From: brownea@cc.uvcc.edu
Subject: My Point of View...an opinion
Organization: Utah Valley Community College
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 19:29:29 GMT

	I have dreams.  Big dreams.
	Allow me to introduce myself, since I plan to spend a quite a bit of
time here.  My name is Earl Brown.  I work at UVCC (Utah Valley Community
College - Orem, Utah) as a computer lab assistant.  I have been programming for
8 years, now (if you include time spent programming BASIC in high school),
using 'C' for 5 years.  I have always known that computers are my career, and
when I first saw a segment on VR, I knew that was my career goal.
	From day one, I have been trying to write a GOOD D&D game (still
haven't been able to start any valid coding on it, yet - too much to correlate
with a real life!), placing it in a VR setting will just be the icing on the
cake.  To do that, I want a VR programming environment.  Reach for an object
which, by the way it looks, describes it's own functionality.  Attach it to
another object by a communications path.  Do this 3 or 4 times, and you have a
functioning 'entity'.  That's my career goal - VR programming environment.  A
good D&D game after that will be the hobby.
	Now that you've got an idea where I'm coming from, let me tell you what
I see for the future...
	TV is useless.  A good VR system will be able to cost less than a good
TV, and will be more flexible.  Just like word processors are mostly useless
nowadays.  I have 'hashed-out' a (theoretical!) design for a real-time
processing system which would allow VR to be used as an entertainment system. 
It would have super-vga resolution and 7 possible output devices, each
determining what it's viewing area is, giving 7 possible points of view on any
system which uses this setup.  It's also very intelegent, so it should be able
to be put into an XT and work fairly well (once again, in THEORY).  If I can
think of it, someone with money, ambition, and (more) education can surely
build it.
	So, people are at home using their VR entertainment systems (which are
actually their home computers).  A phone call comes in, they 'step into another
room'.  They don't move, they just set up a new primary environment to talk to
the other person in.  The phone call is done, the revert to their television. 
Since VR is so flexible, they could set up 'white boards' or projection
screens.  One for the television, one for the phone call, and one for their
job.  No problem to multi-task 3 VR processes on the virtual net because of
(not yet invented) advanced network communication speeds.
	When the devices which give us better speeds on WAN communications,
local memory will become a fiction.  I see our systems being driven as a
connection on a huge VAX type system.  But it will be intellegent.  Taking the
386 as an example:
	When memory is requested which is not actually present on the board, a
request for memory is sent out.  The first 'entity' (I use this term to mean
operating process, not user.  It could include device-drivers, process servers,
or space servers) with as much space available to respond is used until a
faster entity responds.  This results in a file 'I' have possibly being in a
machine halfway around the world.  It's tied to my user ID, so when I close up
shop, go to the work, and turn on the computer there, I still have the same
data available to me.  This will also work for phone #s - The social sec. # of
the future.  Each person gets an ID number.  To contact that person it's just
like e-mail, but you can get face-to-face communications going (if they're
allowing it at the moment).

<I realize that I'm rambling a bit.  I've got a lot of ideas to put forth.  I
hope that I'm at least interresting>

	Lets take a look at a currently emerging technology - holographic
storage.  I've heard reports of it actually working on small-scale systems, and
it's supposed to work like this:
	A small clear crystal, the size (roughly) of a sugar cube can contain
terrabytes of information (a friend and I worked it out - it's enough for 500
music CDs @ 90 minutes each).  I could see a single one of these memory units
costing as little as $100.00 (current value American).  On this little cube, we
can keep our entire history - education, financing, family snap-shots (even a
little real-time, but that would take ENORMOUS amounts of space).  This thing
is supposed to be as fast or faster than our current RAM speeds, and be
read/write-able.
	So, now we're watching MVR (Music Virtual Reality), and our favorite
group has a new video out.  Well, yesterday was payday, and I've still got a
'release' to get (what we might call a CD or an Album today) before I've got
the complete collection.  Plus I want the new video.  I call up my shopping
menu, connect it with the current MVR entity, and request group-specific
cross-index.  From that, I choose the video that's showing, and the release I'm
missing from my collection.  I insert my finance data cube to pay for the
transaction, and I immediately have access to the music I want.  It doesn't
matter really, where it is on the network since speeds are so terrific, but I
like to have my stuff local so that I can disconnect from the world, so I
insert my multimedia collection cube (#3 - Music collections) into the
data-transfer unit, and move the data from *wherever* to MCC3 (that's what the
lable says).
	This is just a small part of my future view, and I've left out some of
the more dislikable aspects (work space would no longer be as roomy - just put
on your VR outfit, and you won't notice that there are 7 people working in your
10' x 7' office space).
	Any comments so far?

	As for interaction like MUDS on current technology -
	I'd love to help develop!  I've had quite a few good ideas, and I'd
like to see them implemented.  I like to use the C++ language nowadays- if I do
the designing it requires, I get the program done quicker and better.

	Earl
	brownea@cc.uvcc.edu