TEXTUALITY IN CYBERSPACE: MUDS AND WRITTEN EXPERIENCE BY JEFFREY R. YOUNG OPENING SCREEN Philosophers and postmodernist critics discuss the way humans communicate, engineers and computer systems designers create ever- integrable networking capabilities and work to improve human- computer interfaces, but at the crossroads, people are playing games. While the philosophers and engineers sleep, the MUDers are at their computers, hour after hour, playing in the cyberspace. In Multiple-User Dungeons/Dimensions (MUDs), text-based virtual realities accessible via Internet, thousands of people share fantasy space, or "live" electronically. They walk and talk, build and destroy, hug and have sex while sitting at isolated computer terminals scattered throughout the world. Their activities, if considered out of the context of the computer network, are certainly not unusual. In a sense, the kinds of socialization taking place on MUDs represent the simplest and most mundane of human interactions. What is interesting about MUD life, and what MUDers seem sometimes to forget, is that these "events" take place without their physical counterparts. Outsiders are quick to point out that nothing "happens" on these computer games, and look upon this growing subculture with a derision and sense of deviance. These addicted computer users, some of whom profess to play for tens of hours a day, may not agree. These textual environments, as innovative applications of computing and networking technologies, provide new and powerful ways for humans to express themselves. THE ARGUMENT MUDS offer new and HIGHLY COMPELLING LANGUAGE EXPERIENCES. In both LANGUAGE STRUCTURE and SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS, MUD allows people to express themselves and explore identity in a simple (text only), user-controlled environment. The medium's primary mode of dialog -- two-way typing in real time -- takes advantage of the newest means of communication: computer networks. WRITING 'CONVERSATIONS' is thus a new concept, one which hovers between resembling speech and resembling writing, but which in its mixing of forms gains entirely new resonances and characteristics. Since writing is expected to take longer than speech to produce and can be drafted and honed in isolation before being sent out over the MUD, input is usually better structured and more topically focused than spoken exchanges. However, like speech, the sense of 'breath,' or distinct presence in time, and the freedom to move freely in the text base forces words into smaller spaces (TEXT BITS) than in traditional written works on paper. The device that transmits the communication of MUDs, the COMPUTER SCREEN, further blurs distinctions between writing and speech. On the screen, written words are both concrete and fleeting, making words more malleable than in bound books, but more solid than speech. NEW VISUAL CUES mix with language characters to compensate for seeing the objects described in these on-line discussions, furthering a sense of presence and engagement. In the virtual text world of MUD, the reader is in control. They control WHAT THEY SEE OF THE VIRTUAL WORLD and WHAT THE VIRTUAL WORLD SEES OF THEM through the use of MUD's OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENT. The framework that allows PERFORMATIVE LANGUAGE control constantly reminds readers of their authoritative stance and critical distance from their own speech and experience. As a result the text gains a unique BLEND OF TRANSPARENCY AND OPACITY, as players constantly shift stance from immersion in the imaginative space to evaluation and control over the textual objects. So what KINDS OF EXCHANGES happen in this new medium? Because of the both distanced and direct nature of MUD interaction, players are more socially confident than in face-to-face situations: MORE INPUT IS OFFERED, input IS MORE FREELY OPINIONATED, and there is LESS PRESSURE FOR PARTICIPANTS TO CONFORM TO NORMS. The surprising trend that people are more friendly, emotional, and expressive in this decentered medium highlights deep inadequacies and disintegration in present real-world societies. The promise of Computer Socializing is that, should MUD become more widespread, it could become an important SUPPLEMENT TO REAL LIFE. If this new communication medium, one that merges literary and oral strengths, is in fact closer to human thought, and represents a MORE GENUINE FORM OF EXPRESSION, perhaps cyberspace will be the choice location to meet and develop relationships with real-world others. And perhaps our real world will gradually be shaped by tendencies of the Net, just as telephone and television technologies have influenced our view of ourselves and our surroundings. BIRTH OF MUD MUDing began as a computer form of the popular fantasy board game "Dungeons and Dragons" (D&D) in which wizards and warlocks used equations and dicey probabilities to fight each other or team up against imagined creatures. The source code for MUD1, an object- oriented computer program written in C for Unix that mixed the fantasy world of D&D with the text environments of popular computer word games such as Infocom's "Zork," was first written by Richard Bartle and Roy Trubishaw in 1979-80, and is considered the first Multiple User Dungeon (Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about MUDs, "What is a MUD?"). As MUDs developed, system operators gradually realized that the computer opened dimensions the board game never imagined. Instead of just fighting imaginary monsters, players could use the computer-networked environment to communicate with one another in a shared space. TinyMUD Original, developed in 1989, was the first MUD to drop the adventure gaming aspect altogether to concentrate solely on social interaction between characters (FAQ, "What Different kinds of MUDs are there?"). As of late 1992, there are 207 operable MUDs, many of which are social, rather than "combat oriented" (Cartwright, 24). Each MUD system can accommodate hundreds of active users at once, and may have thousands of characters stored in the database. If every registered user on LambdaMOO were to log on at once, for instance, there would be 7993 players wandering around in the MUDworld, though the average active population of Lambda is about 200 (From "help wizzes" file on LambdaMOO (accessible by typing 'help wizzes'). Though there are many books on the Internet and the hype-laden Information Superhighway, few authors take these games seriously. When MUDs are mentioned, they are often referred to as a deviant form of network use, where users 'eat up disk server space and tie up wires for hours on end goofing around.' As one MUDer notes in a help file, "Most schools (universities are where most MUDs originate) classify MUD as a game, and games as non-essentials. Therefore, if your school decides to shut off all games, or disallow you to telnet out to play MUDs, you're stuck" (FAQ, "I paid money for my account! MUDing is a right, isn't it?"). But a closer look at these "games" reveals that much more is going on here. More than any other service on Internet, MUDs draw people in, spurring an involvement that often becomes an addiction. It is not unusual for serious MUDers to spend "as many as 120 hours a week engaged in such on-line activities." (Cartwright, 24). Because so many people do get hooked into these worlds -- tying up data lines as they live in the cyberspace -- many schools are forced to outlaw MUDs altogether. As a professor at New Mexico State University e-mails, "Our computer center pretty much bans them except deep in the night, since they claim too much of our unix resources" (e-mail from Stephen Bernhardt, 4/26/94). However, there must be some attraction that keeps thousands of users logged-into MUDs, choosing on-line life over excursions in the real world. COMPELLING SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT One explanation for the addictive quality of MUDs is that the people using them are somehow socially inept, and find a community of kindred spirits in cyberspace. This notion coincides with a stigma that has long been attributed to computer hackers or hobbyist in general, as evidenced by the existence of books like The Invasion of the Computer which gives a profile of computer users as maladjusted, shy, quiet, and generally lacking the social skills necessary to succeed in 'real world' human interaction. This narrow view of computer usage is easily disputed, however. For the most part, it is true that MUDers are generally computer hobbyists, but this is because these are the only people with