From mdm1004@cus.cam.ac.ukThu Mar 30 15:43:54 1995 Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 19:27:36 +0100 (BST) From: "M.D. Mackey" To: mkruse@saunix.sau.edu Subject: info_hwy.txt Title: The Information Superhighway By: Mark Mackey (mdm1004@cus.cam.ac.uk) Quick description: A hypothetical look at a network cable... Using: This image was produced using Persistence of Vision version 2, running on a 486DX-33 with 8MB RAM. Comments: Well, this image underwent a long, slow evolution. I started thinking about the topic, 'The Internet', which was really crying out for something cyberspacy as an image, even though the concept no doubt is becoming a bit cliche'd. I went through about four or five different designs of what I wanted to do, and then, one night, I suddenly wondered what a network packet really _looked_ like. Well, tying this up with the whole 'information superhighway' politicobabble didn't take long, and so on paper I had a good idea of what I wanted to do. However, I was really unable to get a good 'tangled cable' effect with the tools I had (specifically Connect The Dots), and I though that a whole heap of joined torus sections might do the job better. I couldn't find a tool to do this, so I did the traditional thing and wrote one, TORPATCH. As might have been expected, writing the tool took more time than anything else about this image... I should release the tool sometime in the coming month, when I have made it sufficiently user-friendly :). The rest of the image was composed entirely by hand. The only problem I had then was to decide what lay at the end of the highway? The answer was obvious: Bill Gates, of course! Whinges: I wish POV could do light diminishing. I hope this is going to be featured in the new version...