Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 21:59:51 +0000
From: David Rieder <daveR-AT-UTARLG.UTA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Educational Practice & Nomad Philosophy


Basically, a MOO is a software program that allows
people to create text-based virtual communities AND to
communicate in "real time," i.e., no lag.  The program
allows users to create characters, rooms (mansions
if you so please), and objects as diverse as glasses of 
wine and robots you can 'program' yourself.  More technically, 
a MOO is an acronym that stands for Mult-User-Domain (with) 
Object-Orientation.  Before MOOs, there were MUDs (multi-user 
domains).  The difference between MUDs and MOOs (without getting 
too technical) is that, in a MOO, you can create objects with
characteristics - like smells and colors and other types
of descriptions.  But, remember, they are completely text-
based... which is why I argued that they enabled one to
invent characteristics that are not bound to the values of
"real life."  In regards to my post on the Dibbell article,
you can (potentially) create characters who are genderless (or atleast
not part of the implicitly capitalist metaphor that Bataille
presents in _Solar Anus_, when he seems to link het' sex 
(breeding?) to the movements (utility?) of a piston and wheel.  
In a MOO, you don't have to be fuckable, i.e, you don't have to be 
reterritorializiable on that Oedipal plane... 

Not that I tell my first-year students things like this, 
(yea... maybe I do...) but I do have them read Dibbell...

Dora


stephen m wrote:

> Excuse my ignorance but what is an MOO?
>