Week 5 - Feb 18

Workshop: IRC and MUDs

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was invented in 1988 by Jarkko Oikarinen at the University of Oulu in Finland. It is a global chat program that allows users to communicate in real time with other Internet users all over the world, 24 hours a day, for any purpose at all. IRC is a dynamic system in that chat "channels" only exist when somebody opens them and chats.

MUDs (Multi User Dungeons/Domains) were invented in the late 1970s by Richard Bartle at Essex University in England. MUDs is a programmed hypertext environment that is both static and dynamic. It is statis in that people can build environments that exist whether somebody is in them or not, yet the interactions in the environment are dynamic, real-time social interactions. MOOs (MUDs Object Oriented) are elaborations of MUDs.

Read

• "Multi-user Dungeons and Alternate Identities," chapter 5 in The Virtual Community by Howard Rheingold, 1992.
• "Real-time Tribes," chapter 6 in The Virtual Community by Howard Rheingold, 1992.

• Electropolis: Communication and Community on Internet Relay Chat by Elizabeth Reid, at http://www.ee.mu.oz.au/papers/emr/electropolis.html
• "Text-based Virtual Realities: Identity and the Cyborg Body" by Elizabeth Reid in High Noon on the Electronic Frontier edited by Peter Ludlow, 1996.
• Mud, Mud, glorious Mud... by Richard Bartle, http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/mud.htm
• "MUDding: Social Phenomena in Text-based Virtual Realities" by Pavel Curtis in High Noon on the Electronic Frontier: Conceptual Issues in Cyberspace edited by Peter Ludlow, 1996.
• The MediaMOO Project: Constructionism and Professional Community by Amy Bruckman and Mitchel Resnick, Convergence 1:1 Spring 1995 located at http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/people/asb/convergence.html
• Presence in Text-Based Networked Virtual Environments or "MUDS" by by John Towell and Elizabeth Towell located at http://www.mcs.anl.gov/home/towell/presence.html

• For irc help, try http://www.irchelp.org
• The IRC - Internet Relay Chat at http://www.funet.fi/~irc/.
• A History of EFnet
• IRC Networks and Server Lists (EFnet, Undernet, IRCnet, Dalnet)
• The Liszt IRC Directory http://ww.liszt.com/chat
• KidLink IRC at http://www.kidlink.org/IRC/
• Pet Bird Chats http://www.blkbox.com/~swhatley/parrots/

• MediaMoo http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Amy.Bruckman/MediaMOO/
• MOO/MU* Document Library of articles on MUDs and MOOs at http://lucien.berkeley.edu/moo.html.

Assignment

• Many IRC channels have a corresponding homepage and/or a discussion list. Locate such a channel and write a short report comparing your experience of the different platforms. Describe their different function and purposes, the tone and type of communication that occurs, the aesthetics of the different mediums. Include some examples of play with language from the different mediums: chat logs, list mail, and/or webpage.

  Refer to the workshop for help with commands on IRC.

  Browse the sites above to help you with finding channels. An example of a homepage for an irc channel is
  Pet Bird Chats: http://www.blkbox.com/~swhatley/parrots/

• If you find a MUD or MOO with corresponding webpages and/or discussion lists, you can write about that instead of an IRC channel.

• Due Date: April 6