From Dust to Stardust: A Collaborative 3D Virtual Museum of Computer Science.

Abstract

One of the outcomes of Moore's Law-according to which the exponential growth of technical advances in computer science is pushing more and more of our computers into obsolescence- is the birth of museums and exhibitions about "ancient" computer science, referring to facts that occurred no more than 50 years ago. The italian computer science virtual museum collects personalities, facts and events of relevance related to the development of Computer Science in Italy during the past century. The museum can be visited online, as a traditional web site, but provides also a three-dimensional virtual reality interface, that can allow people connecting from different parts of the Internet to visit it together. In addition, it contains simple interactive games that illustrate basic principles of computer science, and gives and effective demonstration of how data was handled at the time, presenting in 'real size ' a working model of a mainframe of the time. All of this in a sci-fi setting, in which visitors can fly and jump from floating platform to floating platform, in a scenario set in a stany space sky. This paper will describe the features of the 3D portion of the virtual museum, and the way it enhances navigation inside the museum contents, providing additional h n and entertainment.

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