schatz@cs.arizona.edu (Bruce Schatz) (06/08/90)
In article <rose.644704252@beowulf> rose@beowulf.ucsd.edu (Dan Rose) writes: >I, too, have been puzzled by the tendency to equate virtual >reality with cyberspace. In William Gibson's books (where the >term originated), cyberspace seems to be an alternate reality >that has emerged from an enormously complex global network of >computers. ... cyberspace is >the real world of data, not a simulated world for people. > >On the other hand, all of these virtual reality devices (involving >gloves, goggles, etc.) produce the illusion of being in a different, >perhaps imaginary place. ... > I couldn't agree more. Making the (data comprising) the real world transparently accessable to people is a different problem than providing a complete (touchable) simulation of an artificial world. Oddly enough, the terms "virtual world" and "virtual reality" seem to have merged, with the goal of creating an artificial world that permits real-world-like interaction. Perhaps this distinction will separate when the technology for creating artificial worlds becomes far more sophisticated and, rather than the current small toy examples, it will become possible to create virtual worlds which permit direct manipulation of real world knowledge embedded within some abstract classification scheme that allows people to effectively navigate through it all. Hopefully, these rich virtual worlds will still permit the interface of a virtual reality. As someone who has been working on the first problem for many years, I can assert that the technology is nearly at the stage to make significant cultural changes in specialized domains. A number of years ago, I coined the word "telesophy" to indicate a system that supports transparent manipulation of knowledge across wide-spread networks in the same sense that "telephony" supports transparent manipulation of sound. Having built several small prototypes on local area networks of bitmapped workstations, I was able to demonstrate the feasibility of rapid browsing of large amounts of multimedia information (text, graphics, images, video) transparently over networks. I am now involved in constructing the first large-scale "information space". This will encompass "all" the knowledge of a specialized scientific community, that comprising the molecular biologists who study the nematode worm C. elegans, and include experimental data (gene phenotypes, physical maps, DNA sequences), literature information (abstracts, articles, newsletters), and informal knowledge (method protocols, intermediate results, electron micrographs). The software will enable a biologist with a bitmapped personal computer or workstation anywhere on the NREN (National Research Network: NSFNET, Internet) to transparently display and edit the remote information. Sharing within this electronic scientific community will be supported by providing commands for grouping the existing information into new categorizations and forging new connections between existing items. When this project is complete in several years, I hope that it might provide an example of how a virtual world can be constructed that supports real world data and permits a new style of thinking to emerge from sharing within the electronic community. Bruce Schatz Director, Computer & Biological Systems Laboratory, Univ of Arizona schatz@cs.arizona.edu