[what is a MUD/MOO !!!]
``Cyberspace. Interactive Television. Networked Multimedia. The Great Convergence. The Information Superhighway. The National Information Infrastructure. These are all names for the same thing: a huge network connecting people to other people using computers. Billions of dollars are being invested to develop this connectivity, ignoring the experience already available from the online industry. Cyberspace is the next important telecommunications paradigm: many-to-many communications. [...]'' ([Farmer et al., 1994, Abstract,]).
What the authors of this quote will argue later in their article is that the key issues of Cyberspace are not things like ``Video on Demand'', ``3-D high-resolution VR'', but simply the fact, that most people don't want to connect to machines, but to other people. First and foremost, Cyberspace is about many-to-many communications, about virtual communities. We can do that today!
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. ([Young, 1994, Opening Screen,]).
This quote from a literary critique (VERIFY THAT!!!) nicely describes the phenomenon of MUDDING from a social point of view. We add to that:
An increasing amount of people do very productive work with that new medium.
Several publications are now available discussing the ``serious'' aspects of MUDing or MOOing for work support: E.g. [Bruckman et Resnick, 1993], [Curtis et Nichols, 1993], [Dieberger et Tromp, 1993], [Evard, 1993], [Hand, 1994], [Henstell, 1993], [Masinter et Ostrom, 1993], [McDonough, 1995], [Roush, 1993]. Others stress its value for education: [Ackermann, 1994], [Fanderclai, 1995], [Hall, 1994], [Kort, b], [Kort, a], [Kort, c]. .... and more could be cited [DO THAT!!!].