MUD on the Super Highway

Chat allows participants to exchange short messages to carry on conversations. More sophisticated systems may locate the participants in some kind of ``virtual'' world. For example, in the simplest case, there may be ``rooms'' that you can move around between--meeting, and chatting, with different people at different places in this virtual world. The world may be further complicated with various kinds of virtual ``objects'' that you can interact with. These arguably provide a richer virtual meeting or conference experience. A common use for such virtual worlds is in distance education. For example, see Diversity University at:

http://www.du.org/

These virtual world systems also merge with various kinds of Internet game. For example, one can play chess, or bridge, or a wide variety of ``role playing'' games of the Dungeons and Dragons variety. This general class of Internet service has an elaborate jargon of its own, including MUDs (Multi User Dragons), MOOs (MUD Object Oriented, whatever that means), MUSH (usually interpreted as Multi User Shared Hallucination!) and MUVE (Multi User Shared Environment). These are accessed with a wide variety of mechanisms, including Telnet, specialised client programs, and Web based interfaces. For more information on these topics look at the Yahoo index at:

http://www.yahoo.ie/Recreation/Games/Computer_Games/Internet_Games/