Human-Center Computing Seminar
Tues, Jan. 19th
4-5:30 pm
402 Barrows  **note change of place**

Bruce Damer, Digital Space Corporation
"Cyberspace becomes a Place"
http://www.damer.com/programs/index.html#opening


Cyberspace is about to become a real place! The PC has evolved into a
capable real-time 3D  platform and is now serving as a portal into large
scale Internet hosted graphical virtual worlds  inhabited by thousands of
users represented as avatars. The rise of these true virtual spaces in
Cyberspace moves us beyond the document metaphor of the Web, and the point
to point broadcast  model of email and videoconferencing. In these spaces,
visitors experience a sense of place, create shared memory, leave
persistent objects, and experiment with new forms of identity. These first
virtual worlds may be a glimpse at the ultimate shape of Cyberspace.
Despite their early state of  development, they suggest the coming of a
powerful new medium for collaboration, play and learning  in the 21st
Century. In this overview of the medium of virtual worlds, we will
consider the applications and economics of the technology, the system and
user interface architectural issues of constructing  these spaces and the
social craft of creating and sustaining the communities within them. We
wiil then take a grand tour of worlds to the following destinations in
digital space: 

  -The exhibition world which hosted Avatars98, the first conference held
inside cyberspace  serving 4,000 attendees, 48 exhibitors and six parallel
speaking tracks. 
 - Pushing into new spaces for on-line pedagogy in The U Virtual
University Architecture  Competition and University of California Virtual
High School 
 -Business collaborative conferencing inside 3D data models in datafusion
world and a number  of customer virtual community worlds including the
prototype Borders Bookworld, 3D net-hosted retail environments for Borders
Bookstores 
 - The social anatomy of a virtual village in Sherwood Forest Town 
-  Growth and learning about nature in biologically inspired worlds such
as Nerve Garden 
-  Virtual worlds on the horizon in support of large scientific and public
experiential events, such as NASA Mars Pathfinder and other NASA project
worlds 
-  Hollywood and cyberspace as a universal improv space for Inhabited
Media Properties 
-  The economics of virtual worlds and their communities, the hardware and
immersion equation  behind the coming of the Home Holodeck.