cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (10/27/90)
[The following excerpts can only give the flavor, not the full taste, of the manifold ingredients of the Cyberthon. Sponsored by the Whole Earth Institute in the soundstages of (Colossal) Pictures, in San Francisco, Cyberthon featured 24 hours straight immersion in cyberspace thinking. Limousines chauffered a lucky few down to Redwood City to see VPL's system in action. But the roster of speakers and the agenda of events was entrancing without going anywhere except into The Maze of Applications. What a metaphor.... [These excerpts are reposted with the authors' permission. -- Bob Jacobson, Moderator] From The WELL Computer Conferencing System Topic 41: Presenting CYBERTHON #108: Greta C. Bickford (gcb) Tue, Oct 9, '90 (18:56) 50 lines Got there about 9 am Saturday. Little sleep the night before. Promptly went to the Build-A-World space and started trying to set things up. Spent most of the next 24 hours immersed in VR and surrounded by Macs running Swivel 3D. Most of you know what that is...for those who don't and who didn't get a chance to come by our space, Swivel 3D is a first-class 3D modelling program for the Mac. Somewhere in there, like about 6 am, I did get about 1-1/2 hours of sleep. However, I was still glassy-eyed (like most of us) and to some extent hallucinating due to lack of sleep (again, like most of us...). Somewhen between when I entered the maze and when I took a break, it got dark. And somewhen it got light. I didn't notice when, at all. About 3 am, a couple of guys from VPL came up and wandered around, and selected the three best pieces of Swivel 3D art created up until then to take back with them. What none of us knew is that one of those pieces of art was created by another guy from VPL...who didn't identify himself as such until after they already had it on disk and going back tp VPL. Most of my volunteers who were there late at night and in the wee hours of the morning got to have their heads (and hands) in Sense8's VR world. Many thanks go to Eric Gullichsen for going out of his way to accomodate these hard-working volunteers in the lull periods, instead of taking a break himself. On the way back home, the light was marvellous. 3 pm in San Francisco, the sunlight on the buildings just right to show off their contours without hitting the windows and causing extreme glare. I saw them not as buildings, but as collections of polygons or Swivel 3D objects; and I began to have new understandings about how things fit with one another and with the non-virtual world. Of all that I took with me experientially from Cyberthon, that impression remains strongest in my mind's eye. People begin to get weird around 3 am when they haven't had any sleep. People begin to get weird around 3 am when YOU haven't had any sleep. I'm still operating on a high from Cyberthon; this is going to stay with me for a while. New insights, shattering old and conventional ways of looking at things, of communicating with each other, of being in the world, will keep you high for some time. The whole experience was really hard on me physically, and I would gladly do it all over again next week if I could. #132: Eleanor Kent (ekent) Sat, Oct 13, '90 (23:34) 10 lines Still thinking about Cyberthon , the people, systems, food, talk and ideas. I sneaked home to feed the dog and take a nap so I missed Leary, but he looked so fragile and burnt out. I still want to know when I can go into vr and make something...draw, cut out designs, knit( which is changing a line into a plane). It is very empowering to be able to draw or build when you are in a strange place...which is why the Apple game of moving boxes around was so much fun in the game room at cyberthon. Is anyone else interested in making in cyberspace? maybe a new topic....anyway, cheers for another cyberthon in whatever format. #115: Leslie Wilson (les) Wed, Oct 10, '90 (17:40) 11 lines Monday night my dreams were so exciting/intense about vr stuff that they woke me up...I'd stay awake long enough to kind of go "Oh I'm still dreaming about it," and then drop off again. Last night I dreamed about different shaped hands in vr and how to make a hand that was more particularly your own. 24-hours was great -- loved how everyone loosened up after midnight...had most of my great talks between 2 and 5 a.m. Izumi Aizu spoke at the mic during the 9 a.m. discussion. He's from the Institute for Networking Design and gave neat insight as to how the Japanese don't have a word for "virtual." Can we email him thru the WELL? I hope I live for another 100 years to see vr become "real." Or will it happen sooner? ------ For more information about The WELL, call 415-332-4335; or log in to 415-332-6106 (1200 baud, 8-N-1, for online registration; higher speeds to 9600 baud available once registered). Or you can email tex@well.sf.ca.us for general information.