the technological resources to use these text environments. MUDs require a fair amount of computer hardware, in addition to network capability and Internet access, which at present the average home computer owner may not have. This by no means indicates that only self-proclaimed computer nerds would find MUDs compelling, however. In research and other general applications (such as pilot programs for classroom settings) that have used MUD environments, subjects found that, as they learned the basics, they often chose to log into the system even after the 'regular hours' of the experiment (Britton, 12). "Sociologist Barry Wellman made a similar kind of observation after noticing how 'shocked' some of the non-participants in the 'on-line party' were at the amount of joking and personal exchanges among those who did take part" (Hiltz, 114). "It's not the shock of recognition," a Wired magazine reporter wrote after experiencing MUD, "it's the shock of communication. The organic sensation that you're connected to people evaporates from the printed page" (Quittner, 93) but is alive on MUD. This novel form of communication appeals to a basic desire to connect directly with others. There is no other medium that allows so many people to interact remotely in a common 'space.' But if merely interaction was the goal, why would people choose this mode of personal gathering over face-to-face encounters? The answer lies in looking at how this new interaction is structured -- its MEDIUM (the computer), FORM OF LANGUAGE, and CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK -- to see why networking on MUDs forms a new type of community: one which allows people to negotiate a strong sense of self and individuality while participating in public space. PART I: A NEW TYPE OF LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE THE LINGUISTIC 'FEEL' OF MUDING There is something magical about entering the main area of FurryMUCK and watching the screen fill with descriptions of strange characters joking and frolicking around you. This mystc is amplified by the realization that what you say and describe yourself doing will be seen and commented on by this motley bunch of critters. The ability to interact with others over the computer breaks preconceptions about what it means to communicate with someone. Both the language structure facilitated by MUDs and the computer language that allows messages to be passed over the network cause a distinct 'feel' of MUD interaction. Simply looking at the interactivity of MUD doesn't address the lure of these environments. After all, we interact face-to-face with others all day long in the real world. There is something else exciting about exchanges on MUDs that is harder to put a finger on. Watching another character, you notice that it describes itself singing a certain song, and you think to ask if they've heard of an obscure band you like. You type out a question and hit the return key. Your question goes out to everyone in the room, and you wait, watching actions of other characters in the meantime. You watch a minute pass, and a reply comes back on your screen: the other player loves that band too. You ask another question about music, and the online 'conversation' begins. Perhaps the only experience that closely resembles this language event in real life is passing notes during class in grade school. You write a note on a scrap of paper, and stealthily pass it to Lucy, anxiously watching as she writes out a note in reply. The message is passed back to you and you read it with excitement, ready to send another note. Asking the same question of Lucy orally, outside of class, never seems the same as scrawling out the words as fragments on a physical object and visually handing the meaningful note back and forth. WRITING 'CONVERSATIONS' MUDs allow writing to take on a function traditionally thought to be the unique domain of speaking: two-way instantaneous communication. The metaphoric terminology of MUD refers to characters 'speaking' to one another, but what users are really doing is writing. This distinction would not be lost on Walter Ong or other scholars who traced the change in human expression from pre-literate societies to those that have developed writing systems. Ong showed that the way thought is structured by people in cultures without literacy is different than in those that have adopted writing systems (Ong). When writing, the same people use different syntaxes and word choices than they do when speaking the same idea. Thus, not surprisingly, the written "speech" on MUDs is different than oral speech in face-to-face encounters. This was confirmed in a recent study of computer conferencing done at MIT: Among experienced users, the "written equivalent" of the language content tends to be somewhat better organized and more fully thought out than comparable statements recorded from a face-to-face conversation. This is because the participant has a chance to take as long as desired to think about a response or comment, to reorganize and rework it until it presents the idea as fully and succinctly as possible. . . . on average the written channel will tend to have a somewhat richer and better-organized content than spoken conversations, in terms of topic-related information (Hiltz, 82-3). Just like when writing notes in class, the time between messages is longer than in face-to-face oral communication. Whereas in face-to- face questions, long pauses make participants uneasy and are one of the most severe "faultables" of spoken interaction (Goffman, 225), written notes are expected to take longer to produce. The result is indeed a different looking/sounding content of communication, an insteresting mixture of what in speech would be stilted language, mixed with a few typical typos. The conversational aspect of MUDing is so strong that many 'newbies' transfer 'inappropriate' conventions from face-to-face communication to the textual world. In some instances, forgetting that responses in MUDs are written, not spoken, results in inefficient use of the text world. Take the scenario from this help file on LambdaMOO, for instance: When paging, just page the question. You don't need to start with "Can I ask you a question?" (Answer: you can and you just *did* --- this is an example of a real-life courtesy that actually becomes counterproductive when translated to the MOO; if one sees an actual question, it is possible to deal with it relatively quickly, whereas if the page is merely a "mind if I interrupt?", time is lost waiting for the actual question to appear) (LambdaMOO help file). It seems that MUDs present a confusion of expectation in language experience. As users translate their conceptions from real life to the virtual text world, they often 'forget where they are' so to speak. Though the interactivity of MUDs causes the partial illusion of face-to-face, spoken dialog, MUDers are quick to condition each other to keep the written aspect of the computer conferencing closest in mind. Just as literate cultures look condescendingly at primary-oral cultures as being 'wrong' in their thinking, MUDers who forget they are writing, not speaking, when online are brought back in-line. In the content-density and mannerisms of MUD conversations, players are clearly a community of writers, not speakers. Though their interactions resembles face-to-face communication more than writing ever has, MUDers carefully maintain the distinction of literacy. Though they 'act' together communally on the MUD, they are also clearly writers in isolation, carefully forming phrases before sending them out over the net into the public conversational space. HYPERTEXT AND THE NEW MEDIUM OF THE SCREEN In many ways, MUDs like FurryMUCK and LambdaMOO operate as books do, especially since they are completely textual. The first MUDs were simply on-screen books that led users through a narrative, with the occasional opportunity to fight one-on-one with other players. Traditionally, the only experience requiring the reading of text for so long at one sitting is found in bound books. For this reason, MUDers often carry over concepts from reading and writing physical texts into MUD space. But the assumptions associated with the reading of physical books, like the assumptions for face-to-face communication, do not transfer perfectly into screen-based, or hypertexts. In fact, as New Mexico State University professor Steven Bernhardt, one of the pioneering researchers of hypertext, notes: "Thinking, working, and composing in the new medium of hypertext has a grammar all its own, a grammar with a