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

[Jerry Kuntz]

Jedi Knight is a "cool" 3D experience. Battle Zone is a "cool" 3D
experience. The library catalog interface under discussion here, however,
does nothing to "save the time of the reader", which I thought was one of
the tenets upon which we were all in agreement.
Jerry Kuntz
Ramapo Catskill Library System
jkuntz at rcls.org
-----Original Message-----
From: thom <thom at indiana.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Date: Wednesday, January 13, 1999 2:16 PM
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Re: 3D (VRML) Interface to IRCAM's Multimedia Library

>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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>
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