================================================================================ RED CIENTIFICA PERUANA NOTIRED ================================================================================ GLOSAS/USA Memorandum Date: July 3, 1993 To: Electronic Colleagues From: Takeshi Utsumi, Ph.D. Subject: Future Prospect of Videoconferencing via Internet **************************************** Dear Colleagues: (1) I have previously announced our "Global Lecture Hall" (GLH) (TM) multipoint-to-multipoint multimedia interactive videoconference for our U.S.-Russia Electronic Distance Education System (EDES), which will be held at the occasion of TeleTeaching'93 in Trondheim, Norway, on August 21st. During the GLH, we will have a demonstration of videoconference via a packet-switching data telecommunication network, including Internet, albeit limited range yet, by Professor Kevin Jeffay of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (2) Mr. Gary Welz, President of the Science and Engineering Television Network, Inc. in New York City responded to my announcement and kindly sent me an abstract of his talk on the future prospect of the videocon- ferencing via Internet which talk is to be given at a conference in Italy in a few weeks. Since I consider that this "cutting-edge" technology of videoconferenc- ing without use of satellite and dish antenna, will provide not only our Global (electronic) University project, but also entire Internet community with profound benefits, I obtained his permission to distrib- ute the abstract here. (3) There are now several pairs of universities around the world developing this technology, such as Cornell University; Columbia University with Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden; University of Milano, Italy, with University of Utah, etc. (4) Next week, Mr. Welz and I will meet to discuss how we can accelerate their development, in such a way that the technology will be available to every Internet users in very near future. Please respond me if you are interested in joining our attempt. Best, Tak **************************************** ATTACHMENT Dear Dr. Utsumi, Thank you for the materials you sent me concerning your work and the materials you forwarded concerning other television broadcasts. Below you will find the abstract of the talk I will be giving in two weeks at the Conference of the International Federation of Science Editors at Consorzio Mario Negri Sud. You have my permission to pubish this abstract in GLOSAS NEWS if the editor so desires. I would welcome comments and advice from any who read it. SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING TELEVISION ON THE INTERNET: Scientific Publishing in a New Medium July 2, 1993 Mr. Gary Welz, President Science and Engineering Television Network, Inc. Many scientists and engineers create moving pictures in their research. These pictures range from the dazzling supercomputer animations produced by mathema- ticians and physicists to the video images of living cells shot by biologists through powerful microscopes. Until recently they have not had a means of publishing these moving pictures and could only distribute them by mailing their peers self-copied videocassettes. Today the increasing capacity of the Internet and rapidly evolving computer hardware and software is beginning to make possible the production and global distribution of digital audio and video. These developments allow scientists to publish research documents in the medium of television. Computers are now commonly used for videoconferencing - video cameras are frequently mounted on the tops of computer screens for precisely this purpose. Soon cameras will be as standard a computer accessory as microphones and speakers are now. Manufacturers of computers and peripherals offer a wide range of video support hardware and software. Among the more popular and least expensive are IBM's Action Media II card and Apple's Quicktime. These were designed for the multimedia market and have yet to be fully exploited for scientific communication - though their potential is enormous. Two products that may play a pivotal role in this are multimedia authoring tools from Macromedia, Authorware Professional and Director. These offer the ability to create documents (multimedia programs) that can be viewed on both Macintosh and Windows platforms with video playback software supplied with the program itself - thus alleviating the need for the viewer to obtain additional hardware or software. At the higher end are the Silicon Graphics Indigo video card and the Xvideo card made by Parallax for use on Sun work-stations - Sun also sells a multimedia authoring tool. Using products like those mentioned above, an author can digitize and compress a 30 minute video presentation into 300 megabytes of data. This will be good quality video, full color and nearly full motion with screen resolution about equal to NTSC, the American broadcast standard. This program can be down- loaded across a T3 (i.e. 45 Megabit/sec) link to a distant viewer's computer in 53 seconds. When the NSFNet is upgraded to OC3 (i.e. 155 Megabits/sec) during the next two years the required download time will drop to 15 seconds. When the US "data superhighway" with a 1 Gigabit/second data rate is opera- tional - some say in 4 years or less - the download time for a 30 minute video program will be only 2.4 seconds. At that point virtually unlimited use of the Internet for the exchange of video documents and live video multi-casting will be possible. One can anticipate that a number of new publication models will arise. Some may be patterned after print journals, offering selected viewer submissions, others will be familiar television formats like talk shows, news reports and live viewer "call-ins". Many of these video publica- tions will be organized by discipline, much as the current bulletin boards are, some will be interdisciplinary, like the journals Science and Nature. We are entering the age of video email, video computer bulletin boards and ultimately video journals with the same degree of editorial quality control that now exists in print. The average scientist is now able to put a televi- sion reception, production and distribution center on his desk for under $10,000. This has turned the computer into the television equivalent of the ham radio set. Television will no longer be only a mass audience medium, instead, in a very short time, it will be the most common and the the pre- ferred form of scientific communication. Mr. Gary Welz President Science and Engineering Television Network, Inc. c/o Association for Computing Machinery 1515 Broadway 17th floor New York, NY 10036 Phone (212) 626-0555 email setn@acmvm.bitnet Your comments and suggestions are welcome. Addendum: Below is a chart showing the download time for a 30 minute video program compressed into 300 megabytes of data and transmitted across lines of various bandwidths 14.4kb/s 128kb/s 1.5Mb/s 45Mb/s 155Mb/s 620Mb/s 1Gb/s Dial-up ISDN T1 T3 OC3(2yrs) OC12(4yrs?) Data SuperHway(4yrs?) 46hrs 5.2hrs 27min 53sec 15sec 4sec 2.4sec (Science and Engineering Television Network, Inc. is a non-profit consortium of professional societies including the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Physical Society, the American Mathematical Society and others. It's purpose is to develop, produce and distribute scientific publications in the medium of television.) ********************************************************************** * Takeshi Utsumi, Ph.D. * * President, Global University in the U.S.A. (GU/USA) * * A Divisional Activity of GLOSAS/USA * * (GLObal Systems Analysis and Simulation Association in the U.S.A.) * * 43-23 Colden Street, Flushing, NY 11355-3998, U.S.A. * * Phone: 718-939-0928; EIES: 492 or TAK; * * SprintMail: TUTSUMI/GU.USA/ASSOCIATES.TNET * * INTERNET: utsumi@columbia.edu * ********************************************************************** .