Figure 27: Systems and Real-time Visualization
All of the nested information in any separate database is a system. For example, each user will have a personal system which may consist of all the information stored on his media, or, the user may enter InterSpace from within a multi-user system (public kiosk or multi-user terminal). These multi-user systems (virtual communities or large databases for example) are likely to be much larger than personal systems.
Information in systems will not be stored in full visual form, but will be visualized on the fly in current spaces according to how the user's interface database is set up to portray it upon encountering it. For example, an object in a current space may represent a video. The user's interface, upon recognizing an object of this type in the current space, will utilize its interface database to portray the video object in the way specified to portray all videos when they're encountered (i.e.: it gets a view screen and video controls, etc. mapped to it). This process will occur through the use of hooks, a type of metainformation that each object knows or is told about itself that the interface can then recognize and map appropriate visual or interactional elements and behaviors to. This will allow users to personalize the ways in which they visualize information.
A user may perceptually "travel" to other systems by connecting to them and bringing back in real time only the primary information and its metainformation from a current space that is then visualized by utilizing the user's interface database. As the user moves about in this other system from space to space, new primary information and metainformation will be brought back and visualized. In this way, the user will have the perception of extending his personal visualizational settings, while other users may visually experience the same spaces and objects differently according to the attribute setup of their interface database.