68 lines
2.9 KiB
Plaintext
68 lines
2.9 KiB
Plaintext
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Taken from the public information file LONG_RANGE_PLAN.DOC on the University
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of Pittsburgh's VAX Cluster system. This document details PITT's long range
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plan in regards to computing at the University of Pittsburgh. Of special note
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are the references to Virtual Reality, as it could be used within the Academic
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environment.
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Some selected extracts include:
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>in a longer view than five years, but well within existing technology,
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>digitized sound together with the availability of digital audio tape decks
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>should make possible compendiums of sound archives of everything from tribal
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>music to bird calls to sound effects to language dialects to speech therapy
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>analysis.
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>With the adoption of digital high-resolution television standards within
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>the next few years, film and video clips and stills should eventually become
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>available in digital form. This will open extraordinary opportunities in
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>education. Imagine a lecture that intersperses brief clips from Nova or
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>Infinite Voyage television archives to help illustrate difficult concepts in
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>a science class, or a lecture on Shakespeare that compares elements of
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>style with clips from several of his plays. Or the introduction of
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>"virtual realities" into the classroom, in which field trips may be taken
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>that are either impractical or impossible in ordinary reality.
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>These are only a very few of the possibilities. We predict that the next
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>ten years will see a genuine revolution in the way information is
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>accessed in our society due to the accessibility of networked distributed
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>databases.
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>Fortunately, the University of Pittsburgh is in an advantageous position
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>to capitalize on these developments as they occur. The presence of
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>high-speed fiber-optic backbone network trunk lines, coupled with
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>ethernet port capabilities in most campus buildings, provides us with the
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>minimum essential connectivity needed to take advantage of the developing
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>networking capabilities.
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.
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.
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.
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On the subject of whether or not a faculty member's personal computer would be
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the responsibilty of the faculty or department:
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>Another example: A physics lab might be constructed around a "virtual
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>reality" in which all frictional forces are absent and the gravity field
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>may be changed at will. While the individual student machines may reside
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>in a physics laboratory room, the actual computing power may well reside
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>elsewhere (or even in several places) on the network. Or the physics lab
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>may be carried out on any suitable machine connected to the network,
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>either in a public computing lab or even in a student's dorm room! How
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>much of the physics lab is "central", and how much is the responsibility
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>of the "end-user"?
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And from the document's glossary:
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>Virtual reality - The digital construction and display of an artificial
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>environment, such as in a flight simulator.
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