steep learning curve and challenging new conceptual structures" (Bernhardt, in press), adding that, "We are in a state of rapid evolution, with heavy borrowing on the history of text on paper, applied sometimes appropriately and sometimes inappropriately to the new medium" (Bernhardt, College Comp., 151). In the medium of the screen, text is both physical (letters on the screen) as it is in books, and fleeting and ethereal like speech, again causing a strange middle-ground between and written and oral sensibilities, and new freedoms and constraints on language. WINDOWS INTO TEXT The page of a book is fixed -- paper size sets the amount of type possible on a page. On the screen, however, the monitor's glass is simply a window into a boundless cyberspace. Instead of page-turning in a linear body of book-text, the screen can scroll in any direction. Not only can this window be moved more freely over the text, but multiple pages can be layered on the same screen. On MUDs, for instance, a user can have one 'window' open with a connection to LambdaMOO, and a separate opening connected to FurryMUCK at the same time. The user can be participating in two separate 'texts' simultaneously, organizing the 'windows' so that both are visible side-by-side on the screen at once. In hypertext, there is no single order or configuration for large bodies, or databases, of language. In fact, the metaphors referring to reading 'through' text in a book are inappropriate to reading the computer screen. In a book, there is nowhere to go but "forward," turning to the "next" page of text, but in hypertexts, readers can move in many directions, and there is no 'one' right way to go. LINKING PASSAGES Screen text is not fixed ink on a physical page, but data units in a random-access storage allowing them to be recalled in any order. This requires an added burden on the text: not only must information be presented, but it must include directional markers, or links, that let readers know how to get to it. "It is like writing in a third dimension, with layered objects in graphic space" (Bernhardt, 151). In MUDs, users can build onto the text world -- creating buildings, rooms, and objects. Using the [@create] command, creators must not only write the descriptions others will see when entering their room, but also code the [@link] commands that allow users to enter and leave the room with the standard directional functions ([N], [S], etc.) (Furry Builders Guide). Without these links, a room is a page no one can turn to. In hypertexts, information is not necessarily cumulative, since the author cannot assume the reader came into a certain part of text from a set path. In MUDs, many players can use the [@teleport] command to pop into any room from anywhere. Unlike in a physical book (in which, admittedly, anyone can flip immediately to any page), hypertexts are supposed to accommodate such leaping, which the computer makes easy and natural. As Bernhardt identifies, screen text is "Situationally Embedded: The text does not stand alone, but is bound up within the context of a situation" (Bernhardt, 152). This embedding makes itself clear not just in the operational structure (the OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING language) of MUDs, but also manifests itself in the content of hypertext. Passages must not only be linked to other pages, but they must explain how they are linked so the reader can judge which path to choose. The most obvious example of this is in the spatial connection of rooms in MUDs: West of the Gardens The western most part of the yard. Compared to the gardens closer to the house, the grounds here seem neglected. A kennel is to the southeast. A striped white & blue awning appears to the south. To the west, over a low fence and through a thin grove of trees, lies a large meadow. A battered tool shed sits to the north and to the east is the main house and grounds. a bubble is sitting in here. Crickets chirp to the twinkling of the stars as the smell of wood smoke and roses permeates the damp night air. You see Chapel and ArVee here. Descriptions such as this provide a visual map to facilitate navigation from text passage to text passage in the MUD. TEXT BITES Because readers of hypertext are constantly navigating through sections of text, writing is forced into small 'bits' of highly- topical information. Instead of each page-full of text having its set place in the whole, hypertexts (like this one) collect isolated fragments. "The text is composed and presented in self-contained chunks, fragments, blocks" (Bernhardt, 159). Though MUD communication is written, therefore producing MORE WELL-THOUGHT-OUT REMARKS, these remarks must be confined to tight spaces. Of course there is nothing stopping MUDers from writing long treatisies, but the structure of this textual world favors smaller 'text bites' that can be read quickly -- just as television favors video and 'sound bites' -- so the reader can learn what they need and move on. As studies show, (written) comments on computer-conferencing systems are more focused than similar responses in face-to-face interactions. This is likely due not only to the fact that responses are written instead of spoken, but also that the hypertext's non-linear structure pressures participants to stick to the topic and not wander off into irrelevant rambling. In MUDs, this means that utterances are in some ways not as rich as their spoken counterparts. This deficiency seems made up for, however, by the 'user-friendly' ease of access of hypertext. CONTROL OF VIEW Since most sections of text on MUDs are condensed and clearly labeled (by LINKS), users gain greater control over what information they consume and what they do not. In a real life cocktail party, for instance, a person has little choice over who they listen to -- a certain voice might stand out, or a social convention might require the person to politely listen to certain others. In the "online part"y of MUD, users have much greater control over which rooms they enter and whose language they read. The clearly labeled chunks of text can be quickly scanned and accessed on demand. In LambdaMOO, players may even choose to screen out certain types of text (usually that of a specific player) using the [@gag] command. This allows each person to edit the social situation for maximum comfort. Such capabilities give readers a feeling of control over language, making them not just readers, but navigators of a text base that is rigidly encapsulized and categorized. MULTIVOCAL TEXTS Because MUDers can, and are expected to jump around inside the hypertextual narrative world, there is much less pressure to present a single coherent voice in a given text. In fact, hypertext encourages and rewards providing a wide range of materials for the reader to explore. In conventional books, Paper collaborators may have different intellectual perspectives and writing styles, and the challenge of collaboration is to bring the separate voices into harmony in a seamless, linear text. (Anson 85). A hypertext, on the other hand, can be a text with seams. Collaborators with multiple perspectives can contribute to the heteroglossia without 'continuity of tone, style, and voice'. (Bolter 16) (Bernhardt, in press). In fact, there is no reason not to include completely unrelated works in the same database. "Because the electronic text is not a physical artifact, there is no reason to give it the same conceptual unity as the printed book, no reason not to include disparate materials in one electronic network" (Bolter, 7). The new tendency of hypertext is not toward an editor or publisher pruning down, or compiling works to provide only pertinent information, but to let the readers decide what is pertinent, giving full access to all the information available. The MUDs (and hypertexts in general) that are the most successful are those that promise the greatest number of players, the most information stored in the database, and the largest chorus of voices available to be sampled by users. WRITTEN OBJECT Not only is the metaphorical space of hypertext visual, but the screen interaction provides 'visual speech.' While typing conversations, MUDers watch their words and the responses of others' form in front of them. Unlike oral conversation in which words are fleeting, existing only for an instant, in MUDs, the utterances of others appear on screen and remain. The words themselves become objects, which the player can react to and handle at their leisure. Like in a word processor, words can be cut and pasted on MUDs. Only now, instead of moving