From: Wade Cherrington (Wade_c@uniserve.com)
Date: Sun Dec 08 1996 - 18:52:42 MST
>>- Other Institutes - Physics Demonstrations, Mathematics, cosmology,
>>basically scientific visualization/multimedia. A lot of this stuff is
>>already out there, either offline or online - it just needs to be brewed up
>>with some Java and made pretty with VRML.
>
>
>Can you elaborate on: "A lot of this stuff is already out there?.."
>
>Amara
>
Yes, I should have made my reference more clear...most of today's
computational physics/math, as I'm sure you're well aware, isn't exactly
conducive to porting to Java and running on some internet server...the idea
of having interactive, 3D applets to experiment with was more a nod to
what's being done in Artificial Life, Cellular Automata, human-guided
selection of mutating fractal forms; for example something like the Tierra
Project or Polyworld
could eventually be integrated into a VRML setting.
However, that doesn't rule out having all sorts of hypertextual
physics and math links that might be interesting and are available
on the web...There already exist several preprint repositories for
Physics, Math, Complexity Science, etc. that would be interesting
to any transhumanist, for example there are a number of great,
well illustrated nanotech papers available at the Foresight
Institute and elsewhere. And though most cutting edge simulations
involve massive amounts of supercomputer resources, there is
still many ways of working with multimeda on a more limited
server. Basically the view would be towards education, background
theory and the _results_ of the most recent simulations and research (As
opposed to the simulation itself, as I may have
misimplied)
Such hypertext would of course handle equation and 2D and surface plots,
potential-energy minimized molecules, tables/charts, schematics, diagrams,
galleries of images from the HST or electron
microscopy, tutorials like Michael Lorrey's on the Lorrey drive, or an
applet dealing with mathematics like the one on "closed packing of spheres",
which illustrates a geometrical principle out of Bucky Fuller's Synergetics.
Basically, everything we can today with HTML, but with our minds open to the
new possibilities for growth into the three-dimensional.
Thanks for picking up on that, I can see how it might be
misunderstood the way I said it...
- Wade Cherrington
(wade_c@uniserve.com)
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"Science can make the world seem surreal, a sympton of culture
lagging behind technological reality.."
- Gregory Benford
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