Reading on the Holodeck: Ray Bradbury, Ivan Sutherland, and the Future of Books. An exploration of the consequences of immersive media environments on IP policy, libraries, and creative arts.

1. Peter Brantley QWC
Internet Archive Brisbane
San Francisco 04.2011

2. Originally published 1950
September 23 issue
Saturday Evening Post

3. The Illustrated Man
by Ray Bradbury.
Doubleday & Co., 1951.

4. The rise in the popularity of television had a direct
influence on Bradbury’s story “The Veldt.” At the
time the story was written, many American families
were acquiring their first television sets, and no one
was sure exactly how this new technology would
impact the relationships among family members.
- eNotes, “The Veldt Summary”

5. Happy Life Home
A pre-digital glimpse of an immersive and
user-driven multimedia experience.

6. The nursery was silent. It was empty as a jungle
glade at hot high noon. The walls were blank and
two dimensional. Now, as George and Lydia Hadley
stood in the center of the room, the walls began to
purr and recede into crystalline distance, it seemed,
and presently an African veldt appeared, in three
dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced to the
final pebble and bit of straw. The ceiling above them
became a deep sky with a hot yellow sun.

7. […] George Hadley was filled with admiration for
the mechanical genius who had conceived this
room. A miracle of efficiency selling for an absurdly
low price. Every home should have one. Oh,
occasionally they frightened you with their clinical
accuracy, they startled you, gave you a twinge, but
most of the time what fun for everyone, not only
your own son and daughter, but for yourself when
you felt like a quick jaunt to a foreign land, a quick
change of scenery. Well, here it was!

8. "Walls, Lydia, remember; crystal walls, that's all
they are. Oh, they look real, I must admit - Africa in
your parlor - but it's all dimensional,
superreactionary, supersensitive color film and
mental tape film behind glass screens. It's all
odorophonics and sonics, Lydia.” ...

10. The ultimate display would, of course, be a room
within which the computer can control the
existence of matter. A chair displayed in such a
room would be good enough to sit in. Handcuffs
displayed in such a room would be confining, and a
bullet displayed in such a room would be fatal.
- “The Ultimate Display”, 1965

11. Campfire storytelling, Iga Warta, Northern Flinders Ranges

12. There is a likely inexorable trend
towards increasing immersion in
human story-telling using tech.
In many ways, writing is an odd detour.

13. “For this invention will produce forgetfulness
in the minds of those who learn it through the
neglect of memory, for that through trusting
to writing, they will remember outwardly by
means of foreign marks, and not inwardly by
means of their own faculties. So that you
have not discovered a medicine for memory,
but for recollection. ” (em. Added)

14. story telling
is
singing and
dancing

18. A ‘holodeck’ is an
augmentation of -
expression.
communication.
sharing.
We have many components.

20. Remote Dance
Tele-Immersion
UC Berkeley

23. Physical engagement:
Nintendo’s Wiimote
Microsoft’s Kinect
Sony’s Move

24. In 2011:
 3d projection
 augmented reality
 surround sound
 gesture detection
 tele immersion
 machine vision

25. Hamlet on the holodeck: the
future of narrative in cyberspace.
by Janet H. Murray,
Simon and Schuster, 1997.

26. The holonovel offers a model of an art form that
is based on the most powerful technology of
sensory illusion imaginable but is nevertheless
continuous with the larger human tradition of
storytelling, stretching from the heroic bards
through the nineteenth-century novelists.
- Janet H. Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck

27. Eventually all successful storytelling
technologies become "transparent": we lose
consciousness of the medium and see neither
print nor film but only the power of the story
itself.
- Janet H. Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck

28. If digital art reaches the same level of
expressiveness as these older media, we will no
longer concern ourselves with how we are
receiving the information. We will only think
about what truth it has told us about our lives.
(em. Added)
- Janet H. Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck

29. Holodeck interpretations would be a
kind of community based writing –
a new revision of a writing center.
Interactive, individual, and real.

30. Cf. GAFFTA, San Francisco –
“Guided by the principles of openness, collaboration,
and resource sharing, our programs promote creativity
at the intersection of art, design, sound, and
technology. A conduit for multidisciplinary creative
exchange, GAFFTA supports the creation and diffusion
of works that engage and inspire audiences, and offer
meaningful contributions to the global movement that
is shaping our collective experience.”