their own text, users are free to cut others' responses and paste them back. An online conversation resembles tossing a ball back and forth, or more specifically, like passing a written note on a slip of paper back and forth rapidly and repeatedly, making the text a physical object in cyberspace. Hypertext is both fixed and malleable. As players type out remarks, they are free to edit and rewrite until they are ready to send the lines out. Once the message is sent, however, it is 'bound' that way and appears on other users' screens. Staring at the words as objects on the screen, MUDers are often more aware of minor language errors than in oral speech. Players often reflect on, and post corrections to, minor text errors they have made: Green_Guest notes that his vowels are beginning to disappear on him.... Cyan_Guest says, "and=an by the wa"y Jenine says, "yet another double term sentence" (LambdaMOO). In speech, since it must be created instantly and disappears an instant later, people tend to forgive many 'slips of the tongue' (Goffman, 222). MUDers have a harder time ignoring the visual presence of errors. This not only lessens the TRANSPARENCY of the language environment, but also reminds participants that they are in a DISTINCTLY WRITTEN WORLD, in which stricter rules of accuracy are in effect. VISUAL CUES Many channels of communication available in face-to-face encounters are missing in MUDs -- primarily visual information such as, facial expression, eye contact, and body movement (Hiltz, 89). To make up for these missing signals, MUDers use the visual field of the computer screen (taking advantage of the WRITTEN OBJECT) to produce new kinds of cues. "What may seem an inadequate set of cues in computerized conferencing for novice users may later be overcome by participants learning how to substitute for missing kinds of cues" (Hiltz, 89). If players want to show their character is thinking something, they represent their words symbolically, using a set of bubbles similar to those seen in comic strips.: . o O ( MMm. Guest sex/ ) . o O ( yes ) If players want their characters to emphasize a point, or create an [@item] that carries a message about themselves, they might produce a symbolic 'cardboard sign': Jorry holds up a sign that says _______ | ahhh | ------- Or if players want to give a small picture of what their area looks like, they can arrange standard text characters in the physical space of the screen so that they resemble the object itself. These visual cues increase the reader's engagement in the fictional world, by taking advantage of the physical arrangement of text. Words become mixed with glyphic symbols adding a level of richness to the interaction that aural speech cannot attain. OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING AND THE POWER OF THE READER There is a new language operating in MUDs in addition to simply written (as opposed to spoken) English. Players must use the MUD's computer environment, or programming language, to pass their words along to other players. To the disembodied player's character, the commands of this programming language make up the equivalent of a physical body in cyberspace. Its purpose is to move the character from place to place, inflect and direct voice, and add gesture and expression. This is done through a simple and highly-intuitive programming style known as Object Oriented Programming (OOP). All of the 13 existing MUD operating systems are OO-based. The commands of MUD correspond, where possible, to their physical counterparts in the real world. The command for "sa"ying something, for example, is simply the word "sa"y and an open quotation mark, or abbreviated as simply a quotation mark placed before the text to be "said." (To say "hi there" simply type: ["hi there]. The computer then prints: [you say, "hi there"] on the screen for all to see.) To make a gesture to accompany speech, a player simply types [pose: smiles], and [player smiles] appears. Spatial movement inside the virtual world works in the same manner. To walk north, users simply type "go north," or "n" for short. Not only the commands, but everything handled by the computer language is treated metaphorically, employing the same terminology used in real life. Most objects correspond to entities in the real world (animals, cars, buildings etc.) or sometimes to easily recognized abstractions like a contract or an aeroplane journey. This immediately offers the attraction that problems may be solved using the vocabulary of the problem domain i.e. we can translate our understanding of the real world directly into software models and maintain the semantic connections between them with reasonable ease (Worthington, 53). The characters and WORDS ARE VIRTUAL OBJECTS, and the commands provide links between them. "When a meaningful message is received by an object, the appropriate method is invoked and the object either enters a new state or reports its state to the client" (Worthington, 54). The computer does not discriminate. All related objects are treated equally by the machine. "All items on the MUCK, whether they be players, rooms, exits/actions, things, or programs, are assigned a number. Any number refers to a specific item (whatever type it may be) in the database. Each item in the database is stored in much the same way regardless of type" (FAQ, glossary). Since there is no human author choosing exactly which information gets presented and in what order, hypertexts take no part in the marginalization of certain VOICES or information. Consider the debate currently surrounding the literary cannon, for instance. This problem of 'which works to include' is virtually a non-issue in hypertextual terms, since the ideal is a database of all materials that the reader could navigate through on their own. PERFORMATIVE WORLD In OO worlds, all language is what Derrida termed performative: its utterance "produces or transforms a situation, it effects" (Derrida, 9). Whatever a player says happens, does happen. In verbal exchanges, on the other hand, performatives are rare, most frequently found in ritual or ceremony, such as pronouncement of marriage or christening of a ship. In text, performatives are standard practice. Consider a novel, for instance. Nothing happens except what the author tells the reader is happening -- all of which is accepted (in the world of the novel) as occurrence. OOP takes the performative power of text one step further, allowing the player/reader (not simply the author) to "utter" performative statements. "The computer is a self-contained world in which the whole process of semiosis can take place. Say that the writer creates the following structure in the electronic writing space of the machine. Not only the words in each topic, but the topics themselves and the link that connects them are part of the process of signification" (Bolter, 197). This continual authority of language elevates it to a more confident footing. Once again, it is clearly the reader who is in control of hypertext. It represents another blurring of the boundary between oral exchange and written exchange in MUD environments. CONTROL OF SELF MUD players are in complete control over how they are looked upon in the textual world. By using the [@describe] command, MUDers literally define themselves. There is no set format or guideline for what should be included in these descriptions. While most stick to physical traits (of a fictional self), players use the descriptions to say things about character that physical appearance would fail to relay. When other characters encounter them and type [look], they will see the description that the player has written. In real life, there are all kinds of unintended visual and aural cues accompanying encounters which may or may not reflect accurately on character. Prejudices of the real world may impede an intellectual woman to be taken seriously by some men, for instance. In the MUD, such a person can set their gender to male and converse for a while. Or they could leave gender undefined or neuter. Because self-authored text is the only information representing MUD personae (even name is chosen by players), players have full control of the self they present to the virtual world. SELF AS OBJECT: THE DECENTERING GRAMMAR OF MUDS In a MUD, users create a virtual self, or character, to act for them in the MUD world. The self, like everything else in MUD's OOP environment, becomes an object, one completely at the user's control. As in a novel, the MUDer looks into a narrative world from the outside. Unlike a novel, however, players are