Mathwright
MindScapes is an unusual program. It was born in the twilit dreamscapes of another
time...a time and place where Science and Fiction met and played in our minds,
where "Robbie the Robot" and "HAL" play chess still, and Androids might well
dream of "Electric Sheep."
We
remember the time. "Electronic computers" were magical, mysterious, and totipotential.
Remote and inaccessible as they were, they did a thing then, that they rarely
do today. They stirred our imaginations. And this, in the author's view, has
always been their greatest promise. But computer software has other promises
to keep, and, true to the vision we glimpsed only dimly in our youth, computers
and their software are patiently and quietly transforming our world. They are
opening vast new vistas of communication and social interaction, of commerce
and scientific research, and have become the pliant instruments of creative
minds in all of the arts, making possible entirely new forms of expression and
entertainment.
But
in these roles, they tend to be the passive instruments of our imaginations,
only rarely are they the active source of new ideas. Now software environments
that can bring the player "under the spell" of an imaginary world they create,
and can make the player an active participant in that microworld can touch and
stir the imagination of the player. And if the microworld mirrors and illuminates
the conventions that we teach in the schools, then the player also becomes a
learner, and the author a teacher. In this way, software environments can provide
entirely new learning experiences and possibilities for students. This is what
MindScapes makes it possible for authors to do.
MindScapes is an authoring
program for the dreamers who would create on the warp and woof of science and
art, virtual worlds that will stimulate the imagination and the curiosity of
their readers. It is a Visualization Studio in which you may sketch on a dynamic
3D canvas the pictures of natural (and artificial) processes that model the
world around us. Those "pictures," being dynamic, can give your readers the
opportunity to explore, to ask questions, and to invent. The pictures should
be realistic, and at the same time responsive and expressive. And this is what
makes MindScapes unusual. It brings to the author a platform that is dedicated
to creating pedagogically compelling simulations and visualizations.
For this, it organizes
into a single language: · interactive 32-bit 3D graphics (based on OpenGL),
· an object-oriented development environment, and · a mathematical scripting
language called MathScript MathScript combines both decimal and symbolic mathematics
with a flexible and expressive idiom for creating and managing complex and interesting
simulations through user-defined object hierarchies. Mathematics (and especially
geometry) will always play an important role in constructing 3D simulations,
simply because scripts must move the actors correctly. MathScript and OpenGL
will "do the math" for you at the lowest levels. MindScapes provides a high-level
language environment in which you may design your scenes and interactions abstractly,
and from the top down, and then tell the lower levels of the language what "math"
to do in those abstract terms. For more information about MindScapes, see the
MindScapes page, or send questions to mathwrig@gte.net
James E.
White, Ph.D.
President,
Bluejay Lispware
