A MUD (Multi-User Dungeon or, sometimes, Multi-User Dimension) is a network-accessible, multi-participant, user-extensible virtual reality whose user interface is entirely textual. Participants (usually called players) have the appearance of being situated in an artificially-constructed place that also contains those other players who are connected at the same time. Players can communicate easily with each other in real time. This virtual gathering place has many of the social attributes of other places, and many of the usual social mechanisms operate there. Certain attributes of this virtual place, however, tend to have significant effects on social phenomena, leading to new mechanisms and modes of behavior not usually seen `IRL' (in real life). In this paper, I relate my experiences and observations from having created and maintained a MUD for over a year. 1 A Brief Introduction to Mudding The Machine did not transmit nuances of expression. It only gave a general idea of people---...

Although the archive of text generated by a persistent conversation (i.e. newsgroup, mailing list, recorded chat, etc.) is searchable, it is not very expressive of the underlying social patterns. In this paper we will discuss the design of graphical interfaces that reveal the social structure of the conversation by visualizing patterns such as bursts of activity, the arrival of new members, or the evolution of conversational topics. Our focus is on two projects: Chat Circles, a graphical interface for synchronous conversation and Loom, a visualization of threaded discussion. Through these examples we will explore key issues in the generation, design and use of graphical interfaces for persistent conversations. 1.

Although current online chat environments provide new opportunities for communication, they are quite constrained in their ability to convey many important pieces of social information, ranging from the number of participants in a conversation to the subtle nuances of expression that enrich face to face speech. In this paper we present Chat Circles, an abstract graphical interface for synchronous conversation. Here, presence and activity are made manifest by changes in color and form, proximity-based filtering intuitively breaks large groups into conversational clusters, and the archives of a conversation are made visible through an integrated history interface. Our goal in this work is to create a richer environment for online discussions. Keywords chatroom, conversation, social visualization, turn-taking, graphical history, Internet, World Wide Web

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this paper has been provided by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (General and Strategic grants), Bell Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Information Technology Research Centre. We dedicate this chapter to science-fiction personage Judith Merril who net surfed for fifty years until her death in Sept., 1997.

In research about the Internet, too much attention is paid to its ability to provide access to information. This thesis argues that the Internet can be used not just as a conduit for information, but as a context for learning through community-supported collaborative construction. A "constructionist" approach to use of the Internet makes particularly good use of its educational potential. The Internet provides opportunities to move beyond the creation of constructionist tools and activities to the creation of "constructionist cultures." These issues are explored through a specific example: MOOSE Crossing, a text-based virtual world (or "MUD") designed to be a constructionist learning environment for children ages 8 to 13. On MOOSE Crossing, children have constructed a virtual world together, making new places, objects, and creatures. Kids have made baby penguins that respond differently to five kinds of food, fortune tellers who predict the future, and the place at the end of the rainbow--- answer a riddle, and you get the pot of gold. This thesis discusses the design principles underlying a new programming language (MOOSE) and client interface (MacMOOSE) designed to make it easier for children to learn to program on MOOSE Crossing. It presents a detailed analysis, using an ethnographic methodology, of children's activities and learning experiences on MOOSE Crossing, with special focus on seven children who participated in a weekly after-school program from October 1995 through February 1997. In its analysis of children's activities, this thesis explores the relationship between construction and community. It describes how the MOOSE Crossing children motivated and supported one another's learning experiences: community provided support for learning through design and...

Instant Messaging (IM) is being widely adopted by teenagers. In a study of 16 teenage IM users, we explore IM as an emerging feature of teen life, focusing our questions on its support of interpersonal communication and its role and salience in everyday life. We qualitatively describe the teens' IM use interpersonally, as well as its place in the domestic ecology. We also identify technology adoption conditions and discuss behaviors around privacy management. In this initial investigation, we found differences in the nature of use between high school and college teens, differences we propose are accounted for by teens' degree of autonomy as a function of domestic and scholastic obligations, the development of independent work practices, Internet connectivity access, and even transportation access. Moreover, while teen IM use is in part characterized as an optimizing choice between multiple communications media, practice is also tied to concerns around peer pressure, peer group membership and creating additional opportunities to socialize.

The goal of the proposed work is to develop a theory of design for building on-line social environments. The underlying hypothesis is that in order to foster the development of virtual communities and cultures, the environment must provide the means to communicate social cues and information: the participants must be able to perceive the patterns of activity and affiliation that reveal the structure of a community and to have a fluid and subtle vocabulary for conveying cultural information. The theoretical foundation for the research is drawn from traditional studies of society and culture and from observations of contemporary on-line systems. Starting with an analysis of the fundamental differences between real and virtual societies - most notably, the presence and absence of the body - the first section examines the ways social cues are communicated in the real world, discusses the limits imposed on online communities due to their mediated and bodiless nature, and explores directions...

and is on the core advisory faculty of GMU's Institute for Public Policy. His professional service centers on organizational redesign for increased effectiveness based on sophisticated technologies. His research interests span technology forecasting and assessment, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and strategic planning. To date, uses of information technology to enhance constructivist learning environments have centered on creating computational tools and virtual representations that students can manipulate. For example, many of the articles in this Educational Technology issue describe information technology instantiations of Perkins ' (1991) classification of constructivist paraphernalia: information banks, symbol pads, construction kits, phenomenaria, and task managers. As learners interpret experience to refine their mental models, computational tools that complement human memory and intelligence are made available. In parallel, transitional symbols (Papert, 1988; Fosnot, 1992). Thus, technology-enhanced constructivist learning currently focuses on how representations and applications can mediate interactions among learners and natural or social phenomena.

We analyze collaborative play in an online video game, World of Warcraft, the most popular personal computer game in the United States, with significant markets in Asia and Europe. Based on an immersive ethnographic study, we describe how the social organization of the game and player culture affect players ’ enjoyment and learning of the game. We discovered that play is characterized by a multiplicity of collaborations from brief informal encounters to highly organized play in structured groups. The variety of collaborations makes the game more fun and provides rich learning opportunities. We contrast these varied collaborations, including those with strangers, to the “gold standard ” of Gemeinschaft-like communities of close relations in tightknit groups. We suggest populations for whom similar games could be designed.