Hello World

Hello World

  • - Download book
  • - Download sample chapter
  • - Kindle
  • - Web View

Buy

  • Amazon.co.uk
  • Amazon.com
  • Gleebooks (Australia)
  • Raw Nerve

Books (single author, editor, contributor)

  • 2013 Technobiophilia: Nature and Cyberspace
  • 2012 In the Flesh: Twenty Writers Explore the Body
  • 2009 Handbook of Research on Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies
  • 2008 Transdisciplinary Digital Art: Sound, Vision and the New Screen
  • 2004 Hello World: Travels in Virtuality
  • 2002 Reload: Rethinking Women and Cyberculture
  • 2000 Inhuman Reflections: Rethinking the Limits of the Human
  • 1999 The Noon Quilt
  • 1998 Crossing The Border
  • 1995 Creative Writing : A Handbook for Workshop Leaders
  • 1994 Wild Women: Contemporary Short Stories by Women Celebrating Women
  • 1994 Water
  • 1992 Correspondence
  • 1990 Where No Man has Gone Before: Essays on Women and Science Fiction

Snippets from the past

  • 2012 Traces of the trAce Online Writing Centre 1995-2005 | Jacket2
  • 2005 trAces: A Commemoration of Ten Years of Artistic Innovation at trAce
  • 2005 trAce Online Writing Centre Archive
  • 2004 Sistema Purificacion
  • 2003 Spivak
  • 2002 Writing Machines by N.Katherine Hayles
  • 2002 Tools of the trade
  • 2002 Stephanie Strickland: Living in the Space between Print and Online
  • 2002 No visible means of support
  • 2002 A New Sensibility? The qualities of a new media writer
  • 2001 Interview by 3am Magazine
  • 2000 lux : notes for an electronic writing
  • 2000 Evolving Practice: writers working online with trAce
  • 2000 Correspondence @ Riding the Meridian
  • 2000 ::::::In Place of the Page::::::
  • 1999 Tremble
  • 1999 The [+]Net[+] of Desire
  • 1999 Noon Quilt
  • 1999 Interview by Full Circle
  • 1998 Sharing a common language online
  • 1998 Land: Textual MOO-based virtual landscapes
  • 1998 Imagining a stone: virtual landscapes
  • 1998 Ensemble Logic + Choragraphy
  • 1998 Creative interaction in cyberspace
  • 1997 Revolver


  • Creative 

Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Unless otherwise expressly stated, all original material of whatever nature created by Sue Thomas and included in this weblog and any related pages, including the weblog's archives, is included in this License.

Errata

Richard Bartle has pointed out a number of errors in this section. Many apologies. Having taught and written about MOOs for so many years it's embarrassing to see that some of the things I have taken for granted for a long time turn out to be inaccurate. He writes:

It's PARC, not Parc ("Palo Alto Research Centre").
It (LambdaMOO) was written from the first MOO code, not MUD code.
The first MOO was written by Stephen White.
Roy first developed MUD in 1978.
It was the University of Essex, not the University of Reading.

Richard himself was involved in the development of MUD1, which I knew nothing about.

Intriguingly, he writes that the first gender-bending player in any virtual world went by the name of Sue Thomas. He sent me this link which details the whole story. Intriguing!

update: he also sent me these links featuring my predecessor:

http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/anec3.htm
http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/pcwaug84.htm
http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/manov84.htm
http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/mafeb85.htm
http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/acloct87.htm

Posted by Sue Thomas on Apr 18, 2005 at 11:33 PM in 03 Shapes | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us |

Landform

landformedinburgh
Charles Jencks designed this beautiful landscape structure for the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. It reminds me very much of the ridge and furrow fields near my house, and of course both are landscapes to be walked and used, rather than admired from afar. But at the same time, it is from afar that their true shapes become apparent.

Full story at the BBC Tuesday, 11 May, 2004, 23:41 GMT 00:41 UK

Page 22

Every shape here is the product of something else. The course of the stream is dictated by the geology. The smooth ridges and furrows of the field were created by a hundred years of strip-ploughing. The hedges planted by humans, their forms bitten around by animals. The narrow tracks created by the daily passing of cleft hooves. In the daytime this field looks like bright green corduroy seamed with hawthorn and hemmed by water. Beneath each row of hedging the ground is brown and dead, suffocated by the heat of heavy lanolined bodies dozing in the shade during the day and dreaming their way through the night. Occasionally a ewe or a lamb does not awake – and then scavengers come to remove its eyes, its intestines, and the other softer parts. Generations of flies, or a farmer and a tractor, will dispose of the rest.


Posted by Sue Thomas on May 12, 2004 at 09:10 AM in 03 Shapes | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us |

The English landscape

Page 21

One may liken the English landscape, especially in a wide view, to a symphony, which it is possible to enjoy as an architectural mass of sound … without being able to analyse it in detail or to see the logical development of its structure. The enjoyment may be real, but it is limited in scope and in the last resort vaguely diffused in emotion. But if instead of hearing merely a symphonic mass of sound, we are able to isolate the themes as they enter, to see how one by one they are intricately woven together and by what magic new harmonies are produced … then the whole effect is immeasurably enhanced. Only when we know all the themes and harmonies can we begin to appreciate its full beauty, or to discover in it new subtleties every time we visit it.
W.G. Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape (London: Penguin Books, 1985), 20.

