Cosma / Documentation / Timeline
Cosmos : Greek kosmos (masculine) an orderly harmonious systematic universe – M. Webster
Cosma : Greek kosma (feminine) an orderly harmonious systematic description of the universe — M. E. Hopper
This version of Cosma is just the most recent iteration of a project that has evolved for decades.
There have been over a million users across time and platforms.
It’s been a fifty year journey — this interactive exhibit and the timeline below highlight just some of the milestones along the way …
You can also explore it on Kuula.
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Menu 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s
Exposure to Empire on PLATO (1976 – 1980)
Cosma Conceptualized (1976)
Cosma came into being through an accident of confluence. Mary Hopper was working in a library and was enamored with the power of the Dewey Decimals to navigate it. Then she was exposed to the spatial game Empire on PLATO. Viola! It struck her that it would be SO cool to make a spatial game where knowledge was a place that you can navigate with addresses like you can in “planned cities” like Indianapolis where she grew up.
She’s been working on making knowledge a place ever since. The concept evolved a lot over the years, but this was the initial spark that inspired Cosma.
Hopper attended Purdue University to get qualified to make Cosma.
B.A. English and Education, Concentration Psychology (1980 – 1984)
School of Humanities, Social Science and Education, Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN
Indiana Teaching Licenses
Secondary English (9-12)
Junior High/Middle School Language Arts (5-9)
Gifted and Talented Endorsement (K-12)
Computer Education Endorsement (K-12)
M.S. Curriculum and Instruction (1985-1989)
Specializations Educational Psychology, Evaluation & Research Methods, Gifted & Talented
School of Education, Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN
HyperCard Experiments (1987 – 1994)
Macintosh Macromind Director Experiments (1988 – 1990)
Purdue Knowledge System (1989 – 1993)
This project was a precursor to Cosma.
Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction (1989 – 1993)
Specializations in Educational Computing, Instructional Design
School of Education, Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN
Dissertation. Educational Courseware Production in Advanced Computing Environments
At this point in time Cosma was mostly designed for highly gifted middle-school students (180+ IQ).
HyperStudio Experiments (1991 – 2005)
Microsoft PowerPoint Experiment (1991)
LCSI MicroWorlds Experiments (1994 – 2005)
TheWorld Web Site (1994-2006)
AthenaMuse 2 Experiment (1996)
Postdoctoral Associate, Comparative Media Studies (1998 – 2000)
School of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hopper, M. E. (1998, October). Hypertext in Historical Context: Vannevar Bush and Ted Nelson revisited. Media-in-Transition Project / Communications Forum, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
This event was about Knowledge Navigation!
Courses at Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science (2001 – 2002)
Reference (Allen Smith)
Cataloging & Digital Libraries (Candy Schwartz)
Archives (Jeannette Bastian)
Hopper used what she learned from Allen Smith to figure out what the content of Cosma should be, and she used what she learned from Candy Schwartz to decide how to organize that content (i.e. Forms, Realms, etc.).
Internship in MIT Archives, processed records of American Institute of Planners (AIP) a.k.a. City Planning 🙂 (2000)
Hopper, M. E. (2000). Knowledge Systems 101: From Alexandria to Hitchhiker’s Guide. Independent Activity Period, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
Hopper, M. E. & Summer, R. B. (2001). Where’s the Media? Models for Creating and Distributing Teacher and Student Made Digital Media [Presentation]. Second Wiring the Classroom Conference. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
Assistant Professor, Technology in Education (2003 – 2006)
Graduate School of Education, Lesley University, Cambridge, MA
Wikispaces Web Site (2006 – 2016)
SecondLife Experiments (2005 – 2006)
Hopper was near the end of her Postdoc at MIT in 2002 when she saw Mitch Kapor give a demo of Linden World (only had a single region/sim at that time). She saw a demo of Active Worlds a few years later. Standards for the 3D Web were starting to mature as well. It was becoming clearer that one of the three would probably be the software platform that would allow her to finally fully implement the project she had envisioned for decades. She continued watching the three platforms develop over the next few years. Hopper knew for sure which platform she would use after attending the demos of them at SIGGRAPH 2006 in Boston. The answer was crystal clear and shortly after that serious development in SecondLife began.
