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Jazz Computing
Updated 18 August 2003
With technology progressing apace, our interface with computers has the potential to become more like that with musical instruments. A piano is a keyboard-based device which can nonetheless create mentally and emotionally powerful experiences. Computers, with rapid calculations and access to various media, have the potential to create even more powerful ones. Today's computers can process data in real time with amazing speed, and can store and display large quantities of information at high resolutions. New interface technologies -- and old ones -- can harness this power, and allow people to create, manipulate, exchange, and retrieve rich experiences in real time and across great distances of time and space. This might properly be called "improvisational computing." Unfortunately, a company called __ has trademarked this term, presumably limiting its unfettered usage. However, in 1995 I wrote a paper called Jazz Computing, which offered a model of improvisational, multi-media interaction between people and computers. Advancing technology is now making it possible to put the model into practice. Video tracking, inexpensive sensors, improving software for real-time interactions, are facilitating new and more natural types of interaction, and new storage, processing, data compression and display technologies enable computers to give us more, and richer, data. Experiential Computing A recent article by Ramesh Jain described the work of his research group at Georgia Tech in similar research, what they call experiential computing. "In an experiential computing environment, users apply their senses directly, observing event-related data and information of interest." The model, like mine, is event-centered, relies on real-time data from disparate sources, and utilises new interaction technologies to allow the user to explore the event from multiple perspectives. "An EventWeb sould be independent of language and have much greater appeal among the 90 percent of the world's population that lacks access to current ICT due to language and education barriers." This approach wisely uses the strengths of each actor: "The human mind is ver efficient at conceptual and perceptual analysis and relatively weak at mathematical and logical analysis; computers are the opposite." This reflects the belief that people do not want to browse huge silos of data. Aggregations and interpretations of the data may exist, but in this approach, they can experience and interact with the data to form their own insights, based on their own interests and preconceptions. (See my related piece, What is Reality?) The system, ideally, knows the state and context of each user and delivers information accordingly. This is an admirable foundation, and my aim is to extend the research, particularly in terms of user interface and interaction technologies.
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