Rex, F. (2006). LambdaMOO: An Introduction. Retrieved March 14, 2006 from http://www.lambdamoo.info/.
So far, this is the best introduction to MOO-ing I’ve seen. It is up to date, makes it clear that MOOs are text-based, and gives a good overview of interacting and writing commands. It also discusses the safety issue:
“You’ll find many people to meet up with and build cyber-friendships with (parental warning and all), and some even use the Moo for pretty complex RPG’s (role-playing games). Like the real world, you take the good with the bad. There’s an infamous story about the misgivings of the Moo, A Rape in Cyberspace (1993) by Julian Dibbell, and there have apparently been many marriages sprung.”
I read about the rape in the book Judi Harris loaned me. (Sorry, don’t have the citation with me but I’ll post it when I get back to home base.) When the rape occured, the wizards of LambdaMOO had just changed the format so that rather than the wizards being the final word on what happened to users who violated the rules, it was up to the community. So, they had a conundrum: here was an obvious violation but they had to see what the group would do to the violator.
I thought of an interesting parallel to modern times. The world watched as the Palestinians had their first elections. We celebrated democracy in action. Except, they elected a terrorist organization to the leadership role. Hmmm…now what?
Dibbell’s description of the rape is very graphic and disturbing and he looks at the larger issue of how we are going to get along in this virtual world:
“For the Bungle Affair raises questions that — here on the brink of a future in which human existence may find itself as tightly enveloped in digital environments as it is today in the architectural kind — demand a clear-eyed, sober, and unmystified consideration. It asks us to shut our ears for the time being to techno- utopian ecstasies and look without illusion upon the present possibilities for building, in the on-line spaces of this world, societies more decent and free than those mapped onto dirt and concrete and capital.”
Can we build more “decent and free” societies online and can they provide examples for how we might function together in the “real” world as well?
