I've left the Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML) interactive vedi model up on this site because it was a great learning and visualization tool in its day. Camping at the Spiral Oasis with co-creator of VRML, Mark Pesce, during Burning Man in 1998, told me a lot about why VRML failed. New technologies were as much cults as they were solutions--moreso back then than now--and VRML was no exception.

I'd been invited by another pioneer of the web, and to whom I owe my hosting on this service provider, John Bagby. Memories of being "summoned" to the tent of Mark under the call of "hey, go get that Sanskrit web guy" during Burning Man '98 just after I'd completed my Ph.D. are some of my favorites ... and strangest ... (does anyone remember that massive horribly loud engine they paraded around the Man on Burn night?). Mark was, as ever, prescient: I eventually returned to the Burn in 2004 with John, where I trained to be a Black Rock Ranger, naturally, 'Ranger Sanskrit'.

Back to VRML ... 3-d on the web is needed, and having it in open markup was valuable, but Flash and the rest took this over. An old version of Netscape or Internet Explorer will still work--at least last time I tried--if you're a purist web historian. Follow this link for more details - and travel into the old version of this site and the charm and wonder of early HTML, colors, backgrounds, and 3-d of the mid-1990's ... before such practical things as XML, databases, "Information Architects" and javascript (insert nostalgic sigh here) homogenized the web and paved the way for such bastardizations and social-manipulation tools as Facebook (no link, deliberately ...).

George Landow supported such legacy remainders in web sites as part of their textual value early on (and thanks again to him for his references in support of this site in its early days). As a scholar and recorder of past "texts" -- evenso in this website, it is only appropriate that I leave the virtual palimpsest in place.

Comments are welcome - feel free to email me.