New Internet is the Stuff of Dreams. Chicago stands at the hub of a fast network that will offer wonders of 3-D virtual reality

The day is coming when you’ll talk to a friend, even shake his hand and offer him a seat–from a city hundreds of miles away.

A new and improved Internet, now under development in labs around the globe, will offer holographic images and go beyond the flat screen in other ways, offering consumers an array of products that can only be imagined right now. You could find yourself in the middle of a virtual reality NASCAR race, for example. Or perhaps you’ll become a detective trying to solve a three-dimensional mystery.

In other words, it isn’t your father’s Internet.

And the gateway through which the network will connect is right here in Chicago.

In a symbolic move that solidifies the city’s important role in the Internet’s next generation, a group of Japanese computer gurus came to the University of Illinois at Chicago campus Wednesday to sign a ceremonial agreement linking researchers there to the rest of the world through the Chicago hub.

"Our scientists are very pleased to exchange massive amounts of data with American colleagues," said Kunihiro Kato, vice president of Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technologies.

By Jon Van
Tribune staff reporter

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