> 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.
>Why is "3d zones with buildings" preferrable to "2d web pages with
>lists of hyperlinks?" You are not adding any useful information by
>mapping it into 3d. You are merely creating a jazzy 3d presentation.
>You are also slowing down access to the data tremendously, because you
>would have people waste time "flying through" a 3d city to get what
>they want, instead of just entering a search keyword into a form.
This is a bit categorical. As Alex says, there is the value of being able
to see everything from above and then zoom down. You can show structure in
a series of web-pages also, but you'd have to get another page to go from
godseye to detail view. Then again Brandon is right in that today, a good
form based system is far better. But let's look at a possible evolution.
Form based system require well-structured data to be capable of any
flexibility (like you'd like more that just author and title in a library
system), hopefully this leads to extensive sets of usable data through the
next years. Then it should be a interesting task to make 3d browsers to
view those structures as spatial structures, to be able to fly through the
connections between books in the library, see threads wind through a
certain historical chain of events, hyperdimentional economical structures,
etc. All this might be generated on the fly, filtered and made specifically
to show the content you're after just then. Others might get other worlds
to explore.
>It is impossible to determine how much "information" a file holds
>based on its size. *snip*. So it makes no sense for a user to measure the
>available
>content by the sizes of the buildings.
It's just a question of definition. Information might just as well be
'amount of understandable codes/signs' as content, also, if
information=content, who's to say that what's content for me is content for
you.
>IMHO, this idea of virtual 3d "mirror-cities" for displaying Internet
>resources is seriously misguided. To improve a user's access to
>useful information, what we really need are underlying distributed
>database technologies that can automatically correlate symbolically
>related information, and documents that can broadcast that they have
>certain kinds of information on widely recognized subject keywords.
>In other words, this is a library technologies problem, not a 3d
>visualization problem.
>
>Cheers,
>Brandon J. Van Every
I agree that static 3d representations of the net is futile, as is printing
maps of jugoslavia these days. Indeed, any projection for real-life
situations and contions into cyberspace must be discussed thoroughly, like
'do we need gravity/cartesian plains/fixed dimentions/etc'.
However, to say that 3d visualistation of database structures is not
something to be worked with, is to me pure nonsense. It's like saying that
we have no buisness going over the horizon to America, that is religious
problem. I'd say that the next big potentional for the computerbuisness is
just in 3d visualisation of non-spatial structures. If you read company
reports etc., you'll see that there is a dire need of a more powerful way
of comunicating complex structures/hieracies, which I see as an ideal task
for powerful computers. Also for artist/designers/architetcts, is a very
interesting field as it requires both a sense the sturcures and a grip on
the workings of 3d.
I've just made a _very_ quick project of this sort, it's www presetation
should be ready sometime this weekend. What's done is that the '3d
meaing&semiotics of Cyberspace' thread from this list was projected into 3d
(there is also a slightly htmlised version of the texts out there, if
someone has objections to me publishing them, please mail me). The text all
stand as semitransparent planes, with windling threads that show the paths
of citation through the mails. This acts as sort of a 3d layout, the extra
dimesions are used in the same way as in 2d layout, to show inplicit
information inside the _content_ of the text, in addition to the signs of
the 1d text it self.
-----------------------------------------
Torbjoern Caspersen casper@due.unit.no
http://www.stud.unit.no/~casper/
Student of Architecture
at the Norwegian faculty of technology, NTH, Trondheim.