Personal Identity Interface Implications
 
The Identity and Information section is a discussion about how one's self and information interplay in a time when information is powerful but we still want privacy.
The Interaction and Interface section allows for the user to contemplate the design of the technology just viewed, and how these forces were developed with or without the user in mind.
The Implications section lets the creators of scenarios forecast the next step in the technology they have created and discuss the social and cultural implications contained therein.
IDENTITY AND INFORMATION
The character in this scene controls and chooses her environment and the means by which she interacts with the interface. Based on her mood, whim, want, or need she can have information and material fashioned for her.
No private information is vulnerable except what the user wishes to divulge and have known about her. The user controls the flow of information in the room, which means the user is the designer. +
Based on the functions of the room, information can be remembered according to the user's specifications. For example, if Rachel wishes to create a scenario in which she experiences a story or interaction in an imaginary world, she can. This is shown with her job.
However, it must be noted that when she goes out of her environment, in a holographic form or otherwise, she is in the public sphere, and, any type of information can become vulnerable. People can go so far as to create holographic models of her and consider how she would react to certain phenomena. +
The user can experience an alternative reality, in a scenario and can fully interact in such an environment.
The information that is created in the room, and not in the public sphere is the users own world and own construct. It only flows outward if the user chooses to let it. It is presupposed that concerns about the issue of control of data, and data as currency, are only constructs of today's society and will be a lower level concern in the future.
INTERFACE/INTERACTIVITY
The interactions are mediated primarily through Rachel's floating panel, which enables her to select the options that the L 1 STSM allows. These choices lead her different environments, depending on the her's actions.
The interactions primarily helps the user. For example, she is allowed to holographically travel to any place in the world and look around but she cannot physically interact with her surroundings. This very fact, is also a hindrance. When she is transported, it is not physical, as one sees when she speaks to Charles and attempts to give him a kiss. +
The limit of the user's imagination is main constraint on the system. There are no constraints placed on the computer by the government or other agents/creators of the machine.
The primary conundrum is that this device is not virtual reality, it generates reality, environments and scenarios, which can be interacted with, walked around in. In that fact lies the danger of not walking out the door the next day. And what if you could create a life inside the machine; i.e. have a lover and friends. Suddenly, why does one need to walk out the door? +
A user access to data and info is based on how much money or how much value the user has in the society in which she works. Rachel programs scenarios for the Millennium Dome so that others can experience life and explore their interests. Since this work is valuable to others, she makes good money, and thus has access to procure elite data.
IMPLICATIONS
Social and cultural consequences of this technology are large and far ranging. As holographs, people will be able to interact with anyone and anywhere. Eventually, this technology would be available to anyone, based on Moore's Law. It also allows people to wield the power to create their own realities. Therefore, the same issues that critic have about the web surface. Opponents of using technology to socialize say it takes people away from daily interactions, which they believe are more valuable than mediated exchanges. +
Proponents of technology contend that it creates a connectivity and intimacy when you find out someone at location X is doing exactly what you are looking for.
This technology also has the potential to take religion and complete the creation circle. If humans can create anything they can dream of in limited sense, they have the opportunity to explore the concept of God and the universe in a more complete way. This is why it is necessary to have indications that a machine is making the self exploration possible. Humans dream and create, and machines enable them to go farther.