like Olympian gods, moving their character pieces as detached observers, while at the same time keeping an emotional connection to their self- fashioned mortals. Because players invent a characterization of self and role- play in cyberspace, they gain a physical and emotional detachment. Instead of feeling along in the MUDworld, players think how their character would react to situations. One FurryMUCK character showed her dual loyalty when this author's MUD character, Marshdarter, asked for some help with the commands. Leticia whispers, "ah.. In Character, Leticia is NOT a nice person.. my Player (the person sitting at the computer) IS a nice person, and will help you, as long as you whisper.." to you. Marshdarter looked at Leticia, curious to see who this "NOT nice person" was: Mistress Leticia is black, a deep, shiny black all over her skin. Her eyes are black, TOTALLY black, no whites or irises showing at all, her teeth and tongue startling flashes of color when she opens her mouth or smiles. She looks human, except for her eyes, her color, and her long, thin fingers (and are there more than 5 fingers there? - it's hard to tell, but you think so.) Her hair is snowy white and silken-soft, hanging to her shoulders and blown by any tiny breeze at all. She wears a long gown of deepest black silk, deeply 'vd between her breasts, with a white silken netting (or webbing?) keeping her decent. the gown rests on her shoulders by thin straps, and gathered at her waist is a belt of scarlet silk, showing off her generous curves. Around her neck is a white silk choker. The choker has a black, hourglass-shaped stone set in the front, (Or IS it black? colors seem to swirl deep within the stone, drawing your eyes, tempting you to `gaze' into it's depths.. Carrying: clrtemp "I am mysself, in character ," she typed, "- Leticia, an anthropomorphic black widow sspider.." (FurryMUCK). Of course, how close the character is to a player's 'true self' of themselves is up to them. MUD is an ideal place to explore facets of personality or explore otherness. Some characters have one personality trait that they emphasize in all their interactions. This male author found that more players answered his questions when he described himself as a curious female than as a curious male. Even the grammar required for expression in MUD is distancing. Since the [pose:] command simply lets others know your character is posing a certain way, pose texts need to be written in third person. This author learned this by trial and error: pose: spin around three times and raise arms to the furry sky Marshdarter spin around three times and raise arms to the furry sky S'A'Alis yips, "Ta da!" pose: exudes thanks from every follicle Marshdarter exudes thanks from every follicle (FurryMUCK). No action can be properly expressed without this linguistic reminder that not the player, but the character -- the altered or displaced self -- is acting in the cyberspace. TRANSPARENCY/ NON-TRANSPARENCY OF HYPERTEXT MUDs constantly remind you of the computer-driven environment. The computer language that is required to navigate through the text world and the ability to author as well as read, keeps players at a critical distance as they experience the virtual world. When characters are writing their own experiences, language gains a strange exchange between transparency and opacity. Players are both drawn in by others' written expression, and must step back and compose their own textual response, paying strict attentions to syntax and format: It compels us to reconsider the relationship between the text and the world to which the text refers. In the world of print, the ideal was to make a text transparent, so that the reader looked through the text to the world beyond. This was the goal of realistic painting as well as the traditional novel . . . In a digital rhetoric, transparency is not the only virtue. The reader can be made to focus on the verbal patterns, on the text as a texture of elements. The text can be transparent or opaque, and it can oscillate between transparency and opacity, between asking the reader to look through the text to the "world beyond" and asking him or her to look at the text itself as a formal structure (Bolter, 167). Even once players become ultra-familiar with the language of MUD (so that it becomes second-nature) the computer environment will not allow full transparency. Intermittent system maintenance on the home server or the network at large causes delays and interruptions that effect every character on the MUD. These events, such as the lag, or the time between when the command is entered and when it is executed, can be so severe that players comment upon the lag like people complain about the weather. 'The lag is so bad today' characters often rant. This event reminds all players that they are not walking around in a fantasy world, but sitting in a room typing at a computer. Even regular system maintenance like updating the database can cause disturbances that characters (and players) cannot ignore: ## Game will pause to save changed objects in two minutes. ## ## Saving changed objects ## ## Save complete. ## Bill_T_Cat thinks the save was a religious experience! Snow bounces out of the save! In a way, players don't want to fully enter this fictional world. One major benefit of MUD is that it is a fictional place populated by real people. If the same delays existed in a computer game where the player acted against the machine, few would bother playing. On MUDs, players put up with system delays and other setbacks to keep their connection with others out there on the Net. PART II: SOCIAL ASPECTS OF MUD In concert with these LINGUISTIC IMPLICATIONS and constraints of MUDs are the social interactions that take place in cyberspace. How are these addicted and casual MUD players using this distinct new medium? The kinds of speech footings and assumptions of this new medium of communication make interactions in the new social space more open and direct. On MUDs, the DECENTERING, ANONYMOUS quality of the fantasy forum allows more people to loosen up so that MORE PEOPLE PARTICIPATE and PARTICIPANTS GIVE MORE OPINIONATED RESPONSES than in face-to-face interactions. Whereas in real life encounters, people constantly use language to negotiate a safe and proper distance (Goffman, 128), in MUDs, the physical distance is set and the common computer environment acts as the normalizing force. This distancing provided by the computer allows people to drop many polite formalities of speech, and 'get to the point.' In a book compiled by a 'Netizen' and published over Internet, one user commented upon this directness common on MUDs: I'm in awe of the power and energy linking thousands into a virtual intellectual coffee-house, where strangers can connect without the formalities of face to face rituals (hello, how are you today. . .) to allow a direct- connected style of communication that seems to transcend the 'how's the weather' kind of conversation to just let us connect without the bullshit (Net book, ch. 7_Netizen). Also, since the niceties of speech are in many ways foregone in MUDs, and because of the MULTIVOCAL TENDENCY OF HYPERTEXT, there is LESS PRESSURE FOR PLAYERS TO CONFORM TO NORMS. In fact, new and interesting points of view are rewarded. Entering the Park on FurryMUCK or the entrance hall of LambdaMOO, characters say quick (and often creative) hellos, and jump right into 'conversations' on topics ranging from religion and politics to how to use the network itself. Since language (and its VISUAL OBJECT) is the only interaction available in these online parties, participants are forced to use MORE SKILLFUL, CREATIVE, or TOPICALLY INTERESTING language in order to engage others. For the most part, MUDers meet the challenges of the textual environment, creating ONLINE COMMUNITIES that can become part of their real life identity and enrich their lives. The new medium allows them to explore themselves and their actions objectively and re-envision their sense of self and community. WHAT TO EXPECT IN MUD With the promise of more direct and open discourse, MUDs can begin to sound utopian, but the limitations imposed by the text-only environment can present a serious obstacle to 'entering' this brave new world. Consider the following dialog involving a skeptical MUD 'newbie': Purple_Guest says, "I've been on here for 3 hours and haven't had an experience yet!" skyguy tickles SuzieB for several minutes. Veal_Guest points its meister at Purple_Guest. Brown_Guest says, "i know what you mean purple...." Sasquatch teleports