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In role-playing MUDs, the arena is defined by the program and
the builders, and mapping it is complicated and
occasionally made even more so by those who create
the arena. Still the metaphor of space is powerful and
enduring, and players speak of the different little
bits of text describing different settings in the
MUD as rooms. They talk of movement and speed, of
roads and paths, when what is really happening when
the character moves from Haven or Azur is that the
program lets you sort through its stored
information in a certain manner. Only the administrators have
power to access the information directly, all
others need to follow some path, which creates an
illusion of space and particularly of place.
This illusion of place is not restricted to MUDs though: the
metaphors of physical movement are powerful and
enduring, to the point that Sherry Turkle’s
interviewee suggests that online is its own place
(Turkle 1995:231).
But is the “place” I am accessing when I log on to
the net comparable to physical places? I will discuss this on the
background of Mark Auge’s concept of a
non-place (1995).
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