G4LI Jaron Lanier Talk

Microsoft Research/Author “You Are Not a Gadget”
The human body has input/output capabilities.
Haptic feedback, in HCI/UI research is about touch feedback and force feedback.
We tend to think that all digital tech is improving exponentially, but in fact some of the most important improvements are simply crawling ahead–haptic feedback
The Powerglove showed up in the 80s, died and then haptics didn’t return until the Wii, and now Natal coming out at Christmas
“The haptic modality of cognition is capable of independent problem solving” Piano improve involves the body independently colving cognitive problems–chord modulation etc. This has great potential for learning, obviously.
“Can you learn trigonometry by mapping your body into a triangle in real time?” “Can you learn anything about dinosaurs by becoming one” “Can you learn about chemistry by mapping yourself onto a molecule and bonding.”
This is fun. Also, we’re narcissicistic and when you are the subject it’s more interesting, and haptic intelligence is powerful means of learning.
As technology improves it improves mental acuity–our ability to recognize fidelity, and potentially computers could improve our capacity to think (what? just gonna roll with this right now)
The crucial duty of anyone in games and ed is to make simulations that have high fidelity to systems being modeled.
One of the cruicial chalenges will be accuractely mapping haptic structures to logic structures
Hypothesis: There is something fundamentally different about having knowledge structures mapped/ingrained into your physical body
The tounge can be an incredibly acurate and useful output device, and with noninvasive senseors it could be an invaluable maens of controlling computers
We’re at a difficult time now because standards for games so high, the ratio between commercial quality and leanring quality is larger that commercial film to learning film–games are very difficult to make well
There has to be parity between commercial and learning games, must happen, no solutions for this

Advocates avatar that is the content–less of the fantasy avatar in edu games