Virtual reality and the future of hypertext (abstract)

Extended Abstract Virtual Reality has been largely conceived in terms this direction: the concept maps in hypertext sys-of the visual. Other senses, sound and touch, al-tema are examples of symbolic spaces in two di-though given roles, are clearly quite secondary. mensions. A third dimension would expand the What VR presents to the user is images, not texts. possibilities of representation. Such a hypertex-What role might text play in Virtual Reality? This tualized virtual space might allow the creation of is particularly important for exponents of hyper-text unlike any that have ever been written. text, because VR threatens to become the hot new topic, and perhaps to diminish interest and research in hypertext. One could convincingly argue there is no real direct competition: VR and hypertext can evolve side by side for different purposes. VR is useful for simulation and training, for medical imaging, for telepresence, and so on. Hypertext serves for databases of text materials, pedagogy, and interactive fiction and nonfiction. But even if VR and hypertext continue to evolve side by side, it remains interesting to consider how the two might merge. Virtual Reality and hypertext are products of two different communication technologies. Virtual Reality has its closest affinity to television, which is a perceptual medium. Hypertext comes out of the tradition of writing. Both VR and hypertext claim to be new ways of expressing information, although with different emphases. In VR, one sees and touches a perceptual space; in hypertext one reads and writes in a textual space. Can the two be combined? In particular , can the space of virtual reality be hypertex-tualized? One way to introduce text into virtual reality would be to write upon the surfaces in the virtual space. This would give us a virtual book, whose structure is expressed architecturally in three dimensions. The book becomes a space that the reader enters and explores, a space in which the relationships among the surfaces define relationships among the verbal ideas in the text. A more radical possibility y would be to turn the entire virtual space into a symbolic structure. Several hypertext systems are already moving in