CW2001 Program - Computers and Writing

Friday
5:15 — 6:30 Session E.5
Com/Possible Worlds:
Rhetorics (of) Programming and
Experimentation in MOO type
RB 284
Bradley Dilger, moderator and respondent
Jane Love
My view is that MOO rhetoric and programming need to recognize
the viability of MOO as a literary genre in addition to its instrumental
role in facilitating synchronous online interaction. I am interested
in interrogating the rhetorical limits and possibilities of MOO client
interfaces, specifically those that support Webbed integration of
sound, image, video, and animation. Just as telnet-based MOO
clients unfold a multi-dimensional textuality, java-based MOO clients
present the possibility for aural/visual/textual un/enfoldings that could
depart radically from the logic of supplementarity that currently
governs the use of multimedia in MOOs. I use Flash to envision and
simulate what one of these radical MOO rhetorics might look like.
Victor Vitanza
This presentation presents our continued attempt(s) to come to
grips, or blows, with the binary character of MOO code through the
perspectives of both theory and practice. As a panel of discussants,
we are composed of MOO theorists, wizards, and programmers.
Through commentary and multimediated speculation, we trace the
topology of one possible ANarchi.text.ural MOO and consider its
concrete implications from a programming perspective and from an
educational perspective.
Bradley Dilger
I respond to the Jane and Victor’s work, considering their “arguments”
from the point of view of a MOO programmer and administrator (albeit
one who believes the MOO best operates when the triumvirate of input,
output, and error is subverted).
64 Computers & Writing 2001