Submitted by AliaK on Fri, 01/05/2009 - 13:42
I've been reading Erik Davis' "Techgnosis" book and thinking about MUDs and MOOs again. I used to play on the MOOs back in the early-mid 90s and read up about them again to see if they were still running a while ago : mud articles + moo articles. so I was thinking on the train home last night that twitter seemed very similar - it seems similar to IRC to me, as well as the MUDs/MOOs - the syntax of the commands ie the @ like the @command_name in MUDs/MOOs & IRC. some twitter software uses the auto-reply DM when people follow you, so I was wondering if you could reuse / subvert this to be used in a MOO/MUD on the twitterverse? or even not using DMs, but just open tweets. you could have games running throughout the twitterverse - people could create other worlds within it, using the text descriptions as was done in the MUDs/MOOs
wondering if we could subvert the auto-reply 4 a #twittermoo #twittermud instead - txt based i/f like this reminds me of those text worlds
Submitted by AliaK on Tue, 19/06/2007 - 00:33
back in the mid 90s or so I used to hang out on a couple of moos with some of the outlook crowd. I found one of my old notebooks on the bookshelf during this trip home and it has some of my notes on how to connect and lists the urls etc also. I used to use the name Alia back then though the name became too popular so a few years later I added the K for Kath/Kathy and became AliaK. one of the pages has my notes on how to request my name.
here's some of the notebook pages. I used to make the notebooks out of old 5.25" floppy disks and recycled paper from work - these disks weren't being used as often by this stage.. amazing how times change!!
I remember making a hammock that swung softly when someone sat in it and a room called blacony - nothing too flash compared to what the others were doing but it all worked ok! one day I'll have to go through some old disks and see if I can find any files from back then, that's if the disks even spin up at all..
Submitted by AliaK on Thu, 13/10/2005 - 19:27
It's a Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World
Exploring Online Reality
by Erik Davis
Originally appeared in The Village Voice, February 22, 1994
In our media-primed brains, the phrase "virtual reality" triggers off images of Robocop helmets, studded gloves, and 3D Nintendo. VR is seen as the scuba gear for the seas of simulation, a purely technological means of tricking the central nervous system into inhabiting a digitally concocted space.
Submitted by AliaK on Thu, 13/10/2005 - 19:25
from Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine / Volume 1, Number 3 / July 1, 1994 / Page 7
The Common Place MOO: Orality and Literacy in Virtual Reality
by Don Langham (langhd@rpi.edu)
In the Phaedrus, Plato has Socrates deliver what may be the earliest protest in Western history against the dehumanizing effects of "modern" technology. With the benefit of our literate perspective, it is easy to say that with his condemnation of writing, Plato establishes Socrates as the earliest Luddite. Yet, as modern critics acknowledge, writing is not without its dehumanizing qualities insofar as it encourages the isolation of the individual from community. Today, there is enthusiasm for computer-mediated communication's potential for ameliorating the divisions and isolation of print. For some rhetorical theorists, computer media promise to revitalize rhetoric by reintroducing the forgotten canons of classical rhetoric, memory and delivery. Among composition theorists, computer-mediated communication promises to move the writer out of the isolation of print into a hyptertextual network of readers and writers (Barker and Kemp, 1990). Whether or not CMC will have the democratizing, liberating effects its enthusiasts believe remains to be seen. But from the outset there is reason to believe that CMC may alter the nature of human interaction as fundamentally as writing and print have, perhaps producing a new way of "being" in the world.
