Textuality in Cyberspace

Muds and written experience

By Jeffrey R. Young

• Opening Screen
  • The argument
  • Birth of mud
  • Compelling social environment
• Part I: A new type of language experience
  • The linguistic 'feel' of muding
  • Writing 'conversations'
  • Hypertext and the new medium of the screen
  • Windows into text
  • Linking passages
  • Text bites
  • Control of view
  • Multivocal texts
  • Written object
  • Visual cues
  • Object oriented programming and the power of the reader
  • Performative world
  • Control of self
  • Self as object: The decentering grammar of muds
  • Transparency / Non-transparency of hypertext
• Part II: Social aspects of mud
  • What to expect in mud
  • Liberating environment
  • More opinions offered
  • Non-conformity
  • Too expressive, public space of imaginations
  • Netsex and physical vs. emotional distance
  • Fragmenting readership
  • Beyond mud: The network's influence
  • A purer form of interaction?
• References
  • Works cited
  • Bibliography
  • Copyright