Auditory browsing for acquisition of information in cyberspace

Today, various novel telecommunication systems have been proposed. The idea of a virtual communication space shared by multiple distributed users via networks, so-called cyberspace, has received considerable communication. In cyberspace, there are tremendously many users, on-line services, and much information, and users have great opportunity to encounter all of these. We think the most serious problem in cyberspace is the great risk that a user might miss a chance to get relevant or important information. In this paper, we propose a strategy for auditory browsing to address this problem, using a spatial sound interface. We implemented VCP (Virtual Cocktail Party), an experimental system for achieving efficient and flexible telecommunication and data retrieval, which takes advantage of human auditory capability. This system can support a number of physically separated users in a single shared sound cyberspace and consists of distributed terminals with a spatial sound interface.