I'm very interested in the cyberspace idea, this protocol or language
should allow for superb visualisation capabilities within the internet
dataspace, though as others have pointed out any complex dataspace should
be usable. I agree that the interactional component of the space will be
vital. The web as it stands is basically a fancy library with a little
searching and lots of pictures. This environment has the potential to
provide a much richer person to person(s) communication.
At a simple level we could provide a configured sendmail which would show
your amil arrivein and leaving, when mail arrives it could present it to
you. Or a more visual example would be a hotlinked videoconferencing
system. There is lots to talk about and develop in the future.
My final point is that the capabilities of cyberspace should not be limited
to just a physical representation of the net, or a rented real estate model
at worst. I was at the Navigation workshop of the WWW94 conference and one
of the more important things to come out of that was the need for some
ability to classify the informational content. The original idea for the
web had semantic links between documents, these got lost in the surge of
people. This time round as we specify a new protocol which is even more
navigation based than the previous, please do not let us forget about this
vital component -- linking or semantic information and some means of
classifying the "documents".
My reason for arguing this is that a visual representation of a dataspace
should be very personal, you should be able to specify the way in which you
want to view the data, not have it arbitarily given to you.
Mark and I have organised a a European mirror for the vrml w3 home pages on
my server, http://boris.qub.ac.uk/mark/vrmlhome.html
This should take some of the load off the wired server. In a week or so
the boris will become www, just for conformity...
bye
Gavin
----
Gavin Bell, School of Psychology, Queen's University, Belfast BT7 1NN.
UK & Ireland SIGWEB Coordinator http://www.qub.ac.uk/sigweb/home.html
Phone + 44 232 245133 x4327 http://www.qub.ac.uk/gavin/gAv.html
gavin@jupiter.qub.ac.uk (smtp/mime) gavin.bell@v2.qub.ac.uk (X.400)
-<My opinions are only vaguely associated with me and not with QUB>-