Fifth lecture
1965 - Ivan Sutherland writes ‘The Ultimate Display’. As depicted by this picture, he had a huge understanding and foreseeing of what could be the future of technology. His system was not as design as google glasses, but nonetheless the idea was already there. Let’s take a look to his ideas through his words.
He started with a description of what already exist in 1965. I will now highlight some of his sentences.
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“As more and more on-line systems are used, it is likely that many more typewriter consoles will come into use. Tomorrow’s computer user will interact with a computer through a typewriter. He ought to know how to touch type.”
Indeed, computers are still remoted by typewriters, nothing has changed. However, more and more devices, even a fex computers, now have screened to control them. It is of course the case of smartphones for instance. In this cas, it remains a typewriter but how it works has nothing in common. Then the argument “Typewriters are inexpensive, reliable, and produce easily transmitted signals” is no longer true.
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“The possibilities for very smooth interaction with the computer through these devices (ED : light pen & stylus) is only just beginning to be exploited.”
I will only use the case of stylus as light pen did with cathode ray tube television.
Professional tablets and even some smartphones like Samsung Galaxy Note are currently sold with stylus. The price of such stylus like the apple one shows how important they can be in a costumer experience. it enables actions like drawing or taking notes that are not possibles with fingers. However, such utilisation is not that common as it takes space and it is not that useful for a common user. I don’t think that he was right about that, neither do I that such utilisation will grow though time.
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“No existing display equipment computes the depths of recursions that are needed. New displays with analog memories may well lose the pointing ability altogether.”
There, he was all wrong. Indeed, far from losing the pointing ability, touchscreens enable anyone to interact with any graphic interface. It is off course a completely different technical solution but still he has not seen it coming.
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“It (Ed : displays) should serve as many senses as possible”
We are far from being able to serve every sens. Indeed, haptic touch enable now to have information back after a touch. Current immersive / surround sound increase the sensation of immersion. 3D, good quality or big screens enable to increase the vision sense. However, in your daily life, you never have smells during a movie. It is the same for the taste. Still, we have a few examples of experience such as movies in the Futuroscope that try to add senses on their experiments. It simply demands too many devices. I don’t think we would have some in a close future.
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“kinesthetic display.”
This idea make me think to the work of our teacher Jan Gugenheimer on VR. The idea was to make the player feel a growing strength to move in real life as his life in the game decrease. All of this is indeed computer remoted. However, there are only few examples of this today. But a brand-new one exists : the button of the ps5 controller will indeed be more or less hard to pull according to the game you play. It took time but yet the application are here.
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“The ultimate display would, of course, be a room within which the computer can control the existence of matter.”
This closes the paper, it is the main idea, something to mark the reader. Actually, we have something like this today, it is virtual worlds such as VR experiments.
The example of the movie “Ready Player One” depicts what could become this technique we currently already master. We can create such world, but dying in there won’t kill you in real life. Ivan Sutherland depicts a world that give matter to digital objects. 3D printing maybe get closer to the idea but remains far less powerful than his description.
What about the future then ? I really do not think we are getting close to such a computer or a world. I do not know any technical solution that could enable it. One more time, in a close future, I can’t imagine it. However, neither could people about the internet before it appears. Then, what will happen in 55 years ? We will see !
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Conclusion
To conclude, I found fascinating that Ivan Sutherland is doing science. He figured everything out of reflexion. He took what existed, what has to be bettered and what he thought was technically possible. It is a very good interpretation.