Virtual Worlds Resources
Virtual Communities
New Finds
- January 1, 1996 David Wooley has updated his outstanding annotated survey of webconferencing resources. Wooley has been following webconferencing developments from the very beginning.
- December 30, 1995: Good stuff from Swarthmore. Thanks, Justin, for the tip. Okay, one chunk does say something favorable about me, but the author also has some strong critiques of the dangers of too much technoutopianism, now that the big money has finally wheeled into place to bring some order and profit to the cooperative anarchy of the Net. Unlike most political theorists, this one doesn't lack humor: "The Web was like the Library of Congress with Bart Simpson as chief librarian."
- December 30,1995: The Johns Hopkins "Muse" needs a subscription to read cited articles, but Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology from Johns Hopkins University press has a special issue, guest-edited by Robert Markley, on Dreaming Real: Cyberspace, Virtual Realities, and their Discontents
- December 30, 1995: Jones MultiMedia Encyclopedia on Computer History and Development is a more serious resource for those who are trying to figure out how all this net-web stuff happened so fast.
- December 30, 1995: Speaking of serious there's a description of a book entitled The Simulation of Surveillance: Hypercontrol in Telematic Societies (Cambridge University Press, January 1996).
- December 1, 1995: Two theses by the ever-knowledgeable Elizabeth Reid (Electropolis: Communication and Community on Internet Relay Chat, and Cultural Formations in Text-Based Virtual Realities) and several essays.
- December 1, 1995: A Masters thesis on a societal model of Usenet
- December 1, 1995: From Florida Atlanta University, a "comprehensive list of communication, anthropology, and cyberculture resources on the Web"
- November 28, 1995: Webconferencing finally works. With Motet, the Web finally becomes a sociable medium. The software is available at Utne Reader's Utne Cafe and any day now at the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle's The Gate.
- November 28, 1995: Another attempt at creating a community of interest is Salon, a new commercial webzine started by a group of former editors at the San Francisco Examiner who are trying to create a high-culture community of discussion. Disclaimer: I write a column for Salon, called Mr. Rheingold's Neighborhood.
- November 28, 1995: Brainstorms reader Markus Schlegel of Oslo, writes: "I have compiled a moderate list of Virtual Communities online sources that lists some non-classical (i.e. European) sites."
- November 28, 1995: On the political implications of many-to-many media, check out Thomas Jefferson and the Electronic commons
Meta sources
- EINet Galaxy has a rich collection of resources on networking and communication, including a long list of links to community networks.
- The WELLgopher archives several excellent resources in its Community directory.
- Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine is worth checking out monthly.
- The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication is more academic, also worth checking out regularly
- The Communications Archive @ Sunsite has a great collection of papers about computer mediated communications.
- Donna L. Hoffman and Thomas P. Novak, web-surfing marketing theorists at Vanderbilt University, have written a number of informative papers that show why marketing on the Web is not your father's BBD&O.
- CMC Study Center Resources list has other goodies.
- Glocom, the Tokyo-based Center for Global Communications, is always good for an international perspective on networks, international affairs, and virtual communities.
- Here is an excellent collection of resources regarding ethics and law on the electronic frontier
- A jumping off point for MUD Resources
- Check out the Center for the Study of Online Community, where sociologist Marc Smith has some key papers and syllabi.
- This University of Pennsylvania course in Social Implications of Information Technology has lots of pointers to social psychology, media criticism, political implications.
- This site has many resources relating to MOOs and Stuff including direct connections to various MOOs.
- David Wooley maintains a collection of Web-based conferencing systems
- The Victoria B.C. Freenet maintains a Gateway to Freenets and Community Networks via World-wide Web.
Articles, papers, FAQs
- Elizabeth Reid's Electropolis: Communication and Community on Internet Relay Chat> is a must-read for any student of virtual communities.
- Amy Bruckman is another must-read scholar of virtual communities. Here is a stash of Amy Bruckman's writing on virtual communities. Don't miss her paper on Identity Workshops
- Tony Rutkowski (Director of the Internet Society) made a keynote speech about the present and future of the Net that's also a must-read.