in. SuzieB [to Purple_Guest]: What sort of experience were you expecting? jeco [to Purple_Guest]: you're not trying hard enough. skyguy smiles at SuzieB. Veal_Guest pulls the trigger on its meister. The meister glows in happy rainbow colors, then Purple_Guest is showered with little daisies. Warm feelings of love and peace fill the air (LambdaMOO). To enjoy this textual world requires an active imagination. Many new MUDers enter with high expectations and are sometimes disappointed. Because MUDs are interactive, they require users to put something in, in order to get something back. In this case, players must use their words to attract others to 'converse' with them: Cyan_Guest [to Jorry]: Well, some of my best experiences here have happened by accident. Generally, it helps to seek out characters who you find interesting, characters who have an active imagination and make an honest attempt to say things that are fun to read (LambdaMOO). Once players become comfortable with the commands and basic mood of a specific MUD they usually begin to encounter and converse with the same characters time after time, and gradually develop online relationships. In fact, due to the DIRECT NATURE OF LANGUAGE in MUDs, relationships generally develop more quickly here than in real life. Characters are often 'very affectionate' with each other verbally, and greetings like this one on Furry are not unusual: Lenore hugs Tiggster! He slowly wraps his arms around his true love, staring for a moment into her eyes, and you see that she seems to melt in his arms....They embrace for what seems like hours, hardly moving, like statues in love! (FurryMUCK). At the far end of this emotional spectrum is NETSEX, which is one of the few aspects of MUDs that have been picked up by major media. (Unfortunately, since the only press MUDs get concerns NetSex and presents these worlds as 'dens of iniquity,' some players clearly come looking for cheap thrills, usually to be disappointed that players want to have a relationship instead!) In addition to participating in dialog, players can build onto the world of MUDs, creating rooms, objects and embellishing their character's description using the OBJECT ORIENTED LANGUAGE of these worlds. Leticia murmurs, "people do more than jusst talk here.. they alsso build thingss and program.." People spend hours building public spaces for others to enjoy, such as amusement parks, short games and riddles, or teleportation and travel devices. The reward is the ability to watch others enjoy your creation, and the feeling of belonging as an active participant in the online community. Just as in real life, other players appreciate and reward the hard-work and support of others. MUDers are using the medium of cyberspace to create new communities to SUPPLEMENT THEIR REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE. Some online relationships develop into real life meetings, and ideas are exchanged and developed in the unrestrained imaginative environment. LIBERATING ENVIRONMENT 'Speaking' from a distance, with the ability to CONTROL MANY ASPECTS OF ONE'S PRESENTATION OF SELF, MUDers who might be reluctant to contribute to real world discussions seem to open up in cyberspace. As Hiltz notes in his recent study of computer conferencing versus face-to-face group discussions, "more opinions tend to be asked for and offered" (Hiltz, 125). Most of the minute inadequacies that might cause someone not to put in their 'two cents worth' (such as fears that looks, gender, or other physical quality will weaken the validity of their remarks) are overcome on MUDs, where physical presence is not transmitted. Cyan_Guest [to Jorry]: It's different than real life in the respect that it doesn't matter what your MOO-friends look like physically. Here, interaction is mental rather than physical. Whereas dirty hair and an ugly mole could be quite disruptive to a real life conversation, here it doesn't factor into things at all (LambdaMOO). Also, MUDs manage participation more broadly and evenly than spoken group meetings. In a face-to-face group, there is usually one or a few people who dominate discussion. Bales found that in face-to-face discussion there usually emerges a 'top man' who sends and receives disproportionate number of messages and who addresses considerably more remarks to the group as a whole than he addresses to specific individuals (Bales et al., 1951, p.465) (Hiltz, 107). But in MUD, many users can enter their responses simultaneously, with less loss of information. In person, even two people talking at once is hard to follow, where in MUD, ten or more players may send short responses at the same time, and all can be read by other players (separately) at their own pace. Of course, even in computer conferencing there is a point of overload or 'spam' -- where the screen is so cluttered with continual input that the general train of conversation is impossible to follow. Because MUDs accommodate more participants at a time, however, the sense that one person 'should' dominate disappears, and there is more equal participation among users. MORE OPINIONS OFFERED In computer conferencing environments like MUDs, users generally make less guarded remarks. "There is less explicit agreement or disagreement with the opinions and suggestions of others" (Hiltz, 125). Again the trend is slightly functional: because MUDers are reading the responses, they can digest a broader range of ideas in a short space of time. In spoken conversations, changing to new views quickly makes discussion hard to follow, whereas on MUDs, such switches are the norm and keep players witing to see what surprising thing will be typed next. But there is also a social freedom on MUDs, the freedom from the eyes of those who might judge you based on looks as well as speech-content. SatNam [to Jorry]: Well, on the MOO, you can be more like yourself, because there is no one watching you. I think people fall in love more on the moo because they can be themselves. Along with open airing of opinions, MUDers are generally more affectionate and friendly online than they are in real life. "In the face-to-face condition, there is usually a brief period when the participants exchange names, but no extensive socializing among strangers who were brought together for this single group meeting. In the CC condition, however, we observed very overt attempts to be personal and friendl"y (Hiltz, 112). There is a sense in computer network environments that the ideas will truly speak for themselves. This sense makes players much more comfortable and bold in their remarks. NON-CONFORMITY When reading a book, readers must follow the path of the author, and when in daily social interactions, those same readers tend to conform to narrow bounds of speech and actions. "One of the most important of the potentially dysfunctional aspects of face-to- face group problem solving is the tremendous pressure on participants to conform" (Hiltz, 106). In the hypertextual world of MUD, where players control the imaginative space, those same players also flaunt their differences. Visitors to cyberspace describe how surprised they are at the diversity of voices in MUDs. "Another memorable aspect of online conviviality was learning just how wide is the spectrum of human experience. In our schools and media we are led to believe that the range of human behavior is relatively narrow; true deviance is the purview of criminals and crazy people. No. Online, I discovered that the range is virtually a universe wide" (Jacobson, 331). MUDs BETTER ACCOMMODATE A WIDE RANGE OF VOICES than conventional books and media. On MUD, there is no cultural norm. Since characters can 'be' whatever they can imagine and describe, everyone is a minority of one. The focus of the textual environment is to fashion a distinctive self and rehearse it in cyberspace. TOO EXPRESSIVE, PUBLIC SPACE OF IMAGINATIONS In most areas of the MUD, cyberspace is a public space. Like any public space, speech and actions affect others. Though the writing of MUD is produced at isolated computer terminals, the text goes out over data wires or phone lines to become part of a widely- read interactive web. As fictional environments, MUDs resemble traditional fantasy texts, in which readers explore a new world in their imagination, a world where anything is possible. An attitude of anything-goes is potentially dangerous in the public imaginative space of MUDs, however. System operators post reminders that just as in real life, actions on the computer network may have consequences: You shouldn't do anything that you wouldn't do