigation, but about manipulation as well. So if we don't like stuff, or we're intensely curious about Ernst Haeckel's scientific falsifications, we can pull them out like that. And then if it's time for analysis, we can pull back a little bit and ask for a different distribution. Let's just come down a bit and fly around. So that's a different way to look at stuff. If you're of a more analytical nature then you might want, actually, to look at this as a color histogram. So now we've got the stuff color sorted, angle maps into color. And now, if we want to select stuff, 3D, space, the idea that we're tracking hands in real space becomes really important because we can reach in, not in 2D, not in fake 2D, but in actual 3D. Here are some selection plains. And we'll perform this Boolean operation because we really love yellow and tapirs on green grass.
So, from there to the world of real work. Here's a logistics system, a small piece of one that we're currently building. There's a lot of elements. And one thing that's very important is to combine traditional tabular data with three-dimensional and geospatial information.
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這是我們熟悉的地方(意指:美國),我們稍後再帶回來,先來選一些項目,並將帶出這個圖表,現在,我們應能飛進這裡並作細部觀看,這些是運算要素,資料來自全美,3D 介面是最重要的一個影響及深深影響我們的空間運算整體概念,它徹底地消滅那種人類與電腦之間一對一的悲劇性配對,那是老套、老箴言,一台機器、一個人、一隻滑鼠、一台螢幕,那不再是潮流所在,真實世界中,我們有人必需共工,我們有人必需要合作,我們有許多不同的展示方式,我們也許想要細看這些不同的圖像或是請別人幫忙,這款新式指控設備的原創者就坐在那兒,我可以將這張圖從這裡移到那裡,這兩台是不相關的機器,所以運算已不再有空間及網路的限制,我要把這圖留在那兒,因為我有個問題要請教 Paul,Paul 是這根魔棒的設計師,所以也許最簡單的方式是請他親自為我們展示其功用,我們先搬開一些物件,先來支解這個物件,我繼續將它爆開來,Kevin,幫忙一下,讓我看看是否能找出線路板,這只是無端的拆卸練習,但我們經常在實驗室中玩。
All right,這就是協作,無論是能立即相互辨位或是拉距及區別,永遠都是很重要的,但最重要的是它,必需放在空間的脈絡中來進行,最後,我想要讓各位,回頭看一下表象的世界,這個系統稱作 TAMPER,看起來有點異想天開,關於未來編輯與媒體操控系統的可能發展,Oblong 的每個人都相信媒體應以更有細密紋理的形式和人類接觸,我們有大量的電影儲存在這裡面,我就先挑出一些素材來,我們可以迅速地穿越整部影片,這已是一種可能的選項,我們可以將素材從正面抓出來,它們還能恢復生氣,繼續其動作,還能抓到這張桌面上,我們再來找出 Jacques Tati,並抓出我們這位標成藍色的朋友,將他也放到這桌面上來,我們可能需要抓不只一個,可能還需要,嗯,我們可能還需要一名牛仔,我們確實需要(笑聲),Yeah,就取這一尊吧(笑聲),牛仔加上法式鬧劇角色不太搭調,而系統明瞭這一點。
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So here's a familiar place. And we'll bring this back here for a second. Maybe select a little bit of that. And bring out this graph. And we should, now, be able to fly in here and have a closer look. These are logistics elements that are scattered across the United States.
One thing that three-dimensional interactions and the general idea of imbuing computation with space affords you, is a final destruction of that unfortunate one to one pairing between human beings and computers. That's the old way; that's the old mantra, right, one machine, one human, one mouse, one screen. Well, that doesn't really cut it anymore. So in the real world, we have people who collaborate; we have people who have to work together. And we have many different displays. And we might want to look at these various images. We might want to ask for some help.
The author of this new pointing device is sitting over there, so I can pull this from there to there. These are unrelated machines, right. So the computation is space soluble and network soluble. So I'm going to leave that over there because I have a question for Paul. Paul is the designer of the wand, and maybe its easiest for him to come over here and tell me in person what's going on. So let me get some of these out of the way. Let's pull this apart, I'll go ahead and explode it. Kevin, can you help? Let me see if I can help us find the circuit board. Mind you, it's a sort of gratuitous field-stripping exercise, but we do it in the lab all the time. All right. So collaborative work, whether it's immediately co-located or distant and distinct, is always important. And again, that stuff needs to be undertaken in the context of space.
