Part 1 - Bio or home page

http://www.advanced.org/jaron/

Jaron Lanier coined the term 'Virtual Reality' and in the early 1980s founded VPL Research, the first company to sell VR products. In the late 1980s he lead the team that developed the first implementations of multi-person virtual worlds using head mounted displays, for both local and wide area networks, as well as the first "avatars", or representations of users within such systems. While at VPL, he co-developed the first implementations of virtual reality applications in surgical simulation, vehicle interior prototyping, virtual sets for television production, and assorted other areas.

Lanier is currently Visiting Scientist at Silicon Graphics and an External Fellow at Berkeley's International Computer Science Institute.  Prior to that, Lanier served as the Lead Scientist of the National Tele-immersion Initiative, a coalition of research universities studying advanced applications for Internet 2.

He tends to collect adjunct appointments, and is currently a visiting faculty member of one sort or another at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth, the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania, the Interactive Telecommunications Program of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University  (where he is a visiting artist), and at the  Columbia University Computer Science Department.
Part 2 - Themes and challenges

1.1. We will explore the intersections of GeoVis, InfoVis and SciVis through the following theme sessions: Cross-fertilizing InfoVis, GeoVis & SciVis, Location Aware Computing & GeoLiteracy, New Architectures & Cyberinfrastructure Initiatives. Workshop participants include experts in the fields of GeoVis, SciVis, GeoLiteracy, Immersive Interfaces, Cyberinfrastructures, and Art.  (See workshop overview at: http://vw.indiana.edu/envision05/envision_overview.pdf )

Which major technical challenges do you see for the objectives of  EnVision 05 - Exploring a New Visualization Infrastructure, as laid out in the main discussion themes?

Three main tech challenges:

1 Information architectures are still dominated by static information.  We need to learn to quickly author, analyze, modify, blend, and search among vast numbers of dynamic simulations that mix varied approaches to dynamics modeling.

2 Still struggling to create displays and input devices that meet human factors requirements.
3 Good user interfaces from research labs haven't been widely adopted and the widely adopted interfaces aren't good enough for tasks covered in this meeting.  Need new approach to advanced user interface that emphasizes ease of adoption


2.2. Which major non-technical challenges do you foresee?

Has the research community and/or the private sector become too complacent with the familiar graphical and user interface aspects of information technology?

2.3. Which major opportunities do you envision?

Basing information systems on the orderings of the real world they are meant to enhance could perform a dual service.  The initial motivation might be to improve user interfaces in order to raise human performance standards, but an unintended and very beneficial side effect might be to reduce the drag caused by arbitrary abstractions.  Geo-ordered data is ordered by an objective principle, while almost all data has historically been ordered by abstract categorizations with no universality.  Successful information systems ordered by reality might inspire more of the same even outside of the geosync orbit.


Part 32  - Your research and publications

If you are already doing research related to the workshop themes and topics, please describe briefly the projects you are working on and relevant publications. Where applicable, please use the categories provided. In case your research does not at all fit into these categories (e.g., work on philosophical, ontological foundations, etc.), feel free to describe your approach in a form you feel most comfortable with.

3.1. Project Name and Web Address


http://www.advanced.org/jaron/COCODEX.html

for answers to questions below, please see above website

3.2. Project Members

3.3. Targeted User Group

3.4. Supported User Tasks

3.5. Data Sets Used

3.6. Algorithms Used

3.7. Sample Maps

3.8. Pros and Cons

3.9. Planned Work

3.10. Major Publications (please provide URLs where applicable)