Conversation and community: Chat in a virtual world. Lynn Cherny. Stanford,CA: CSLI Publications, 1999. Pp. 369.

Abstract

In the early 1990s, Lynn Cherny spent much of her time in the MUD – not mired in wet earth, but actively exploring “Multi-User Dungeons.” These “fictional universes with a focus on role-playing,” as they are defined in the Introduction, enable groups of Internet-connected individuals to assemble in cyberspace, communicating by way of sequentially typed text. Later, as a doctoral student in linguistics at Stanford, Cherny decided to study ethnographically – that is, from the perspective of one methodically and dispassionately observing a different race – the expressive practices of those habitually using this strange new modality.