Lookout 2000--Toward the Holomorph

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The Millennium Holomorph site begins in December, 1999.This contribution to the celebration of Lookout 2000, is from me, Caroling. It addresses this idea by Gregory Wright :

"We need to design an elegant four-dimensional navigable infospace. This space will represent the entire land-and-water surface of the planet."

Greg calls this infospace a holomorph. The Millennium Holomorph idea came from an article in VReMAG by Gregory D. Wright. The article is reprinted here, at Lookout 2000.

The topics are Maps, World Visions, and other related ideas.

Maps

We need a visual reference and take-off point. What else but some sort of map? In 2006, Google Earth and others have created great addressable earth maps. The following is Y2K legacy text from before the year 2000.

Flat maps

This Timezone Map lets you see relative real times around the world. I've seen many sites that will figure a given time. But this is the first place to graphically show the whole map, all 24 hours. It has a useful color bar where green shows the areas that are already in the next day. It is not accurate for daylight savings or details of the zones. But if you need a ballpark figure, this is great. Just what I've been looking for.
Colored timezone map.
http://www.lightshift.com/Vital/zonemap.html is a LightShift-sponsored page that shows the exact times for each country, relative to 0 Greenwich.

3D maps

Globe

. Mathematica could be the visual generator. Here is the T-shirt from the 1990 Mathematica conference. The graphic is a globe with the continents cut out. The software can generate images of the globe that are more refined. Then we would show how graphic tools could zoom in on a local area for precision. If you are interested and would like to visualize the project better, see the Wolfram web site, creators of Mathematica.

Here's a QTVR globe. You'll see it if you have free QuickTime plug-in software installed. You can grab the earth and move it around. This version is 50KB but see how much more control you have with the 580KB version. The rotating earth is © Andrew Cameron Bairnsfather 1999.

World visions

We need global coordinated actions. In 2004, the World Wide Panorama site started, fullfilling the promise shown in the pioneer items listed below.

An example is the very successful, spontaneous Wrinkle in Time. See http://wrinkleintime.org/ for a global virtual reality photography project for the start of the year 2000. The wrinkle happened first on the December 21 solstice of 1997. Wrinkle 2 happened on the equinox, March 20-21, 1998, with the theme is "The Wonders of Earth". The results came online on Earth Day, April 22, 1998. Wrinkles continue each equinox and solstice. For info on participating or viewing, see Wrinkle links.
To take part in a photo shoot on New Year's Eve, 1999, or order a book of the photos, see The Millennium Photo Project. There are three limitations. One is that the photos aren't available on the web, you have to buy the book. Two is that photographer quotas for many of the countries are filled. Three is that it is not digital, not online, and not virtual reality. Too bad. See a wrinkle in time 2000, above.
Another photo project is like the previous, but it is wired. Turning Over the Millennium gallery is a" visual presentation of our world as we leave the 1900's and enter 2000". Some locations might have reached a quota.
Here are web cams from all over the world called Webcast of the Century.

Other related ideas

Here are some ideas by James Sullivan that complement the HoloMorph idea.
The infospace needs a look, but what is it all about? And how can we do it? For links to related sites, see "Why don't we do it on the Internet"?

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