In 1975 at MIT... (Score 1)

Nick Negroponte and his media lab. had a project called "Data Land", where he and his grad students went to Aspen, CO and drove all around, in all seasons, went into every building, every floor and video taped everything they saw. This was all created on video disk platters and you could view this "data base" projected on a wall from a special chair. You could move in three directions through the database... You could select a building from a overhead view, go into the building, go to the next floor, look around and if you selected someone they had taped while there, you could see split-screen, their resume, or whatever. A touch pad on the chair arm allowed tou to change pages. You could even go between buildings on the same floor...

Remember now, this was in 1975. I was there, invited by him, through Foxboro Instruments, as a man-machine interface designer working on nuclear power plant control rooms, to see just what the state of the art was. I was quite humbled, in fact, I still am. The concept was stunning, to say the least.

-r