Publications

Identity Workshop: Emergent Social and Psychological Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Reality

Bruckman A

ic

January 1992

unpublished paper

Abstract

It is 3:30 AM EST, and I am talking to my friend Tao in my quarters aboard the Federation Starship the USS Yorktown. Actually, I am in Massachusetts and Tao is in South Carolina. We are logged onto a Multi-User Simulation Environment (MUSE) based on a Star Trek theme. At this moment, there are thirty-six people logged on from all over the world. My character name is Mara. Anything I say or do is seen by Tao, since he is in the same room; anything which is announced is seen by all thirty-six people logged on. Our private conversation-- about gender roles and the ways female characters are swarmed with attention6-- is interwoven with a public conversation filled with computational puns and Star Trek references...

http://mf.media.mit.edu/pubs/other/IdentityWorkshop.pdf