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.. ]]>
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..
more notebooks photos (including notes on other little projects I used to work on) @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/aliak_com/tags/notebooks/
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. ]]>
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.
But some netheads are coming to suspect that MUDs—which, depending on whom you talk to, stands for either Multi-User Dimension or Multi-User Dungeon—have already incarnated the spirit, if not the letter, of VR. Called into being by variety of different programming languages with greasy-kid-stuff names like MUD, MUCK, MUSH, and MOO, MUDs have sprouted up mostly on university computers hooked to the Internet. But no matter what their underlying code, these environments allow folks to simultaneously log on from any computer on the net, construct virtual characters, and then explore and even extend the landscape.
visit http://www.techgnosis.com/muds.html for more details and to read the full article
]]>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. ]]>
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.
In this article, I relate Socrates's critique of writing in the Phaedrus to a relatively new form of CMC known variously as MUD, MOO, and MUSH, which I will refer to as MOO. MOO environments provide an interesting perspective on how communication and transportation media affect human interaction, on how electronic communication can produce a sense of co-presence and interaction quite unlike that associated with other secondary orality media such as the telephone. Indeed, I believe that these virtual realities stand as an answer to Socrates's critique of writing, and to modern condemnations of electronic media.
visit http://www.ibiblio.org/cmc/mag/1994/jul/moo.html for more info or to read the full article
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