in real life, even if the world is a fantasy world. The important thing to remember is that it's the fantasy world of possibly hundreds of people, and not just yours in particular. There's a human being on the other side of each and every wire! ...People who treat others badly gradually build up bad reputations and eventually receive the NO FUN Stamp of Disapproval (FurryMUCK help file). MUDers have been known to go too far in their expressiveness. Because it is not really you 'doing' the online actions (but your fictional persona) and because there are no victims in (physical) sight, players sometimes perform actions that are hurtful or offensive to other characters. As an online help manual points out in an etiquette section: "Avoid 'power-playing' and 'violence.' Even though you may not think you are doing anyone any actual harm, many people get annoyed by it, and such activities may make you unpopular . . . wandering into the Park and spraying bullets at everyone there is strongly discouraged" (FurryMUCK Beginner's Guide). Tumbl_weed [to Jorry]: you also have to be careful if you have a smartass personality. Sometimes things don't turn out the way you say them and someone gets insulted... SatNam says, "Yeah, some people forget that the people are real, and insult a lot of people." NETSEX AND PHYSICAL VS. EMOTIONAL DISTANCE Perhaps most curious to outsiders (and greatest cause of criticism of these new cybercommunities) is the phenomena of MUDsex: high-speed two-way erotica typing, which sometimes involves masturbation. Those hoping to do some info-highway rubbernecking on MUD will certainly be disappointed -- believe it or not, players on MUDs are, for the most part, discreet in their online heavy petting. MUDs provide private areas where characters can close the door and turn off the virtual lights, and it is in the virtual back rooms and bedrooms that NetSex occurs. What do couples get out of this highly emotional activity when it's filtered through cyberspace? The easiest comparison to NetSex is phone sex, but this comparison may be unfortunate. If a player were hooked into MUDs just for NetSex, then this link would be appropriate, but most people who take the time to learn the MUD programming languages and design their character are interested in more than a one-night stand. Picking up the phone and dialing a sex line invests no commitment, whereas the hours of learning required just to be fluent enough in the MUD system to have NetSex (much less find someone to have it with) makes the event more significant. As communities that are often looking for a self-respecting communal identity, MUDs try to resist being characterized as online whorehouses. Marshdarter (author's character) mentioned a recent Wired magazine article about MUDs (which focused heavily on NetSex) to one character and met a disgruntled reply: Leticia murmurs, "THAT article again. :(" Leticia murmurs, "THAT article, if you noticed, had two descriptionss, and about a paragraph (rather biased) about Furry.. the rest about LambdaMOO, but they decided to portray Furry ass a den of iniquity.." People on MUDs don't walk up and proposition you with NetSex. The event generally occurs between characters who have first 'talked' and interacted over a period of time. Once NetSex is considered in relation to real life sex, it is interesting to note the implications of online intercourse. Participants in NetSex maintain a strict physical and emotional distance while still enjoying what can be a fulfilling exchange between two people. With all the fears our society associates with casual sex (pregnancy, disease, etc.), NetSex provides a safe opportunity for sexual play. In fact it is possible that MUDs provide an outlet for those who are shy in real life to be more aggressive sexually. Just as MORE OPINIONS ARE OFFERED on the Net than in real life, some MUDers are more open in their affections. So much so that the amount of sexual innuendo and flirtation becomes notable to other players. Diadalos says, "has there ever been two minutes on this thing where there hasn't been the mention of sex... do you guys conduct yourself like this in RL?" The answer clearly is no. These players use the semi-anonymous medium of MUDs to explore aspects of self and expression they would not ordinarily venture in face-to-face exchanges. FRAGMENTING READERSHIP Ironically, with all these opportunities for the reader to CONTROL THE ORDER and EXPLORE VARIOUS VOICES in hypertexts, readers end up further away, rather than closer to these texts, and in some ways each other. Since the infinite writing space cannot be fully consumed, a computer-reader's mentality is geared toward extracting the information specific to individual needs. This shifts focus of writing from author-centered to reader-centered. People reading a hypertext never have an overall shared experience. Players of MUDs, unlike readers of a bound book, each have unique experiences. The structure of community suggested by hypertexts is not one valorizing and providing common, shared experiences, but celebrating individuality and expressing very separate identities in a common medium. No longer is the author lord of the text kingdom. In hypertexts, readers are free and encouraged to read only what interests them. Instead of appointing the author as a representative to explore 'databases' of available information and report back, readers now represent themselves in these vast databases, compiling their own personal and unique books. BEYOND MUD: THE NETWORK'S INFLUENCE It is often said that we live in a media-dominated society. Currently, 'media' is predominately television, but also bound books, whose structural model is one of central authorship and strict linear flow. These do not have to be the dominant media, however, and this does not have to be the prevailing model. MUD represents a technology that is available now, that challenges preconceptions of media and social form. MUDers, some of whom have already crossed over into this medium, are now filling their previous television-watching and book-reading time hypertext-ing in cyberspace. If the networking technology and knowledge were more widely available, perhaps we would already see a mass movement to join those addicted to the new language experience. "Among experienced participants in computerized conferences there emerges a strong urge to check in several times a day to receive any waiting messages and to see what is happening in various conferences" (Hiltz, 103). If such a movement began, soon people would find their lives more closely resembling MUDs than television: rather than modeling physical appearance on visions of supermodels gracing tv and magazine advertisements, people would be searching the world- wide web of cyberspace to find clothing and other items that are distinctly their own; rather than joking about the latest celebrity scandal, people would hone in on the latest jokes within their circle of well-matched, online friends; perhaps at some point, "The ideal of stability and cohesion (would) largely disappear. Few (would) feel the need to assert such cohesion, since even the smallest group of writers and readers can function happily in its niche in the electronic network" (Bolter, 238). A PURER FORM OF INTERACTION? Writing has long been glorified as the purest form of expression. As a tool for organizing thoughts and preserving memory, writing revolutionized humanity's ability to solve and understand problems. "The interdependence of the development of writing and modern civilization is well documented" (Coulmas, 8). So powerful is written language that we have come to think that the mind itself operates in a linguistic fashion when encoding ideas: Literacy has been long regarded as the stabilizing pillar of culture and of intelligence. . . Because of its connection with mental skills, literacy, in the sense of alphabetic literacy, has meant the ability of the individual to rise above particular circumstances and enter a shared world of intelligibility. This shared world of intellect is believed to disclose a superior reality which encompasses and masters the commonsense and mostly inarticulate grasp we have on things we deal with intuitively (Heim, 23-4). But ironically, writing is not as natural to man as spoken language. "Writing is a cultural achievement rather than a universal property and as such is much less important than speech to our self- understanding" (Coulmas, 3). There is a living, organic quality of speech -- spoken words are born, mature and die in the breath of a moment. Derrida noted this