Information Technology Reference
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propriate. That analysis begins with understanding the various reasons
why constraints are necessary.
The platform-related reasons for constraints are fairly straightforward.
They will also change, depending upon the elaborateness, completeness,
and cost of various implementations of the system. For example, pointing
devices that can be used to enable gestural input may have a limited range,
constraining people to stand within range of a receiver. The Wii and Kinect
are examples of systems that extend human physical involvement; the con-
straints surrounding their use must be manifested effectively. For example,
Nintendo tried to control the all-too-common accident of throwing the con-
troller at the TV by adding a strap, but this did not control people who
ignored the strap or got sweaty palms. Physical acts like running or ma-
nipulating objects in a Virtual Reality world require conventions whereby
the desire to perform such actions can be expressed. Such conventions,
mandated by the technical limitations of systems, are a form of constraints.
Constraints are necessary to contain the action within the mimetic
world—a design problem. For example, in an interactive fantasy version
of a Sherlock Holmes mystery, it would be important to constrain peo-
ple to the customs and technology of Arthur Conan Doyle's 19th-century
London (e.g., no computational spyware). Any human-computer system,
no matter how elaborate, cannot be expected to comprehend all possible
worlds simultaneously.
Constraining how or whether people can introduce new
potential into a dramatic interaction is essential in the creation and maintenance
of dramatic probability.
What is the relationship between the experience of creativity and the con-
straints under which one performs creative acts? In fantasies and fi ctions
about human-computer systems, we may imagine spaces where we can do
whatever we wish.
9
Even if such a system were technically feasible—which
it is not, at the moment—the experience of using it might be more like an
existential nightmare than a dream of freedom.
9. From someone who did just that: “Cyberspace. It sounded like it meant something, or it
might mean something, but as I stared at it in red Sharpie on a yellow legal pad, my whole
delight was that I knew that it meant absolutely nothing.”—William Gibson, on his invention
of Cyberspace, from his talk at the New York Public Library on April 19, 2013.
