Thanks Craig, clicked and loading......(I think I saw this software on Jurassic Park #1. lol when the young girl hacks the system)
Quote:
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Like many APIs of its era, this one attempts to improve its usability by presenting information 3-dimensionally, the fashion we humans are presumably best adapted to viewing it.
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You know, I can't be so sure I agree with this.
(1d)If we have a ruler stick, it is very easy for us to navidate from one end to the other, we know that 30cm is somewhere near one end and 0 cm is somewhere near another end.
(2d)If we have a web, it gets just slightly more complicated. We can learn that things are x and y axis... up down, left right...in view of looking "on screen".. Things can be located North, South, West, East, and North west, North east, South west South east.. We can visualize direction easily.
(3d)If we have a sphere, or a cube, things begin to get quite complicated. If we know a location on the sphere, then we know where the opposite side is. Call this location A and B, now, if we continue to add more series of these points, and we attempt to navigate the sphere it can become very disorintated Direction has very little meaning, if the sphere gets "rolled" "yawed" "pitched" from how we thought it was... Of course this isnt the only way to get into 3D, since we can simple just use the 2D, design and add + and - vertical directoins relative to the 2d Plane / surface. Like in this image:
File:FSV-OSX-screenshot.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
However, I'm not confident this makes it more intuitive to navigate.. as I think we are more naturally 2d plane navigators and our mind is more orientated to visualizing reality as flat.
For example, if we are lost in a small wooded forest.. and want to comprehend our way back where we started, we begin by visualizing our one dimensional path.. where we came from, and where we headed. Then we work on 360 degrees around us.. behind us... our sides.. our front... I don't think we care much about whether we are moving vertically, since our destination and locations is sort of naturally conceived on just a 2d surface. If we attempt to make it out of the forest simply by going on the knowledge of, Home is downwards... and started heading "down" the mountain... it wouldnt provide much reliability for achieving the goal of reaching a destination. Vertical information I think tends to be about fluctuation's as opposed to points in the more dominant 2nd world.
If we begin adding a 3rd dimension to our map... it creates a whole new field of information that can break us away from intuition.. Just imagine trying to remember 10 random floors, on 10 random sky scrapers in a city. The Highest floor is #1...2nd highest.. #2..... etc.....the lowest floor is #10... Now, put a different number on each building... the building with the highest floor is #3 (etc).. Can we comprehend this 3dimensional space of buildings + rooms, nearly as easy as we can comprehend the 2 dimensional space of just buildings?
