Bringing visualization to the user

Pictures are now more important than text for ordinary communications. I will discuss the implications of this premise rather than its desirability. The only reason they (and sound) have not been ordinary is the relative difficulty of creating and manipulating them in everyday contexts. The wonderful Moore’s Law phenomenon an order of magnitude increase in everything good (memory, speed, price decrease) every five years has made it possible to make sound and pictures ordinary. But this is not yet the case, despite available computing horsepower. The reason the different branches of picturing (2D, 3D, images, geometry, animation, interaction) have not yet converged with one another, much less with text, despite decades of talk about “convergence” and “multimedia” is, I believe, one of poor models and inappropriate metaphors, many of which are unfortunately all but institutionalized. I will elaborate the discrete/continuous problem, the alpha/gamma problem, and others that currently hinder us, the purpose being to highlight them so that they will be dealt with. There is really nothing other than infrastructure to deter us from implementing the vision now. I will also attempt to calibrate the audience to what really is possible and when.