7.6 FUTURE RESEARCH
The dimensions of automated word processing have evolved and expanded over the years. Line editors gave way to full screen editors in the early 1980's. Spelling checkers and on-line thesauruses soon followed. Hypertext and hypermedia, with concepts of historical referencing and collaborative authoring, are recent elaborations of the textual environment. The CAD environment is faced with similar conceptual extensions, specifically in terms of data visualization, virtual reality, and object technology.
Data visualization is the translation of vast amounts of data into understandable images, allowing real-time interaction with and querying of entities such as three dimensional "solid" models displayed. Other dimensions to information are provided by the extensions of virtual reality, where alternate forms of interaction with the computer, such as data gloves, force-feedback servo-mechanism, and head mounted displays allow "immersion" and a sense of presence into the renderings of the computer. Such virtual environments provide a context and reality that users can immediately relate to or provide a context and reality that the user previous could not have conceived.
Information manifestation is a key concept that must be emphasized at this point. The most obvious example of manifestation includes a visualization of data on a computer display for human perusal. As an example, a database table indicating the fluctuation of a certain stock price over a particular month could be displayed on the screen in the form of a line graph, that data has been manifested. If one were to assign an increasing or decreasing pitch in sound to the same increasing or decreasing price values, and then play the sound sequentially through a speaker, data has become manifest.
At this point, it can be seen how information, static or dynamic, can be manifested to the human in a variety of forms through a variety of the senses, including sight, sound, and even touch. This concept is extended here to allow for a manifestation of information not only to the human agent, but to other agents of the computer system as well. Manifestation is a reconstruction of information from one agent in terms usable by another agent. Interface design is in terms of agents and not particularly human agents.
The difference between a communication model of engineering design as opposed to a computational model is exemplified by the use of video-conferencing, faxes, and voice-mail. There is no attempt to discern the meaning of the communication by the computer as would be required in the computation model. The computer only facilitates the throughput of this information.
Automation requires an "understanding" of the data, at least in its structure for brute force processing, and in its semantics for more intelligent manipulation of data. Assisting is not so contingent upon understanding the data, although, as has been seen with PIMES, it may be within the scope of some intelligent processing. As the user finds redundant and repetitive tasks, they can be automated.
In general, the complete span of modeling systems, from geometric specification to Computer Aided Software Engineering, must be presented with an integrating framework, but not necessarily one imposing a universal language. While there is much literature on creating common translatable languages between disparate agents, these agents are usually of similar domains. There must be provision for a dialogue among agents without the requirements of translation through the computer. While the computer can mediate dialogue, rather than concentrating on constraint mechanisms, research should concentrate on enhancing the dialogue to allow an elaboration toward concise communication of meaning. There is basically too much stuff going on in design to get a handle on it all, but there is not so much stuff as be unable to facilitate and store it all.