![[VR-Online]](pics/bib.gif)
If you like to be taken on a journey not only through the net, but also like to know your culture better, embark on a trip to Allucquere Rosanne Stone´s small, yet brilliantly written ftp archive and find out how to go on a Magical Mystery Tour, even Anno 1995.
The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link is the legendary mother of all BBSs. Though many on line communities have made BBS-hopping quite familiar these days, the aura remains. A quality selection of some of the finest materials on Cyberspace and Virtual communities. Namely Howard Rheingold with "Virtual Communities", Bruce Sterling, and David Ronfeldt with opinions on Cyberocracy and "Cyberwar & Netwar: Warfare between Networks".
If you are into MUDs and MOOs, Xerox`s PARC probably is the right place for you to stay a while. A whole world of interesting papers at their ftp-archive.Working a little slowly lately. But once you get in, you are likely not to leave before to soon. Try it.!
For those who don´t wish to go through a registration procedure, there is a mirror site with older back issues of WiReD-Magazine in Singapore. You never can tell til you try : WiReD-Magazines service has - in fact - dramatically improved. I found out only after overcoming my reservations of registering real-name with the editors.
Getting slightly more technical, you might want to take a look at the HIT Lab, especially in what concerns their development of a VR-display, using retinal projection.
Yet another magazine on the web, this time more technologically and bussines- (as compared to Zeitgeist and culturally, as in WiReDs case) oriented. No time has gone so far into finding out whether this is more than an appetizer-site, though its first appearance is quite promising, not as promising as WiReD though.
Let alone the fact whether it is a lucky word creation or not, it
might be convenient to ask the question of what cybernetics is
all about.
Everyone uses the buzzwords, cyberspace and VR are being reported
everywhere around the globe, in almost any kind of medium. The problem
does - however - seem to be: Is there a commercial application for
all this? Carl Loeffler, in "The Virtual Reality Casebook", seems
to suggest "eventually
yes". The question is, however more complicated for VR than
for other usual products being introduced to a marketplace. This is
because VR cannot only be a product on the realworld market, but
because of its quality as an almost all (reality) embracing tool has
the capacity to become a market itself, reflecting onto the realworld
economy or becoming an n-dimensional economy of its own. The question
then is: on which currency will this new economy run?
Gather some
perspectives by one of electronic cash's inventors, David
Chaum. For a quite comprehensive overview, see the
compilation on electronic payment systems, by Trinity College
(Dublin).
Finally, the Governments are gearing up to create the Global
Information Infrastructure (GII). With the GII first having been proposed in 1994
by Vice President Al Gore in Buenos Aires, the Summit in
Brussels seems to be an important milestone towards its
implementation. Though there is no saying for how long, for the time
being you can find a comprehensive documentation about the meeting
on the
Net.
Whilst I don't exactly wish to discredit this selection as being
random in its approach, future-gazing Toffler-style has won a new
importance in connection with Newt Gingrich's writing the forword
to their latest book "Creating a New Civilization". Whilst this
text is not available on-line, you might want to take a look at an
older interview with Alvin Toffler from the
New Scientist.
Hard to find on the Net, but - so I guess - nobody escapes Lycos,
the searching system at Carnegie-Mellon. See:
Distributed Virtual Reality:
applications for education, entertainment and industry from
1993.
It seems to be a good site. Since I have just picked it - and it
seems to be quite comprehensive -
find out more
yourself.
Find out more about what's going on at the Lab with the support of
20+ of the world's mega-corporations.
8. Encryption and Network Money
9. The Brussels G7 Mini-Summit on Information Society
10. The Tofflers
11. Carl E. Loeffler
12. Web Stars in VR (NASA)
13. The MIT media-lab
14. Bibliography of VR
Very good! Compiled at the HitLab and
available online.
A good collection on the social aspects of VR and Telecommunication, available at the WELL Website.
Assembled in these proceedings from the conference are some very interesting thoughts on the future of media and communications in the networked world. Find a file with an abstract of the most interesting contributions (as from this bibliography's author's viewpoint).
CTHEORY is an international, electronic review of books on theory, technology and culture. Sponsored by the Canadian Journal of Politicaland Social Theory, reviews are posted periodically of key books incontemporary discourse as well as theorisations of major "event-scenes"in the mediascape.
Quite elementary reading about the coming about of the Internet. Before going into the real comprehensive materials, it is probably a good idea to start with this article.
Probably one of the most complete list of links on the Net. Internet-training, RFCs, pointers, search-engines. Prepare for a very big file, and plan to take time, if you take a look.
This article is taken from Le Monde diplomatique in July 1994. It shows some of the applications of modern networked computing in the domain of NGO-cooperation.