Abstract: The field of view of a video camera is set to include electric appliances such as a refrigerator, TV set, air conditioner and lamp installed within a room. When the user operates a remote controller to emit a visible laser beam toward a controlable range including these electric appliances set within this field of view, and designate a certain one of the appliances by the resulting pointer within the controlable range, the video camera for extracting only the visible laser beam of a wave length picks up this pointer, and a control box detects the position of the pointer within the controlable range from the output of the camera so that the appliance designated by this pointer can be detected and remotely controlled by use of the remote controller.

Abstract: For realizing a system for uniformly operating and managing a network system capable of managing a plurality of types of logical networks for one network entity composed of a plurality of objects, information on network topologies is collected from each of the plurality of objects. Display data is created for each of a plurality of types of logical network topologies for each object in accordance with the collected information on network topologies. A control is conducted in accordance with the created display data so as to display a physical connection relationship, a logical connection relationship, and a virtual connection relationship on a virtual screen.