embracing my inner nerd

I have really started to immerse myself in this cyber-culture stuff now, but it seems like the more i find out, the less i know! I have joined up to this cyber city game -type thing. It describes itself as follows:



CyberSphere is an RPG MOO set in a dark American future. Your virtual journey begins in New Carthage, the denizens of which range from the benign eccentric to the malicious psychotic. Shadowed alleys conceal dark secrets, and gleaming towers of urban wealth hide fantastic conspiracies.

Past the skeletal buildings of the anarchic New Carthage outskirts, beyond its armoured city wall, a vast Wasteland of post-apocalyptic Hell awaits the truly brave. Its glowing sands crawl with the horrific mutant champions of natural selection, and are stained with the blood of the weak.

Delta-winged shuttles crisscross the scarred planet as reconstruction continues under the control of emergent superpowers in a new world order: megacorporations and crime syndicates. Bangkok harbors shadowy black markets of cybernetic technology, while orbital colonies turn serenely on axes of money, power, and privelage.

As the physical landscape still smoulders from the ravages of global wars and environmental disasters, an alternate reality glows brightly in the worldwide matrix network. Deckers and console jockeys swim the depths of this data sea, knights rendered in chrome on battlefields formed in the cognitive nonspace of a collective consciousness.

The pulse-pounding excitement of our virtual world is but a keystroke away.

NOTE: Cybersphere's creators would like to caution you that its violent realism and graphic nature may not be appropriate for all audiences.

Sounds exciting doesn't it? hmmmm.....

It is completely text based so I am having arguments with myself about the importance of visual media in terms of understanding and imagining space. I also have an aching brain from trying to learn all the text commands so i can actually communicate with people, interact with objects, move through space and (perhaps most importantly) kill people.

New terms I have learnt:
MUD - Multi-User Dungeon (the originally online roleplaying game environment - based on dungeons and dragons)
MOO - MUD - Object Orientated - usually less of a game and more of a community (i think)
IC - in character
OOC - out of character

I am also trying to work out how to apply for membership of an entirely different cyber-community called MediaMOO, which was set up in the nineties at a university in america. The spaces within the MOO relate to the university itself and it acts as a forum for dicussion of media and visual arts. How come all this stuff has been going on so long and yet i have never heard of it before?

On the one hand, am feeling quite technical, on the other hand have spent 5 hours trying to burn a DVD today and am still having trouble.