[WEB4LIB] Re: 3D (VRML) Interface to IRCAM's Multimedia Library

[thom]

On Wed, 13 Jan 1999, Jerry Kuntz wrote:

> But as a primary interface, what's the point of recreating the sensation of
> being in a library and  stumbling around to find things?

The idea of creating 'space' is essential to vrml. We like space, we use
it all the time and vrml space is not going to be 'library' space as we
know it. It will be hyperspace where you do things you can't normally do
in real space, sorta like 'the web', cyberspace, information highway ...
the space metaphor has been with us from the beginning. 

I think there are some folks on this list who don't want to do vrml or any
spatial modeling in this lifetime but do think there are a ton of 'kids'
in schools and all over the 'space' who would love to give it a try. It is
cool and this is a very cool attempt. I just showed this to a class full
of 'kids' and they all said:  Cool! They will do it because it is cool,
they have the time and the interest and they know that their entry into
the information economy is probably doing things the older more
established folks 'don't have the time for'. This is how it always has
been. 

I don't think creating 'the space' is the way it ends up but it is the way
it has to begin because we always begin with what we understand. We have
done it with every medium every invented. McLuhan's 'content of every new
medium is always an old medium.' Bolter has just published 'Remediation'
which is mostly a book length rehash of McLuhan's sentence. Vrml will
remediate everything because it can and then it will figure out what it
does best and do it with a passion. The other thing vrml does which the
web does not is create 'immediacy', it actually reduces interface. 

Years back at Berkeley, Buckland announced that he was giving a class
called "Designing Bibliographic Robots."  Real dumb idea, real silly but
it went on for terms with faculty and students from all over the campus
whacking their heads together and eventually leading into a Digital
Library grant. 

When the web first began I had a student who immediately decided he wanted
to design the slis web at Iu. The department basicly said: Good idea, no
one wants to do this, you do it. He was in my game design class just the
term before and he saw it as a 'game' so he made it fun, it grew like
crazy. He learned a lot by playing and eventually AOL found him and hired
him as one of their earliest webmasters. They called me up and asked me if
I have more like him, folks who understood information organization,
games, graphics and the web. They wanted him because he had played with
the 'new' and knew how to use it in ways that the established folks
didn't.

This vrml project isn't a message for the 'old' folks it is for the young
folks coming up and looking for an edge. I say do the normal web work 
in school but also make lots of time to create a vrml design project,
play with it, see where it leads and pop it out at an interview with the
'older' folks ... and they will hire you because you can do what they
can't or won't. Same as it always was, same as it always was.

No disrespect for any of the 'older' folks, I'm probably older 8-)

--Thom

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