Anno 2010-remembering our future. Challenges and frontiers of visualization for Human-Media Technology as the kernel for Human-Centered Computing

Summary form only given. Human-Media-Technology is one of the "technology's top 10 challenges and opportunities" for the year 2010. The subject hereby is: "humans live, science finds out how technology conforms." The goal is to develop environments that allow users to cooperate in the most efficient and natural way. Human-centered systems will have to incorporate people as an explicit design component. The article addresses the main goals in developing such systems based on their general characteristics and the corresponding enabling technologies: visualization; virtual and augmented reality; and multimedia. Examples from applications and case studies support the clarification of ideas and goals. So far, the human-centered interfaces to accommodate human perception and human response capabilities and limitations have been presented and discussed. These interfaces allow us to integrate the desired amount of immersion and cooperation (CSCW). Based on this, some "hands-on" live demos are shown to discuss the state of the art of these technologies, like Virtual Tables (responsive workbenches), special I/O technologies, etc. Some of these demos are stand-alone demos; others show the potential of telecommunication for collaboration by connecting the floor with other locations to demonstrate CSCW based visual tele-applications. A brief survey is given on the most important research and application challenges, with the objective of having technology conforming to users and not vice versa.