Notes

1 LambdaMOO is especially well known because of a notorious incident that took place there in 1994. A character named Mr. Bungle used certain aspects of the MOO programming language to enable him to seize control of and sexually "attack" some of the other players. This incident is covered in depth in Julian Dibbell's article <a href="http://www.levity.com/julian/bungle_vv.html">"A Rape in Cyberspace,"</a> which originally appeared in The Village Voice. The "rape" incident brought to the fore issues of identity, community, and responsibility in MOOs. See also Sherry Turkle's discussion of the LambdaMOO incident in her book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Simon and Schuster, 1995. Return to text.

2 The quests and battles so common in these environments reflect the Dungeons and Dragons heritage of MUDs. Dungeons and Dragons was a fantasy/role-playing game that was popular (mainly with young white men and boys) in the 1970s and '80s. The original MUD developers wanted a way to role-play over distance, so they moved their game online. The "D" acronym MUD is a reference to "Dungeons." Return to text.

3 Amy Bruckman, a graduate student at M.I.T. in 1992, started MediaMOO. This was the first official professional use of MOOs, which has been used for fun and games until that point. Bruckman has continued to pioneer MOO use. Her dissertation, entitled MOOSE Crossing: Construction, Community, and Learning in a Networked Virtual World for Kids, involved building an educational MOO for children under age 13 with the purpose of getting them excited about reading, writing, and programming. Georgia Tech University currently hosts MOOSE Crossing. Return to text.

4 Stephenson's Snow Crash and Gibson's Neuromancer are both novels set largely in virtual worlds in cyberspace. These novels' visions of the future are especially interesting, given the popularity of MOOs and the blending of MOOs and hypermedia. Return to text.

5 See Victor J. Vitanza's CyberReader (Second Edition, Allyn and Bacon, 1999), a collection of dozens of articles on controversial topics related to MOOs. This book provides an excellent introduction to the many gray areas of virtual reality. Return to text.