- Ann Beamis' Master's thesis (City Planning, MIT, February 1995) is the first scholarly investigation of Communities On-line: Community-Based Computer Networks
- Paper on VC, MUDs, IRC etc. from the Communications Archive @ Sunsite
- Howard Rheingold's Virtual Communities text from 1992, via WELLgopher.
- A proposed national strategy regarding Civic Networking.
- The Benton Foundation looks at telecommunications policy from a public interest perspective in What's going on with the National Information Infrastructure
- Computer networks are only the tool. Community is the task. Can we use these communication tools to help revitalize our real-life communities? The Rockefeller-funded Millennium Project has published its report, Communications as Engagement: a Communications Strategy forRevitalization including a list of 235 projects that have established themselves as effective community-building initiatives.
- Vannevar Bush wrote his prescient As We May Think way back in 1945. Still worth a reading.
- Gender Issues in Computer Networking, by Leslie Regan Shade
- Elizabeth Lane Lawley has written a paper about The Sociology of Culture in Computer-Mediated Communication from the point of view of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.
- This piece by Brenda Danet of the Hebrew University, on Smoking Dope at A Virtual Party: Writing, Play, and Performance on Internet Relay Chat will be published in Network and Netplay: Virtual Groups on the Internet, MIT Press, in press.
- A paper about Collaborative Hypermedia Servers and Webbed MOO (WOO) Transaction Protocol (WTP)
- The Sci.Virtual-Worlds Meta-FAQ is the place to start if you just got interested in VR and want to know a whole lot more.
Places and Communities
- The WELL, Rheingoldian home turf, hotbed of gnarly individualism
- The River, a virtual community owned and governed by the users.
- FreeNets Home Page leads to lots of resources for community networkers
- Blacksburg Electronic Village, a state-of-the-art community network.
- TWICS, a virtual community in Tokyo
- COARA, a virtual community in Oita, Japan -- far from Tokyo; less bicultural than TWICS; I've visited them four times IRL. COARA members are starting to put up lots of cool web pages.
- OTIS - an online caldron of creativity
- Cobra Lounge is one of the weirdest, wackiest, art-troupes in cyberspace, part of The San Francisco Telecircus [Scroll down a ways and you'll come across Mamie "Minispoon" Rheingold]
- Click your way into a whole nuther world, ChibaMOO
- Vincent's Hollow, a "text-based virtual reality" (MUD-like place).
- CTD MOO is a virtual community for the Center for Talent Development.
- Ubique is a commercial outfit that creates tools to add human presence to the Web.
- Mix your real reality and your virtual community: A global guide to Cyber Cafes.
- TurnPike Metropolis will publish, at no charge, up to one megabyte of your non-commercial Web pages
- The Spring is a young virtual community flesh-based in Austin, Texas.
- Station Rose, my zany Austrian artist friends, are online from Frankfurt, via the WELL in California.
Virtual Reality Info
- Virtual Reality Archive Home-page
- A succinct but juicy list of VR-related resources.
- The Human Interface Technology Lab is the home of Tom Furness' crusade to scan images directly on the retina, and a dozen other VR projects in medicine, architecture, education.
- Presence is MIT's distinguished VR journal, available via ftp.
- The VR page by Chris Hand is a great jumping-off place for VR websurfers.
- NASA's Virtual Environment Generator
- Carl Loeffler's Distributed Virtual Reality
- Triangle VR Group from North Carolina's Research Triangle Region.
- Georgia Institute of Technology's Graphics Visualization and Usability Center has worlds o' stuff related to virtual environments, VR applications from surgical simulation to the phobia project, human factors in VR research.
- The University of Washington's virtual worlds ftp site is another goldmine if you are looking for VR papers, postings, books, faqs, discussions.
Critiques of Cyberculture and Technology
Send corrections, updates, candidates to Howard Rheingold hlr@well.com
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