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The Aleph

By Bruce Sterling

Some scientists believe that a petaflops (1 million billion floating-point operations per second) computer could correct bad image-processing in real time. I'd like to push that idea. Perhaps a petaflops computer could become a kind of universal camera. It might be able to re-create 360-degree landscapes, in any depth of focus and from any angle, through the light impinging on the surface of a black globe. No lenses, no film, none of that antiquated frippery - just raw photons and computational power.

I imagine Public Telepresence Points, consisting of a rather mystical-looking black globe high on a mirrored stalk. The poetic obverse of a charlatan's crystal ball that people all over the world can peer into - or rather peer out from - this globe. Perhaps with a headmounted display, the computer simply calculates the viewer's needs in real time and composes the appropriate image, binocularly, for human vision. Subjectively speaking, you would have the experience of simply looking out over Trafalgar Square anywhere.


- Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com) writes science fiction.

 
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