Comparing A MOO World To A Blog or Fan Fiction World: It's A Good Place But Is It An Essential Place?

Cow
Originally uploaded by Curtis Castillow.

The MOO world is different than any other social software environment I’ve experienced in this class. The emotional ambiance created by artifacts and descriptions of people, places, and things made the MOO world unique, but it was the real-time interaction that made it so different—even enticing. Is the MOO world the best world though for an instructional technologist?

Even though I knew I wasn’t really standing in a dark closet with strangers, the very idea that I was pretending so, made me a little uncomfortable at first. In my real world, it would be inappropriate for me to stand, lie, or sit in a dark closet with anyone but my wife. I found it odd that a surreal world of make believe could evoke my conscience and make me feel I might have to defend my moral standards. I have to admit though, I was fascinated that so many people were in the closet, and I couldn’t help but wonder why, so I began to ask. I asked one girl (I think it was a girl) why she would stand in the closet. She replied, “To feel warm and cozy.” Now I thought that to be a little strange yet interesting—she felt warm and cozy in a pretend closet? But then again, in the pretend closet I felt real feelings that my personal space was violated. A pretend, textual world, created an emotional ambiance that could evoke feelings in me—uncomfortable feelings. So that shouldn’t seem so strange they would evoke “cozy” feelings in her.

Blogs and fan fiction writings evoked emotion too, but not in the same way that standing in a dark closet with a stranger did. Also, reading a description of a make-believe world in a fan fiction story was one thing but exploring it, touching it, and feeling it in a MOO world was another. For example, I visited a street that had an open manhole with a rope dropped in it. I was so fascinated as to who would be in that manhole and why. In a fan fiction piece, as a reader, I would merely observe the manhole from afar, but in a MOO world I’m there. I can see it, touch, and smell the stale, pungent odor rising from it cavity. Furthermore, I can look inside and talk about it with real people who see it too.

The fascination, however, was not so much a mysterious, dark, manhole, but who was in it, and why they were in it. I was interested in the people. Often I would explore strange places like a gypsy wagon, wondering what kind of personality would be in gypsy wagon, but was very disappointed to find no was there but me. I wanted people to be there; I wanted to interact with them. They made the world real, and were that attraction that made the make believe world so charming and alluring. So it wasn’t so much the artifacts and surroundings that make the MOO world so appealing, but the people that are in them.

Which brings me to what I believe makes the MOO world so different from the fan fiction and blog world. I can write a blog and eventually someone will respond and I feel a connection with him or her. In a MOO environment, I just enter a room and feel connected immediately as people greet me in real-time with a warm smile. I ask them questions and they respond. The world is pretend but their immediate response is real—very real and immediate. In fact even their body language seemed real. When I first entered the Living Room, everyone kept smiling at each other. They drove me crazy. Feeling self-conscience, I finally asked why they were all smiling. I felt they were all looking at me, and knew something I didn’t know as if perhaps a cyber, poppy seed was stuck between my teeth. They seemed to sense I was new and naïve to their world. They had fun with my inexperience, but were sensitive and helpful.

I can’t help but wonder though if the MOO world is the best world—at least from an instructional technology perspective. I know MOO and MUD world’s are “constructionist environments in which people build personally meaningful artifacts” (Bruckman, 1994) and collaborate in social settings. I know they have pedagogical underpinnings. And I know, they build by experiencing, and Dewey would say experience is the best teacher. I believe, however, experiencing the right things is the best teacher. I don’t have to experience Crack to know its bad. I’m not saying the MOO world is comparable to a drug world, but I’m not sure its an essential world to learning. Granted, it is a place where people experience and make understanding, but even Dewey said, “It is not enough to insist upon the necessity of experience, nor even of activity in experience. Everything depends upon the quality of the experience which is had” (Dewey, 1938). Is the MOO world a quality-learning environment? For the time you spend there is it worth it? If I am to look at from an instructional technologist point of view then I have to say no. At least, no, it’s not the best of quality time spent in pedagogy. There are better quality constructionist environments where I can build personal meaning to my world. I suspect though they might not be as enjoyable as a MOO world.

If I look at the MOO world from a psychological perspective, however, then perhaps I might say it is a quality world worth its weight in gold and my precious time. “Technicolor” thought so. When I asked her why she participated in the MOO realm she replied, “I’m a shut-in and I have to interact socially somehow with people.” In light of that statement, I can see where it might be a place to be.

Having said all that, on the bright side, I enjoyed the experience and was fascinated with the people and the emotions their cyber world evoked in me. But I have very little time and I’m not sure if the MOO world is where I want to spend what precious time I have left. Besides, I get all the MOO I need every morning from my neighbor's hungry cow.