Re: [huml-comment] FW: [www-vrml] Fw: Being There - The new FREE bookon Presence

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Sorry I am just now getting to this. Web Services have been absorbing 
me big time this week and will be for the remainder of this month. 
This is excellent. This site is a bit on the exhaustive side, which 
makes focus difficult, but I am certain that I will be spending a 
huge amount of time becoming very familiar with it since the Human 
Physical Characteristics Description ML will use it as a major 
resource. Cognitive modelling and Semiotic concerns (in terms of 
neurological functions), not to mention Kinesics and Haptics are all 
very well represented in this resource collection.

Note: I am currently working on a HumanML-enhanced chat application 
as a sample implementation of our PBS, as well as keeping pace with 
the Web Services avalanche. Hopefully, we will get that V. 1.0 out at 
the end of this month and the pace can resume a more normal, less 
intense, rate.

Just so you know, because the chat will be part of a modular approach 
to Portals, containing significant 3D features, I am writing it 
simultaneously in Java, C++ and Python to cover as much as I can of 
the spectrum of application environments that I wish to support (and, 
yes, I also have my eye on the wireless and handheld app market, 
too). So, that is the source of my current case of tunnel vision.

Ciao,
Rex

At 8:38 AM -0600 1/9/03, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>Note that there are significant overlaps in this and what
>HumanML categories seek to codify.
>
>len
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: George Birbilis [mailto:birbilis@kagi.com]
>Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 8:01 AM
>To: www-vrml@web3d.org
>Subject: [www-vrml] Fw: Being There - The new FREE book on Presence
>
>
>this might be of interest (VR, medicine,
>neuro-psychology)...
>
>>  Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 2:31 PM
>>  Subject: FW: Being There - The new FREE book on Presence
>
>
>Being There - The new FREE book on Presence
>Please Distribute
>-----------------
>
>
>FREE Electronic Book:
>
>
>"Being There: Concepts, Effects and Measurements of User
>Presence in Synthetic Environments"
>
>
>2003, Emerging Communication Series, IOS Press, Amsterdam,
>The Netherlands.
>
>
>Edited by G. Riva, F. Davide, W.A. IJsselsteijn
>
>
>Preface by F. Biocca
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>--------
>FREE Download in PDF format. Link from the following web
>site - http://www.cybertherapy.info - together with many
>other free electronic books.
>------------------------------------------------------------
>-------------------
>
>
>INTRODUCTION
>
>
>What do people do at work? They go to meetings. How do we
>deal with meetings? What is it about sitting face to face
>that we need to capture? We need software that makes it
>possible to hold a meeting with distributed participants --
>a meeting with interactivity and feeling, such that, in the
>future, people will prefer being telepresent.
>
>Bill Gates, 1999
>
>According to different analysts, during the next ten years a
>new infrastructural paradigm will emerge, the 'Ambient
>Intelligent Space'. This is the collection of
>infrastructural technologies, applications and services that
>will enable the seamless interoperation of the applications
>and services of Ambient Intelligence: a pervasive and
>unobtrusive intelligence in the surrounding environment
>supporting the activities and interactions of the users.
>
>However, there are many outstanding requirements in order to
>reduce the lag between the availability of (hardware)
>technologies and the availability of applications and
>services based on those technologies, including support for
>rapid prototyping, user acceptance trials, real life
>experiments and demonstrations. In particular, achieving
>this vision will require the development of more natural
>ways of interacting with computer and information technology
>systems. This for example, will help to eliminate barriers
>that arise from difficulties that people experience in using
>current interaction devices such as screens and keyboards.
>
>A more advanced human-centered interaction with systems
>would provide users with a sense of being there, close to if
>not equivalent to the experience of actual presence.
>Creating this sense of presence remains a major challenge
>and is leading to the development of new interdisciplinary
>research, combining cognitive psychology, haptic (sense of
>touch) studies, computer graphics and multimedia design,
>advanced communication theory and socio-cultural issues. A
>theory of presence, emerging through this interdisciplinary
>research, that explores the cognitive and affective roots of
>sensory perception, is expected to give rise to the design
>of innovative systems that offer "richer" experiences than
>any current media and communication technologies.
>
>
>This book is an attempt to help designer and researchers in
>reaching this goal, by developing a better understanding of
>how a real sense of presence can be achieved. It involves
>learning and discovering what is going on when people use
>their senses to understand and interpret their surrounding
>environment and when they interact with objects in that
>environment. For the complexity of the discussed topic, we
>have put a great deal of thought and effort in the
>definition of the structure of the book and the sequence of
>the contributions, so that those in search of a specific
>reading path will be rewarded. To this end we the book is
>divided in four main Sections comprising 21 chapters
>overall.
>
>
>Part I - Presence: Past, Present and Future
>Part II - Presence: Theory and Methods
>Part III: Presence in Practice: Applications
>Part IV: Social Presence: Creating a Common Ground
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>--------
>FREE Download in PDF format from the following web site -
>http://www.cybertherapy.info - together with many other free
>electronic books.
>
>
>Please support the Series and its FREE approach: ask your
>institution to order the paper version of the book.
>------------------------------------------------------------
>-------------------
>
>
>--
>
>------------------------------
>Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Lab.
>Istituto Auxologico Italiano
>Casella Postale 1
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>
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>
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-- 
Rex Brooks
Starbourne Communications Design
1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA 94702 *510-849-2309
http://www.starbourne.com * rexb@starbourne.com