characteristic of text when he wrote, "What writing itself, in its nonphonetic moment, betrays, is life. It menaces at once the breath, the spirit, and history as the spirit's relationship with itself (Derrida, 25). MUDs (and computer conferencing in general) provide a blend of writing and speech that may represent a purer form of expression than either achieve separately. The experience of MUD is more highly cerebral than speech -- players analyze their actions closely as well as constructing both the verbal content and computer commands to send their messages -- and yet all this takes place in (slightly slower) real time, where players 'speak' to one another with written notes passed from computer to computer. "It's the closest thing I can think of -- unpleasant as the thought might be -- of plugging electrodes into my brain" one professional writer says about hypertext writing (Hurwood, 105). As this hypertext has suggested, the medium of Multiple User Dungeons offers many benefits over both speech and writing. In hypertext communication, "It becomes difficult to say where thinking ends and writing begins, where the mind ends and the writing space begins. With any technique of writing -- on stone or clay, papyrus or paper, and particularly on the computer screen -- the writer comes to regard the mind itself as a writing space" (Bolter, 11). MUDs offer a writing space that is highly malleable, yet sometimes concrete, where the inherent programming structure works as one of the only stabilizing forces in a free realm of imagination and expression. WORKS CITED Bernhardt, Stephen A. "The Shape of Text to Come: The Texture of Print on Screens." College Composition and Communication, May 1993 (Vol. 44, No. 2) pg 151-175. Bernhard, Stephen A. Unpublished article received via e-mail. Is scheduled to appear in the winter issue of Technical Communications Quarterly, a special issue on hypertext edited by Ann Scott. Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1991. Cartwright, Glenn F. "Virtual or Real?: The Mind in Cyberspace." The Futurist, March-April 1994. Computer Writing Environments. ed. Bruce K. Britton and Shawn M. Glynn. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1989. Coulmas, Florian. The Writing Systems of the World. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1989. Derrida, Jacques. "Signature Event Context." Limited, Inc. Evaniton: Northwestern University Press, 1988. Frost, John. Cyberpoet's Guide to Virtual Culture. posted to [alt.cyberspace] newsgroup on Internet, March 15, 1994. FurryMUCK Help Staff. "FurryMUCK Beginner's Guide." Internet ftp site: sncils.snc.edu. FurryMUCK Help Staff. "FurryMUCK Builder's Guide." Internet ftp site: sncils.snc.edu. FurryMUCK Help Staff. On-line Help Files. Goffman, Erving. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981. hauben@columbia.edu. "The Net and Netizens: The Impact the Net has on People's Lives." Internet ftp site: wuarchie.wustl.edu. Heim, Michael. Electronic Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Hiltz, Starr Roxanne and Turoff, Murray. "Social and Psychological Processes in Computerized Conferencing." The Network Nation: Human Communication via Computer. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993. Hurwood, Bernhardt J. Writing becomes Electronic. New York: Cogndon & Weed, Inc., 1986. Jacobson, Robert. "Sailing through Cyberspace: Counting the Stars in Passing." Global Networks: Computers and Interntaional Communication. Linda M. Harasim, ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993. LambdaMOO Help Staff. On-line Help Files. Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York: Methuen, 1982. "MUD Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) #1: Basic Information about MUDs and MUDing," posted to [MUD.General] newsgroup on Internet, March 16, 1994. Quittner, Josh. "Johnny Manhattan Meets the FurryMuckers." Wired, March 1994, pp. 92-97, 138. Worthington, Bill and Robinson, Brian. "The Medium is Not the Message: Mixed Mode Document Technology." Multimedia Information. ed. Mary Feeney and Shirley Day. London: Bowker Saur, 1991. Transcipts from MUD sessions: FurryMUCK various long-ins during the period from March 17- May 1, 1994; LambdaMOO from April 15- May 1, 1994. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bernhardt, Stephen A. "The Shape of Text to Come: The Texture of Print on Screens." College Composition and Communication, May 1993 (Vol. 44, No. 2) pp 151-175. Bernhard, Stephen A. Unpublished article received via e-mail. Is scheduled to appear in the winter issue of Technical Communications Quarterly, a special issue on hypertext edited by Ann Scott. Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1991. Cartwright, Glenn F. "Virtual or Real?: The Mind in Cyberspace." The Futurist, March-April 1994. Coulmas, Florian. The Writing Systems of the World. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1989. Computer Writing Environments. ed. Bruce K. Britton and Shawn M. Glynn. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1989. Derrida, Jacques. "Signature Event Context." Limited, Inc. Evaniton: Northwestern University Press, 1988. Fidler, Roger. "Newspapers in the Electronic Age." The People's Right to Know: Media, Democracy, and the Information Highway. Frederick Williams and John V. Pavlik, eds. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lwarence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1994. Frost, John. Cyberpoet's Guide to Virtual Culture. posted to [alt.cyberspace] newsgroup on Internet, March 15, 1994. FurryMUCK Help Staff. "FurryMUCK Beginner's Guide." Internet ftp site: sncils.snc.edu. FurryMUCK Help Staff. "FurryMUCK Builder's Guide." Internet ftp site: sncils.snc.edu. FurryMUCK Help Staff. On-line Help Files. Goffman, Erving. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981. hauben@columbia.edu. "The Net and Netizens: The Impact the Net has on People's Lives." Internet ftp site: wuarchie.wustl.edu. Hiltz, Starr Roxanne and Turoff, Murray. "Social and Psychological Processes in Computerized Conferencing." The Network Nation: Human Communication via Computer. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993. Heim, Michael. Electronic Language: A Philosophical Study of Word Processing. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Human-Computer Interaction.. ed. Jens Rasmussen and Henning B. Andersen. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1991. Hurwood, Bernhardt J. Writing becomes Electronic. New York: Cogndon & Weed, Inc., 1986. Hypertext: Concepts, Stystems and Applications. ed. N. Streitz, et al. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Jacobson, Robert. "Sailing through Cyberspace: Counting the Stars in Passing." Global Networks: Computers and Interntaional Communication. Linda M. Harasim, ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993. LambdaMOO Help Staff. On-line Help Files. Levy, Steven. Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992. Moulthrop, Stuart. "You say you want a revolution: hypertext adn the laws of media." Postmodern Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. "MUD Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) #1: Basic Information about MUDs and MUDing," posted to [MUD.General] newsgroup on Internet, March 16, 1994. Mulgan, G. J. Communication and Control: Networks and the New Economies of Communication. Cabridge: Polity Press, 1991. Quittner, Josh. "Johnny Manhattan Meets the FurryMuckers." Wired, March 1994, pp. 92-97, 138. Rheingold, Howard. "A Slice of Life in My Virtual Community." Global Networks: Computers and Interntaional Communication. Linda M. Harasim, ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993. Ross, Andrew. "Hacking Away at the Counter-Culture." Technoculture. ed. Constance Penley and Andrew Ross. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Seyer, Philip. Understanding Hypertext: Concepts and Applications. Windcrest, 1991. Shneiderman, Ben and Kearsley, Greg. Hypertext Hands-On! Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1989. Wilson, Kevin G. Technologies of Control: The New Interactive Media for the Home. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. Worthington, Bill and Robinson, Brian. "The Medium is Not the Message: Mixed Mode Document Technology." Multimedia Information. ed. Mary Feeney and Shirley Day. London: Bowker Saur, 1991. Writing at Century's End: Essays on Computer-Assisted Composition. ed. Lisa Gerrard. New York: Random House, 1987. copyright 1994, Jeffrey R. Young comments, reactions welcome: jryoung@phoenix.princeton.edu