For the past five years we have been part of the
NSF-funded OptIPuter project [ 5], developing
advanced cyberinfrastructure to enable scientists
to interactively visualize, analyze, and correlate
massive amounts of data from multiple storage
sites connected through optical networks. One
major result has been the OptIPortal, a 21st-cen-
tury “personal computer” consisting of a tiled
display wall connected to a computer cluster
connected to multi-gigabit national and international networks. The OptIPortal runs the Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment, software
we’ve developed to serve as a cyber-mashup,
enabling collaborators to simultaneously run
applications on local or remote clusters. Discussing and analyzing the science behind the
information being streamed, remote colleagues
access and view multiple ultra-high-resolution
visualizations, participate in high-definition
videoconferencing calls, browse the Web, or
show PowerPoint presentations.
The OptIPuter and its OptIPortals provide
scientists and students better technologies in the
FIGURE 1. STUDENTS AND FACULTY GATHER IN THE
CYBER-COMMONS FOR WEEKLY TECHNICAL MEETINGS.
laboratory and classroom than they might currently have at home. To make them useful and
useable, we’ve created the Cyber-Commons, a
community resource openly accessible to our
faculty and students (see Figure 1).
David Gelernter, in his prescient 1992 book
Mirror Worlds [ 3], wrote “A Mirror World is
some huge institution’s moving, true-to-life mirror image trapped inside a computer—where
you can see and grasp it whole. The thick, dense,
busy subworld that encompasses you is also,
now, an object in your hands... This software
technology, in combination with high-speed parallel computers and computer networks, makes
it possible to envision enormous, intelligent
information reservoirs linking libraries and databases across the country or the world... The Mirror World is a wholeness-enhancing instrument;
it is the sort of instrument that modern life
demands. It is an instrument that you (almost
literally) look through, as through a telescope, to
