Re: Some Questions About VRML

floman@bga.com
Mon, 27 Mar 1995 07:43:45 -0600


I've been following the VRML development from the sidelines up till Claude
Bullard's interesting
discussion of 3/23. Why are we doing this? We all have our various reasons,
but I thought I'd post mine.

I want to explore threespace.

Cyberspace is our third space, the next evolution of our existence. We've
evolved through
realspace, the external world, and mindspace, the internal world, and now
their child,
cyberspace, is upon us. Like any child it has properties and behaviours
similar to, but different
from, its parents. It is unique in its own way. It is neither in realspace,
nor in mindspace - it is its
own space. Space itself is evolving, and destiny has come calling with its
usual shove and given
us cyberspace, whether we're ready or not.

But we cannot consider cyberspace alone, it is concurrent with realspace and
mindspace: they
form a tripolar reality. How do we find balance, harmony and flow in a
threespace existence,
when we are just coming to terms with the twospace existence we have lived
in for 50,000 years
or so? Threespace makes twospace historic, and therefore all the ideas,
concepts and laws by
which we have evolved society in twospace are now up for review. Much of
twospace ideology breaks
down in threespace - religion, law, sexuality, territory, etc., and new
paradigms and metaphors
need to evolve to understand a tripolar existence. Threespace represents our
next step, and
VRML is a basic tool for its exploration. There's no going back, threespace
is here, and will be
with us for thousands of years.

I'm working on something called a flostation at JSC under an SBIR contract.
The NASA purpose
is to develop immersive environments for simulating EVA for astronauts, but
the spinoff is to
develop the system as a basic tool for flying our selves in cyberspace. We
have no body in
cyberspace, just an attention vector receiving cyber energy input. If our
attention is fully focused
on cyber input, then where are we? In cyberspace. But still in realspace and
in mindspace. They are
concurrent, but our attention serializes the flow through consciousness.
What we pay attention to
determines the quality of our lives - the rest is noise. We have to
integrate all three spaces.

So, for me, VRML represents the ability to fly through immersive space after
immersive space,
responding to vision, sound, motion and vibration cues - the primary senses
of cyberspace - and
diving deeper into the new void.

You're all doing grand work. We'll get there.

See ya

bp
Brian Vandellyn Park
principal
flogiston corporation
realspace: Austin, TX
mindspace: vox/fax (512) 894 0562
cyberspace: floman@eden.com
web: http://flogiston.com/flogiston