Through the convergence of mobility, ubiquity and multimediality/multimodality a new information & communication technology paradigm is emerging: Ambient Intelligence (AmI). AmI basically means that computers move from the desktop into the infrastructure of our everyday life to build networks of smart items serving "smart players" (humans, machines, smart items, animals, etc.) in intelligent environments. AmI begins to influence the way we interact with our environments. An important aspect of future human interaction therefore is the way this interaction evolves from human-computer interaction (HCI) to a human environment interaction (HEI) supporting us in efficiently managing our personal environment, not only at home or in the office, but also in public and industrial environments.

The development of the Internet, the Web, and Java let us believe that computing technology seems to become an integral part of our daily environment that hopefully supports us in improving the quality of life. But what does this mean to the future of information technology development? This paper presents visions towards sustainable, human-centered technology developments. New trends in human computer interaction and human information interaction are necessary for enabling even the naive user to communicate and interact with computers. What we need is a paradigm shift from the conventional information technology towards a human media technology which focus on the interaction manner between human beings and information space or amongst human beings through information space.

The goal of this paper is to give an overview about the worldwide virtual reality activities. Furthermore, future perspectives are expressed by highlighting industrial virtual reality projects which are regarded as crossing the threshold from being a research prototype to become a fully employed industrial application in the near future.

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Abstract The main advantage when using a standardized graphics system is quite obvious: the application programs become portable. Integrating such a system ‐ and GKS (Graphical Kernel System) is the only one being standardized internationally ‐ into VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) chips, this graphics system may become an integral part of graphical devices. This guarantees a uniform interface of such devices to GKS applications. Devices of many different kinds will become compatible not only with respect to plugging but even in their logical behaviour, eliminating all device dependencies from the host software. We have started to design the GKS‐chip which will be able to be used in a great variety of devices (vector and raster type). The GKS‐chip will bring the computational power to support real time picture updates, limited only by the maximally attainable output data rate.

Abstract The paper describes an approach for the technical evaluation and economic justification of CAD systems based on a CAD system simulation. The underlying model, the tools needed and the simulation concept used are discussed in detail. An extensive bibliography complements the concepts presented in the paper.

GKS has evolved from a long process of national /1,2,3,4/ and international /5,6/ discussion on standardization of graphical systems. One of the basic principles of the Graphical Kernel System GKS is the concept of workstations that are used to address a display terminal with several input devices. This is a basic conceptual difference to the GSPC core system /6/, which will be discussed in this paper.A workstation represents a collection of graphical devices that are operated in a coordinated fashion by an operator at a given site. The whole workstation is treated in GKS as one logical unit.GKS features two dimensional output to and input from single or multiple workstations. Besides basic line drawing primitives raster graphics primitives are supported. The coordinates are transformed in a two-stage transformation process where the first stage can be set for each primitive and the second can be set for each workstation. Furthermore the setting of a workstation specific pen and text table allows control of the appearance of all primitives on the corresponding workstation.A segment facility provides means for structuring a picture in subparts. Segments may be created and deleted, the segment attributes may be dynamically modified, and the segments may be transformed. They can be displayed simultaneously or alternatively on different workstations. A device independent segment storage serves for inserting segments into other segments.

Two status reports will be presented. The first report describes the activities of Working Group 2 (Computer Graphics) of the International Standards Organization Subcommittee on Programming Languages (ISO TC97/SC5/WG2). Actions taken in recent WG2 meetings in October, 1979, and June, 1980, will be covered. Significant proposals being examined by WG2 include GKS, a German-designed 2D graphics package derived from the SIGGRAPH GSPC Core System proposals, and Videotex, a Canadian-designed protocol text communication that includes geometrically coded picture images.