Unable to sleep, I get dressed and go downstairs. In the kitchen, the dog snores and the refrigerator turns itself on and off. The fire bubbles its gas-driven flames as the house machines hum. Beyond the curtains the street is black and deserted. Dogs everywhere are asleep. Prowlers prowl. Burglars burgle. Here is Dylan's night-time town of Llareggub brought alive again. He must have written that play through many darknesses like this one.

I put on my coat, close the front door quietly, and cross the dead street. It's a full moon tonight, and its beams bounce off the windows to light up odd crevices of the buildings. Only a few houses to pass and then I am through the gate and into the field. The groaning of the heavy metal five-bar wakes up some of the nearest sheep, who raise their heads sleepily and gaze around. I stand in the centre of the meadow and raise my face to the moon, which lights me as it lights everything else around. It’s good to be outside on such a night, but a little frightening too. I feel part of something but I’m not sure I understand what it is.

Every shape here is the product of something else. The course of the stream is dictated by the geology. The smooth ridges and furrows of the field were created by a hundred years of strip-ploughing. The hedges planted by humans, their forms bitten around by animals. The narrow tracks created by the daily passing of cleft hooves. In the daytime this field looks like bright green corduroy seamed with hawthorn and hemmed by water. Beneath each row of hedging the ground is brown and dead, suffocated by the heat of heavy lanolined bodies dozing in the shade during the day and dreaming their way through the night. Occasionally a ewe or a lamb does not awake – and then scavengers come to remove its eyes, its intestines, and the other softer parts. Generations of flies, or a farmer and a tractor, will dispose of the rest.

The stream cleanses the feet of two such meadows, each sloping down toward to the shallow running water where animals and trees dip to drink. Cress rises from the stones, willows bend and reach across. Sometimes, but rarely, children sit in the branches to drop boats made from leaves, twigs, paper and plastic into the sluggish current. Sheep come to scratch and nibble at the shoots they can reach, creating with their grazing an orderly and geometric topiary.

I walk for a while in the light and shade of the field, feeling the firmness of the turf beneath my feet and being very aware that I am only the most visible one of many presences moving through the domain of the night. Then, feeling the need for company, I go home and log on as a guest to join the throngs at LambdaMOO where I enter a different kind of darkness.

I am fascinated by the way the English landscape has been formed by the many farming and industrial practices of this country.

To find out more, see the BBC programme Land Lines and the organisation Common Ground.

Posted by Sue Thomas on Mar 10, 2004 at 01:57 PM in 03 Shapes | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us |

03 Shapes

Page 24
Instead of reading about it, you can find out about LambdaMOO just by going there:

Type the following into the address bar of your browser, or click on this link: telnet://lambda.moo.mud.org:8888

When the plain black and white telnet screen appears type

connect guest

After that you’re on your own. You might begin by typing

help

LambdaMOO runs on a telnet client which may well be already installed on your computer and will open automatically when you click the link above. However, even if this works, it's likely that your inhouse telnet client will be very basic. PC users may prefer to use FireClient and Mac users should install Savitar

Posted by Sue Thomas on Mar 03, 2004 at 02:14 PM in 03 Shapes | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us |

About

@suethomas


Technobiophilia: Nature and Cyberspace

  • bookjacket

Categories

  • 00 About the book (2)
  • 00 About the web view (1)
  • 00 Acknowledgements (2)
  • 00 Cover (1)
  • 00 Foreword (4)
  • 01 Imagining (5)
  • 02 Hello World (3)
  • 03 Shapes (4)
  • 04 Geographies (4)
  • 05 Bachelard (2)
  • 06 Thoreau (3)
  • 07 Links (3)
  • 08 Electricity (1)
  • 09 The Indian Pacific (1)
  • 10 Growing up (3)
  • 11 Riding the train (1)
  • 12 The lived body (5)
  • 13 Skin (1)
  • 14 Where are we? (5)
  • 15 Food and money (2)
  • 16 Anxiety (3)
  • 17 Worries (2)
  • 18 Infection (3)
  • 19 Addiction (1)
  • 20 Nullabor (2)
  • 21 Exposed (1)
  • 22 Sex and greed (2)
  • 23 Turned inside out (1)
  • 24 Wastelands (1)
  • 25 Settlement (1)
  • 26 Home (1)
  • 27 Cultivation (1)
  • 28 More (1)
  • 29 Coast Starlight (3)
  • 30 Death Valley (3)
  • 31 Virtuality (2)
  • 32 Sunset Boulevard (2)
  • 33 Our country (12)
  • Nature and Cyberspace (1)
  • ~ Articles & Papers (1)
  • ~ Conferences, Workshops, & Talks (7)
  • ~ Connections (5)
  • ~ Errata (1)
  • ~ Future Research (1)
  • ~ Online MA in Creative Writing & Technology (2)
  • ~ Reviews (11)
  • ~ Win a copy [archived] (2)
  • ~ Writing and the Digital Life (6)
See More