Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 5, 1995 TAG: 9511030022
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LOUIS TRAGER SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO LENGTH: Long
Big deal? It is to marketing people, desperate to jazz up an on-line world that for all its gee-whiz futurism might as well be printed pages that run up electric bills.
And the landmark Internet ad for San Francisco's C/net is but a first sip of Java, a language for writing computer programs developed by Sun Microsystems of Mountain View.
Java allows World Wide Web sites for the first time to fully incorporate motion and sound, real-time information updates, and user customization and feedback.
The Web - part of the Internet - can become the source of an enormous array of services, utilitarian to frivolous, with all the bells and whistles - a far cry from the still pictures and frozen information typically served up now.
``Imagine,'' says Sun in a piece promoting its software for jazzing up Internet sites. ``Interactive shopping in virtual walk-through sites. Multi-user 3-D games and environments. Animated logos and illustrations. Live background music and sound effects. On-line auctions. Live sports scoreboards and stock tickers - continuously updated. Real time chats and conferencing sessions. ... It's possible today.''
Java also circumvents what has to date been the fire wall of distinctions among different computer operating systems, such as those segregating the Microsoft Corp. and Apple Computer universes.
Ultimately, Java helps open the vista of a computing world where electronic devices, handheld to wall-size, can pluck any kind of service or amusement off the Internet instantly from anywhere on the globe, Sun says.
Software applications are just now being written. But many pundits say Java is a symbol of a shift toward Internet-based computing that in years to come will make the computer hardware and software industries spin just like the C/net ball.
From there, the shift could have just as profound an impact across nearly every sphere of human interaction - entertainment, health, news, education, politics, culture, science and industry.
``People today have two things they can get out of media,'' says Sun co-founder Bill Joy. ``They can plug into a broadcast and have data pour out at them, or they can plug into a personal computer, where they have to do a lot of set-up, and play with things.
``The network [computing networks, up to the Internet] is a third thing. Instead of pouring out at you, or having it on your disk, you have access to the whole world out there. You can download little bits of activity or things that animate.
``The PC is like being on a farm. You have to drive an hour to get anything you need. Whereas being on the network is like being in the city. As you walk you discover new things - but it's at your choice.''
Now we buy bulky, big-ticket computers to house and run digitally bulky pieces of software that we have to purchase at a store and install. In most cases, we only scratch the surface of these machines' and programs' enormous capabilities before ditching them for more powerful ones.
The cyberworld created by the Internet and made navigable by browser makers like Netscape could be harnessed beyond our dreams using tools like Java, say fans in and out of Sun.
``Applets'' - as in little application programs - will be written in the Java language, to reside not in a zillion individual PCs but in big computers hooked into the 'Net. From there, applets can be plucked by Internet users anywhere.
You can download software from the Internet now, but it's a chore of multiple steps that depends on the speed of your computer's telecommunications link.
In Javaworld, it's more like operating a TV. That makes the language a noteworthy step toward realizing Sun's longstanding epigram: ``The network is the computer.''
Sun has posted on the Internet, for the taking, the information software writers need to produce applets. But it stands to recoup its investment in Java many times over in the sale of powerful ``server'' computers for 'Net providers and of possible future products such as cheap dedicated 'Net terminals and even a Java operating system of its own.
In some ways, the recentralization of information - away from atomized desktops and back to a mother ship - will be a throwback to the pre-PC days when using a computer meant sitting in front of a terminal that simply displayed information as it was piped in from a huge mainframe.
In the new model, however, the mainframe is replaced by thousands of scattered servers that are lashed together in the 'Net and are infinitely more powerful and versatile. The ``dumb'' terminal on the desk is replaced by a personal computer that can manipulate the information it receives instead of merely showing it.
``The so-called dumb terminal of 1998 will be more powerful than the top-of-the-line PC five years ago,'' says Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future, in Menlo Park.
Because it's an electronic network, users from different points in the world could use a single applet, such as a game or business scenario, at the same time.
Users could interact long-distance in apparently three-dimensional football games, wars or fashion shows. Each player could take the vantage point of any character in the simulation, switching standpoints at will.
by CNB