UC Santa Barbara and the "All-O-Sphere"

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, a new dimension is added to our 3-D world in the very near future. On August 3rd, Professor Keith Clarke of the Geography Department at UCSB gave me a sneak preview of the 3-story spherical high-tech facility, the Allosphere, which incorporates state-of-the-art nanotechnology surface materials and sound (500 individual speakers and sub-woofers) to create a multimedia immersive laboratory for interactive computing and scientific data exploration (allosphere-info@mat.ucsb.edu).

An ambitious research agenda includes use new modes for “gaining insight and developing bodily intuition about environments into which the body cannot venture,” using geo-spatial sciences, as well as of “immersion-based entertainment, fusing future art, architecture, music, media, games, and cinema,” as an excellent example of the 3-D digital earth world defined in Gore’s now famous speech.



This technology will augment Santa Barbara’s already stellar work in digital earth knowledge nets and libraries under Mike Goodchild’s mentoring.

Check out the allosphere here: LINK