2-2.1 Feeling of distance

2-2 Presentation of MOO & WOO environments

2-2.1 Feeling of distance

In a recent article, Graham McBeath and Stephen Webb have argued that today's communities have to deal with the diminution of the feeling of distance between persons: "The warmth suggested by the term `community' is at root importantly signifying the desire to have a sense of shared space, orderly and respectful of personal space which allows us a delimited freedom, but not a space in which the spaces between ourselves and others are so wide that no-one feels responsibility to be concernful about anyone else, other than being concerned about ones feeling that one should be concerned, but not feeling sufficiently obligated to help out. In other words knowing a moral rule about how one ought to act, and not doing so. "

The MOO (MultiUser Object Oriented) environment could allow the community to overcome the feeling of distance that stands in the way of productive collaborative research. We will see that the most important feature allowed by this environment is the share of a virtual common space for distributed communities.

VMDL/MOO Report - 17 FEB 1996

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