Lecture 05 : The Ultimate Display by Ivan Sutherland

What has Ivan Sutherland successfully predicted ?

In his 1965 article The Ultimate Display, Ivan Sutherland wonders what the future will look like for computers, displays and the human interactions that will take place between them. To sum up efficiently which of his predictions were true, I will directly quote him and try to explain what he was describing that is actually existing today.

“It is likely that new display equipment will have area-filling capability.”

Yeah, Ivan Sutherland predicted the filling tool for Paint, sort of..

“Tomorrow’s computer user will interact with a computer through a typewriter.”

Yeah, Ivan Sutherland predicted the existence of keyboards for computers.

“Tablet stylus serve a very useful function in pointing to displayed items and in drawing or printing For input to the computer. The possibilities for very smooth interaction with the computer through these devices is only just beginning to be exploited.”

Yeah, even if Steve Jobs did not like stylus, they eventually became more and more sophisticated and impressively responsive. And Ivan Sutherland knew it.

“New displays with analog memories may well lose the pointing ability altogether.”

I feel like Ivan Sutherland was here referring to the pointing ability of the man directly. He was right instead of pens using Infrared, we moved to mouses using tracking motions and forgot about the real “pointing”.

Finally, Ivan Sutherland hints at a lot of things that would eventually become reality or even better afterwards : eye-tracking, voice input etc. But what’s most impressive about his paper is the fact that he imagines what is actually Virtual Reality :

“With such a display, a computer model of particles in an electric field could combine manual control of the position, of a moving charge, replete with the sensation of forces on the charge, with visual presentation of the charge’s position. […] By use of such an input/output device, we can add a force display to our sight and sound capability”

“So far only the muscles of the hands and arms have been used for computer control. There is no reason why these should be the only ones, although our dexterity with them is so high that they are a natural choice. Our eye dexterity is very high also. Machines to sense and interpret eye motion data can and will be built.”

These types of devices already exist and even though they are not as developed as M.Sutherland imagined we are getting closer each and every day.

What he might have previewed ?

Ivan Sutherland was right for so many things, we might wonder to what extent he might be right. In his essay he refers to a lot of things I believe to be possible in the near future :

“So far as I know, no one seriously proposes computer displays of smell, or taste.”

It should be soon that we may be able to synthesize taste and smell through electrical signals. We have so much knowledge about how our brain and senses work that it is only a matter of time until we fully implement such a thing.

“The kinesthetic display might be used to simulate the motions of a negative mass”

If we improve the VR setup presented above, it is quite possible that we may simulate no gravity or the feel of it and even more elaborate physics behaviours.

“The ultimate display would, of course, be a room within which the computer can control the existence of matter. A chair displayed in such a room would be good enough to sit in. Handcuffs displayed in such a room would be confining, and a bullet displayed in such a room would be fatal. With appropriate programming such a display could literally be the Wonderland into which Alice walked.”

Although this example is far from being the actual depiction of what Sutherland imagined, it’s crazy to think about what we could do in the near future and even further beyond…