Life on the Screen by Sherry Turkle

Author:Sherry Turkle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 1995-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Coat Closet. The Closet is a dark, cramped space. It appears to be very crowded in here; you keep bumping into what feels like coats, boots and other people (apparently sleeping). One useful thing that you’ve discovered in your bumbling about is a metal doorknob set at waist level into what might be a door. There’s a new edition of the newspaper. Type “news” to see it.

Typing “out” gets you to the living room:

The Living Room. It is very bright, open, and airy here, with large plate-glass windows looking southward over the pool to the gardens beyond. On the north wall, there is a rough stonework fireplace, complete with roaring fire. The east and west walls are almost completely covered with large, well-stocked bookcases. An exit in the northwest corner leads to the kitchen and, in a more northerly direction, to the entrance hall. The door into the coat closet is at the north end of the east wall, and at the south end is a sliding glass door leading out onto a wooden deck. There are two sets of couches, one clustered around the fireplace and one with a view out the windows.

This description is followed by a list of objects and characters present in the living room. You are free to examine and try out the objects, examine the descriptions of the characters, and introduce yourself to them. The social conventions of different MUDs determine how strictly one is expected to stay in character. Some encourage all players to be in character at all times. Most are more relaxed. Some ritualize stepping out of character by asking players to talk to each other in specially noted “out of character” (OOC) asides.

On MUDs, characters communicate by invoking commands that cause text to appear on each other’s screens. If I log onto LambdaMOO as a male character named Turk and strike up a conversation with a character named Dimitri, the setting for our conversation will be a MUD room in which a variety of other characters might be present. If I type, “Say hi,” my screen will flash, “You say hi,” and the screens of the other players in the room (including Dimitri) will flash, “Turk says ‘hi.’” If I type “Emote whistles happily,” all the players’ screens will flash, “Turk whistles happily.” Or I can address Dimitri alone by typing, “Whisper to Dimitri Glad to see you,” and only Dimitri’s screen will show, “Turk whispers ‘Glad to see you.’ “People’s impressions of Turk will be formed by the description I will have written for him (this description will be available to all players on command), as well as by the nature of his conversation.

In the MUDs, virtual characters converse with each other, exchange gestures, express emotions, win and lose virtual money, and rise and fall in social status. A virtual character can also die. Some die of “natural” causes (a player decides to close them down) or they can have their virtual lives snuffed out. This is all

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