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我最後要說的一個想法是,那就是最偉大的英語作家之一,在過去的三十年中曾說宏偉藝術總是像天賦,他並不是指一本要價 24.95 美金的小說,或是你必需要籌出 7000 萬買下偷來的 Vermeer 名畫,他是在談其創作與存在的環境,我想現在也是我們對科技提出相同問題的時間點,科技能表達並深深影響,一種特定的善意,而我們其實必需提出那種需求,對於這類科技的其中一部份,其領域中心是結合設計,這超級重要,我們無法再讓科技進展,除非一開始便結合設計,另外還要有效力及動力,我們是人類,具創造力的生物,所以,我們應確保我們的機器能幫我們創造,而且是建於相同的形象,就這樣,感謝聆聽(掌聲)。
Chris Anderson:問一個明顯的問題,其實是比爾‧蓋茲的問題,何時?(John Underkoffler:何時?)CA:何時成真?何時才能普及,不只是在實驗室或講台上,普羅大眾都能用得到,或是只有大企業與電影製片?
JU:No,每一位人類都應用到,那是我們的終極目標,我們不會成功,除非我們朝這個大方向邁進,我是說,已經 25 年了,真只能有單一的介面?不行!
CA:但那是否也意謂著,在你的辦公桌上或家裡都必需要安裝投影器和攝影機?到底要如何使其運作?
JU:No,這些都將嵌入每台顯示器的設計中,這些都會內建到整個架構之中,手套會在幾個月或年之後棄用,這是必然。
CA:以你的觀點看來,五年內,人們將可以購買這項設備,作為標準電腦介面嗎?
JU:我認為五年內,人們所購買的電腦將會擁有這項設備。
CA:非常酷!(掌聲)
世界常讓我們感到驚奇,就這玩意兒如何被真正使用而言,你認為什麼將會是這設備最殺的應用?
JU:這是個好問題,我們每天都如此自問,目前,我們的早期採用客戶,這套系統在真實世界中的部署都是有大量數據需要,或巨量數據問題的產業,所以,各戶分佈於物流管理的後勤業或天然瓦斯和資源開採、金融服務、藥品業、生物資訊等行業,這些是目前的主要運用範疇,但那都不是最殺的應用,我瞭解你的問題。
CA:預言一下,武術、遊戲,選一個。
(笑聲)
John,感謝您讓科幻變成真實。
JU:備感榮幸。
感謝聆聽。
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And finally, I'd like to leave you with a glimpse that takes us back to the world of imagery. This is a system called TAMPER, which is a slightly whimsical look at what the future of editing and media manipulation systems might be. We at Oblong believe that media should be accessible in much more fine-grained form. So we have a large number of movies stuck inside here. And let's just pick out a few elements. We can zip through them as a possibility. We can grab elements off the front, where upon they reanimate, come to life, and drag them down onto the table here. We'll go over to Jacques Tati here and grab our blue friend and put him down on the table as well. We may need more than one. And we probably need, well, we probably need a cowboy to be quite honest. (Laughter) Yeah, let's take that one. (Laughter) You see, cowboys and French farce people don't go well together, and the system knows that.
Let me leave with one final thought, and that is that one of the greatest English language writers of the last three decades suggested that great art is always a gift. And he wasn't talking about whether the novel costs 24.95, or whether you have to spring 70 million bucks to buy the stolen Vermeer; he's talking about the circumstances of its creation and of its existence. And I think that it's time that we asked for the same from technology. Technology is capable of expressing and being imbued with a certain generosity, and we need to demand that, in fact. For some of this kind of technology, ground center is a combination of design, which is crucially important. We can't have advances in technology any longer unless design is integrated from the very start. And, as well as of efficacy, agency. We're, as human beings, the creatures that create, and we should make sure our machines aid us in that task and are built in that same image.
So I will leave you with that. Thank you.
(Applause)
Chris Anderson: So to ask the obvious question -- actually this is from Bill Gates -- when? (John Underkoffler: When?) CA: When real? When for us, not just in a lab and on a stage? Can it be for every man, or is this just for corporations and movie producers?
JU: No, it has to be for every human being. That's our goal entirely. We won't have succeeded unless we take that next big step. I mean it's been 25 years. Can there really only be one interface? There can't.
CA: But does that mean that, at your desk or in your home, you need projectors, cameras? You know, how can it work?
JU: No, this stuff will be built into the bezel of every display. It'll be built into architecture. The gloves go away in a matter of months or years. So this is the inevitability about it.
CA: So, in your mind, five years time, someone can buy this as part of a standard computer interface?
JU: I think in five years time when you buy a computer, you'll get this.
CA: Well that's cool. (Applause) The world has a habit of surprising us as to how these things are actually used. What do you think, what in your mind is the first killer app for this?
JU: That's a good question, and we ask ourselves that every day. At the moment, our early-adopter customers -- and the systems are deployed out in the real world -- do all the big data intensive, data heavy problems with it. So, whether it's logistics in supply chain management or natural gas and resource extraction, financial services, pharmaceuticals, bioinformatics, those are the topics right now, but that's not a killer app. And I understand what you're asking.
CA: C'mon, c'mon. Martial arts, games. C'mon. (Laughter) John, thank you for making science-fiction real.
JU: It's been a great pleasure. Thank you to you all.