VirT
short e-paper

  Virtual Technologies (VirT)

  Visual Representations  of  Human's  Domains of Activity:
   a TOGA meta-theory based  preliminary identification

Adam Maria Gadomski

e-paper

 Project

Cog-SOPHOCLES
 

Problem:

Design

Human-Problem Cognitive Interface

This e-paper is a key technical note dealing with a top analysis and top-down taxonomy of goal-oriented visual representations of the human domains of activity/interest.

Human domains of activity/interest may be a part of either physically perceived real world, or  mental constructs, such as problems, plans, theory,  imaginary models or situations.

For the definition of the problem we use the TOGA  meta-theory specification framework.

  VirT cognitive context   

Every real world problem involves passive and active components, i.e.  the couple: Intelligent Agent (IA) and h/h/its Domain-of-Activity (D), where D includes the problem domain.  
Every human agent constructs an abstract Virtual Domain-of-Activity (ViDA). It has to have  properties which are related to the goal of the assumed problem..

  Definition
Virtual technologies are technologies which serve for the representation of elements and events of the real, invented and abstract human worlds in the form of dynamic images. These worlds or their parts are visually perceived and interpreted by humans like as really existing physical objects.
Therefore, virtual images are used for the optical observation of different simulated behaviors which either are not observable by human eyes or do not exist physically.

   Why
Image perception and elaboration are most efficient capacity of human senses and brain. 

   Hypothesis

According to the axioms of the TOGA meta-theory:

 - every problem is goal-oriented/based/ purposive and can be represented as a system of abstract objects. There is possible to create an isomorphic relation between such abstract objects representation and a system composed with images of real-world objects and animating their behavior using the metaphor relation.

   Application Domains
The VirT are applied for  the creation of images of problem-oriented Virtual Worlds. 

   Application Objectives
Virtual Images serve for information acquisition, learning (knowledge acquisition), design, action planning and, in general, for evaluation of the decision making hypothesis in complex domains.

We may distinguish 5 basic domains of the application of VirT:

1. Visualization of difficult analyzed or planed  RW (real world) complex dynamic systems/scenarios if it is more economic than their physical construction.
Specially  used in engineering for "What if" simulations.

2. Visualization of impossible to do  in RW, such as, dangerous destructive experiments and natural disasters.

3. Visualization of unavailable for observation behavior of hardly accessible elements of RW; too big, too small, hidden inside of RW objects.

4. Visualization of invisible properties of RW, such as fields of temperature, radition and other physical spatially distributed attributes.

5. Visualization of inexistent physically entities, such as, imaginary/invented beings,  abstract objects, and their interrelations and interactions.
For example, by the mapping of mental constructs to the graphical RW like objects.

Visualization of Abstract Objects

The first, well known, step in the visualization of  mental concepts has been the elaboration of standards of the visualization of abstract objects and their relations using simple  two dimensional graphical figures. It includes different types of  flowcharts, graphs, Petri net, and so on. their common property is the representation of abstract objects and  their interrelations but without metrics of the introduced space. 

This approach is used, for example in the Microsoft Office Visio (2007) tool and described in details in the book of T. Kamada  & S. Kawai (1991), A general framework for visualizing abstract objects and relations, ACM Press   New York, NY. Unfortunately, the application of graphical symbols is driven by user-defined mapping rules, frequently intuitive and not explicity formalized. Therefore only in particular cases these representations enable  formal operations on the grahical objects which  can lead back to the representation of the real or possible states of the relations between initial abstract objects.

The formal modeling and visualization process is here the following:

 Properties of physical objects --> Abstract Objects Model --> Graphical object network

Fig.1

Graphical object networks enable only mental navigation between recognized  strongly reduced physical properties of the interest.

"Physics of Mind":  RW Metaphor

Everyday scientific practice is the  projecting of RW entities on the abstract spaces of theories or other ontological systems.
A new possibility, especially promising for the scientific and practical purposes, is the mapping of human mental world on the RW directly as static and dynamic images.

Abstract concepts                  Images of 
system                        --->      the reality

The hypothesis of intelligent Virtual Technology is the modification of the fig. 1 to the sequence below.

 Properties of physical objects --> Abstract Objects Model --> Image of a virtual real world

Fig.2

Such mapping should be dynamic and enable/help to solve many complex abstract problems using  relatively easy to solve RW situations, for example, a car driving.

At present, the idea of the metaphoric problem solving is the object of investigation in the frame of the TOGA meta-theory.

Use of the term Virtual Technologies

This  term meaning is frequently quasi idiomatic with  human-computer and multimedia technologies, but the domain 4 and 5 are not yet sufficiently explored theoretically.

see:

International Journal of Virtual Technology and Multimedia  (IJVTM)
 

One of early proposals (1993)

Google references :

"virtual technology" - 123 000 docs ( 14 Feb. 2007)

"virtual world technology" - 651 docs ( 14 Feb. 2007)

"metaphor modeling" -  454 docs  ( 14 May. 2007)

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