Section 3 - The Cave Response

I remember the first time I heard about The Cave at Brown was in a biology class in my senior year of high school. My teacher referenced how the interface could allow scientists to be immersed in scientific imagery, describing a user wearing computer-integrated gloves, assessing the physical dimensions of the visual projection of a mitochondria within a cell by placing their hands around the organelle. In addition to creating brand new 3D spaces–as in the examples we saw, where the creators exploited the dissimilarities between physical three dimensional spaces and virtual ones to create unfamiliar (and perhaps 'unreal') sensations of human spatial awareness–The Cave allows new options for exploring real places that used to be either too large or too small for the human body to experience in a fittingly immersed fashion ("fittingly" i.e. "lifesize", or in a less speciest phrasing: a space that is easy and semi-familiar for humans to interact with). Additionally, video games would be freaking sweetass!

As small-sized technological hardware becomes more and more popular to reduce required storage space, GUIs move from two-dimensional small screens to three-dimensional IMAX theaters and even rooms named after holes in big rocks; but is an entire room for projection a plausible commodity for individual users not affiliated with institutions like Brown. Commodification arguably encourages efficiency in an ideal free-market situation, so I wonder if perhaps a more universally ergonomic option could be something more like the postulated glasses I mentioned in my last post about 3D Windows. Basically, someone should just make those glasses I guess.