Founded Knowledge Foundry (2006 – 2012)
Small company that supported Cosma’s Projects (among other things)
Knowledge Lands@SecondLife
Knowledge Places (2006 – Present)
Knowledge Gates to Second Life (2006 – Present)
Hopper, M. E. (2007). The Knowledge Gates to SecondLife [Presentation]. Media in Transition 5 Conference: Creativity, Ownership and Collaboration in the Digital Age, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
Knowledge Palace (2007 – 2009)
Knowledge Paradise (2008 – 2014)
Hopper, M. E. (2009). Cosma: Constructing a Kingdom of Knowledge [Presentation]. Media in Transition 6 Conference: Stone and Papyrus, Storage and Transmission, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
K-Palace, K-Paradise and most of the K-Gates sites were discontinued and their contents were consolidated into extremely scaled back “archival” sites that hold just a small sample of the spaces and objects that made up the K-Places sites. The largest archival site is K-Park — it preserves the spaces and objects that were an interface to the Knowledge Realms.
There is also a “sky-space” situated above the ground-level sites — it preserves the spaces and objects that were an interface to the Knowledge Forms on the Cosma Web site.
Here is a video of an extended walk-through of the K-Places archival sites.
This map shows where the archival sites are in Linden Village. If you have a Second Life account and the software is installed on your computer, then you can click the map to teleport there.
Tens of thousands of wanders have used Cosma by clicking on “Magic Windows” in SecondLife. SecondLife employs fictional names and also enforces anonymity, so it is “almost” impossible to know who the people are in Real Life (RL), but it is fair to say that the more that someone has used SecondLife, the more likely it is that they know of the sites. The “hard core users” and “older residents” are almost certainly aware of them and have probably visited them.
Unity 3D Experiment (2015 – 2017)
WordPress.com Web Site (2016 – Present)
Wikispaces announced that they would be shutting down. All thousand pages and hundreds of posts had to be moved to WordPress.com, and that process has not been completed, yet. The Wikispaces version of Cosma had been introduced to over a thousand students in Hopper’s undergraduate and graduate education courses over time. This lead to thousands of teachers across a wide range of grade levels and subjects using it. Home-schoolers and their parents started to find and use the site as well. Hundreds of thousands of people used the Wikispaces version of Cosma before it shut down in 2016. Hundreds of thousands of people have used the current WordPress version of Cosma. Each post currently reaches around 6,000 users.
RoundMe Service (2017 – 2022)
Toy Worlds (2018-Present)
Toy Worlds are made by capturing 360° images of “real world” spaces made with miniatures.
More than a hundred thousand people used “Toy Worlds” on RoundMe before it shut down.
Click on objects to find out about them and use doors to visit other Toy Worlds.
You can also explore it on Kuula.
Attended Conference The Science of Information, 1870-1945: The Universalization of Knowledge in a Utopian Age (2017)
Preservation of Technologies Used for Cosma
New Media Museum (2017 – Present)
RoundMe 360° photo sharing service that was being used to host Toy Worlds suddenly shut down in 2022 with no warning. All of the Toy Worlds had to be re-posted and marked up in Kuula Service in a “very short” time.
Kuula Service (2022 – Present)
Web Worlds (2025 – Present)
This is Cosma’s current Welcome Area were you can start your journey into knowledge!
Touch posters and objects to find out about them or visit other worlds.
You can also explore it on Kuula.
The Web World below is a special one with links to many of the others. You can use it to find hundreds of immersive 3D and 360° experiences to explore!
You can also see it directly on Kuula.
More than seventy thousand people have used M. E. Hopper’s “Worlds” Posted on Kuula.
You can explore them on this Worlds Wall: A Guide to M.E.Hopper’s Pantheon of Worlds!
Touch pictures to explore the worlds, and it is best done full screen!
Worlds Challenge (The Journey Continues …)