Perhaps you have already clicked onto the underlying concepts and become aware of the vast potential for novel and exciting applications which the Internet and the Web have opened up?
Maybe these revelations are yet to come, as you progress through the book?
For those who are impatient to get a glimpse into the novel new world we shall be uncovering here in this book, below are listed a few of the areas we shall be explaining with coded examples.
1) Biotelemorphic cells can be provided with Internet protocol engines which will allow them, and the objects they contain, to use the Internet and the Web to deposit and retrieve media and documents, send emails and open up chat lines.
2) Objects created in cells can be designed to use the portal themselves, to input new objects into the RAM space of the cells they themselves were birthed in. They will be able to import new media and instructions; from a hard disk, a CD-ROM or the Web. Cell objects will be able to change or process the information, display images and produce sounds.
3) Full multimedia presentations and movies can be loaded into a biotelemorphic cell. To these movies can be added all kinds of objects, media and information which objects will be able to be alter, change or update presentations on the fly - according to additional data brought in from the Web, a CD-ROM, a hard disk or an email.
4) Any kind of presentation, service or tool can be built from scratch upon the introduction of a "trigger" object which will set off a sequence of fetching and loading events which result in the immediate creation of a simple or complex avatar from components.
5) Combinations of different objects, brought together in the RAM space of a biotelemorphic cell, can combine and cooperate to provide all kinds of services and perform many different types of operations. They will be able to alter, monitor and control each other, pass messages, create message paths and form hierarchies.
6) Cell objects can also be given memories, sensors, and different forms of "smartness". They can be arranged to combine, cooperate to share their abilities, knowledge and attributes - polymorphing into virtual super objects.
7) In the human brain, dendrites from brain cells reach out to each other and exchange chemical signals across synapses. In a similar way, cell objects will be able to reach out across the Web, using Web pages as synapses, to exchange information, media and instructions.
8) Like the avatars of Eastern mythology, characters and images can manifest themselves in a cell as a result of their component parts being assembled from a wide variety of sources. Not only will avatars be able to manifest as characters, they will also be able to manifest as complete movies, scenes, presentations, processes, or tools.
From these few thoughts, it does not take long to realize that a biotelemorphic cell, which is initially opened empty, could be made to "read" an email which creates a simple object; which initiates an action; whereby the object reads pages from the Web to create other objects; which get data, media, instructions and additional coding from a mix of Web sites, CD-ROM and the hard disk to create any kind of avatar which the imagination can dream up.
Clearly, a scenario could easily develop where the avatars are not just the creations of a single human mind, or, even the result of an organized group of minds. The avatars would have the whole of the millions and millions pages of the Web to draw upon to design and improve themselves.
In the complex systems that are now possible, who would really be able to tell where human minds end and the virtual minds of the avatars begin?
Hopefully, this first chapter will have triggered some form of enlightenment. Shown you not just a dream of untold complexity but given you an introduction to a strategy of eminently practical reality - and it is all brought about through using the same simple mechanism as nature - an empty cell with a portal.
Think of the empty rectangles of a spread sheet and remember the vastly complex organizations and processes which they can be made to model.
Now consider the empty biotelemorphic cell as being filled with programmed objects and connected to the unlimited resources of the Internet and the World Wide Web - who dares try to imagine the variety of different models which could be brought to life?
Examples of avatar application
Avatars and biotelemorphic cells can be used in almost any conceivable application involving communication and information processing.
To give a few examples, of the kind of application where avatars might be useful, is something akin to trying to point out a typical pattern within a system of chaos. There are just too many possibilities for any set of examples to even scratch the surface of the possibilities available. However, here are just a few ideas which will be covered in more detail by coded examples in this book.
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Teachers will be able to stack all of their miscellaneous course notes and diagrams onto "homemade" CD-ROMs which they can give to their students. They will then be able to send an avatar, by email, to each student to sort through the CD-ROM and provide every one of them with individual sequences and presentations as a customized study program which materializes on their computer screens.
Updates and additions could be gathered from the Web and appropriately inserted into these study notes. Avatars could monitor student progress and report back by way of the Internet to the teacher who could then act on this information to email further avatars to alter or adjust the student's program as needed.
Similarly, avatars can be designed to strip specific paragraphs or sections from an overwhelming volume of data on the Web. Presenting the information in a concise and attractive form on a client machine.
Sales and service departments can use avatars to assemble and deliver combinations of up to date notes, diagrams, specifications, prices and deliveries to satisfy particular client problems or needs.
Avatars can be designed to include and to represent people. The roles of avatar and user can be merged together in valuable symbiotic relationships.
Web based personal intelligence and information systems can be created, which assist the user in maintaining networks of contacts and information sources.
Personalities, abilities and characteristics can be cloned onto avatars, allowing avatars to be sent across the Web to represent their owners to seek out new friends and cooperators, find jobs and new business contacts.
There is no limit to the possibilities for Web based games: for amusement, adventure, social and educational reasons.
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One last thought to end this chapter. If we can build intelligence into an avatar - which we shall be covering in later chapters - how large could an avatar's brain be?
In considering this problem, think about how the human brain is organized. The continuous flood of signals, emanating from our senses and sensors as they monitor internal and external conditions and events, are constantly being processed by various specialized sections of the brain. The brain must consist then of a vast network of independent processing units connected directly or indirectly to a myriad of sensors and monitoring units.
It is quite possible that the Internet and the World Wide Web will evolve to incorporate many different computing mechanisms - accessible from the Internet. This will make it similar to the human brain with its vast number of individual specialized computing modules.
If this comes about, every individual biotelemorphic cell would be capable of communicating with any of these computational sectors and be able to download suitable interface devices to within its own RAM space.
In effect this would allow any avatar, manifested in any biotelemorphic cell on any individual computer, to have a virtual brain the size of the combined computing powers of the whole of the World Wide Web.
We shall be speculating upon this possibility in the final chapter
copyright 1997 Peter Small - No part of this document can be used or reproduced in any form without express permission
Details of book, CD-ROM and online continuation - peter@genps.demon.co.uk