1. I use the term "cyberespace mirror-city" to talk about a virtual
representation of all the Internet resources refered to a geografic zone (a
city or a region). This should not be, of course, the only kind of
cyberespace city, since much of the information you find in the Web is not
relative to a specific geografical zone, but to content. But the one I'm now
talking here is that mirror-concept, where places or resources in real wolrd
have their own representation in cyberespace.
2. I agree that this representation should not be a copy of the phisical
dimensions and shapes of the real world, but an entire new concept, (probably
with links to/from a map of the phisical city).
3. The internet resources could be represented by some sort of buildings.
Those biuldings should be distributed in zones organized by content.
Different streets would sorround and cross zones, giving to the navigation a
real-live look to make orientation easier. The main diference should be the
possibility to fly, and also easily see the entire city from above, so the
different zones can be easily recognized and choosed.
4. The size of those buildings should be relative to the amount of
information they contain. If size is left free to de decision of the building
"owner", every building would be twice as bigger than the previous one
inserted in the city, and the city would grow with no sense.
5. The "adresses" or phisical coordinates on the 3D model of the virtual city
should be fixed, so anyone could find a resource by remembering where it was
phisically located into cyberespace. If coordinates of a resource change
often, navigation will be confusing and quite dificult. On the other hand,
fixed coordinates do not allow continuous reorganization of the city to allow
an efficient content oriented search, so the city can finally grow -like a
real city- in a quite anarchic way. That would make those searchs inefficient
if you want to try a Yahoo-kind search with the suposed advantages of 3D
visualization. Don't really know the best solution.
Alexandre Soler M.
alexs@servicom.es
Barcelona, Spain
BTW Anyone who could tell me what happened to the VRML list?