IMPLEMENTING GIBSONIAN VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS

We speculate on the possibilities for a realization of the idea of a three di mensional cyberspace as sketched in the novels of William Gibson using todays technology Virtual reality and global networks such as the Internet together can provide the fundamentals for such an effort From an examina tion of the technological principles of a Gibsonian virtual environment we conclude what properties such an implementation must have An implemen tation of a system with these properties faces a number of problems in the large and in the small in particular the semantics of the virtual environ ment and its inhabitants must be defined We also report on our ongoing implementation of a prototype software system that was designed to evalu ate the feasibility of these ideas