webber@brandx.rutgers.edu.UUCP (10/09/87)
What should cyberspace look like?
In preferring ``Peace Wars'' to ``True Names'' as an example of Vinge-style
cyberpunk, I think to some degree I was reacting to how close ``True Names''
borders on pure fantasy, with the computer as just an excuse to make ``magic''
work. If the cyberspace turns out to be just a rehash of the ``real world''
then it probably isn't worth the effort (except for scientists wanting to
test the predictive powers of their theories).
The human mind is capable of working in alternate spaces. The best
example of this I know of is Banchoff's work at Brown University where
he has been producing movies of things like the inversion of a sphere
to give people a better intuition about abstract geometric spaces.
Of course, this was one of the first things that computer animation
was used for (see A. Michael Noll, A Computer Technique for Displaying
n-Dimensional Hyperobjects, Communications of the ACM 10, 8 (Aug 67),
1967), but somehow it doesn't seem to have spread far from its
starting points.
In the recent October 87 Scientific American, there was an ad for
Prime Computers with the following offer:
To receive ``Discovering the Fourth Dimension'' by Dr. Thomas
Banchoff, send your completed coupon to: Prime Computer,
Prime Park, MS-15-60, Natick, MA01760, or call: 1-800-343-2540
(in MA, 1-800-332-2450; in Canada, 1-800-268-4700).
Sure enough, I called the number, told them about the ad, and they
mailed me the report. It will be interesting to see what it is like.
By the way, in the April 86 Scientific American, Dewdney's Computer
Recreations column provided an interesting overview of this
visualization problems of hyperspace (a natural subject for the author
of Planiverse).
-------- BOB (webber@aramis.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!webber)
disclaimer: I have never used a Prime computer nor had any financial interaction with company that markets same.