31. Cf. Medialab Prado, Madrid –
“Medialab-Prado is a program of the Department
of Arts of the City Council of Madrid, aimed at the
production, research, and dissemination of digital
culture and of the area where art, science,
technology, and society intersect. ”

32. “… MacArthur Foundation and the Institute of
Museum and Library Services (IMLS) …announced
plans to create 30 new youth learning labs in
libraries and museums across the country. Inspired
by an innovative new teen space at the Chicago
Public Library called YOUmedia and innovations in
science and technology centers, these labs will help
young people become makers and creators of
content, rather than just consumers of it.”

33. One, two! One, two! And through and
through The vorpal blade went snicker-
snack! He left it dead, and with its head He
went galumphing back.
- Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky

34. Sample experience frames …
Experiential – (take us to Patmos)
Suspended – (play “Roman Fever”)
Interactive – (enter “If on a Winter’s Night ... )
Gaming – (contest the Jabberwocky)

35. Where rests the IP of a holodeck?
If encounters with holodeck experiences
build new stories, is each user an author?
Are multi-user holodeck experiences works
with multiple authors?

36. What would ‘moral rights’ mean in a
mixed virtual-real shared experience?
As in interactive gaming environments,
we will see a re-melding of the roles of
the author and reader.

37. Holodecks run a set of interactive frames,
not tightly specified narratives.
To ‘write’ may be programming a game.
To ‘experience’ may be running a program.
Open-ended. In the player’s
control.

38. Holodecks are interpreters.
Code factories.
Select the components.
Order the sequence.
“Make” an experience.
“Run” the program.

40. When you were young,
would you have expected
your toys to surprise you?

43. Are holodecks the next-generation personal
digital experience? A private fantasy field?
Or, are they the next “3rd Place” – a place of
self enactment and story telling in a social
context?

44. Cf. gaming –
“The idea of the lone gamer is really not true
anymore. Up to 65 percent of gaming now is
social, played either online or in the same
room with people we know in real life.”
- Jane McGonigal, Smithsonian Magazine, February 2011

45. trending toward
sophistication
complexity
surprise
and deeper social interaction

47. For the state to see, parse, and record
all the experiences its citizens design.
To control the interpreter.
To write the program.
To make handcuffs bind and bullets kill.
To make the deck a panopticon.

48. Are holodecks built or assembled?
Apple iDeck with iTunes?
Google Android Holodeck.app?
Amazon 1-click Holodeck?
Or the Valve Steam Room?

49. The real life fact that
one most enter a holodeck
is critically important.
Real things invite inspection.
Sabotage can be detected.
Hacking is possible.

50. “We founded Startl to pave the way for cool new
digital media learning products to move from
idea to funding and into learners’ hands. We’re
working outside the established systems in a
public-private partnership to break new ground
in the education market and help to launch the
next generation of digital tools for learning.”

51. Fight to control the deck.
Start to make your own.
Don’t take experience for granted.
Build you own visions.

53. Saturday Evening Post, cover image, 23 September, 1950.
http://curtispublishing.com/images/NonRockwell/9500923.jpg
“The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, accessed on 14 January 2011.
http://www.veddma.com/veddma/Veldt.htm
Hamlet on the Holodeck, cover image.
http://covers.openlibrary.org/w/id/152123-L.jpg
Hamlet on the holodeck: the future of narrative in cyberspace.
by Janet H. Murray, Simon and Schuster, 1997.
“The Illustrated Man”, Wikipedia, accessed on 14 January 2011.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_Illustrated_Man
“The Veldt: Summary”, eNotes, accessed on 14 January 2011.
http://www.enotes.com/veldt/summary
“The ultimate display”, by Ivan Sutherland.
Proceedings of IFIP Congress 1965, 506-508.

54. “veldt rainbow”, by David W. Siu, Flickr.
“Campfire storytelling, Iga Warta, Northern Flinders Ranges”
by 澳大利亚国家馆 || Australia at Expo 2010, Flickr.
“Lontar”, naypinya, Flickr.
Still of Zoe Saldana in Avatar,
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1265536512/tt0499549
“holodeck” by learn4life, Flickr.
“The holodeck” by A Hermida, Flickr.
Bali cakepung, http://blog.baliwww.com/
Tele-immersion dance, http://tele-immersion.citris-uc.org/
“Hold Hands”, wickenden, Flickr.
“Robotic Seal” by Thomas Hawk, Flickr
“Bodies of Thought”, Kristin Smith, cellspace.org/new/node/237 - ErikaPR
“Teaching how to dance”, William Forrester, Flickr!

55. peter brantley
internet archive
san francisco ca
@naypinya (twitter)
peter @archive.org