Foucault-L mail-list

could you pls elaborate -- for what does MUD stand?

On Mon, 12 May 1997 GMCMILLAN@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> ************************
> Re: Public punishments:
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> 
>  
> Punishment on MUDs shows a return to the medieval.  While penal 
> systems in the Western nations that form the backbone of the Internet- 
> -the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom and Australia--have 
> ceased to concentrate upon the body of the condemned as the site for 
> punishment, and have instead turned to 'humane' incarceration and 
> social rehabilitation, the exercise of authority on MUDs has revived 
> the old practices of public shaming and torture.  The theatre of 
> authority in virtual reality is one which demands and facilitates a 
> strongly dramaturgical element.  All actions on MUDs must be overt, 
> every nuance of experience must be manifestly represented for it to 
> become part of the play, and so punishment must be flamboyant.  The 
> virtual world of a MUD exists in its dramatic strength only in the 
> minds of its players, but the play enacted in the virtual world 
> emulates the physical rather than the mental.  The public spectacle of 
> punishment, which Foucault describes as disappearing from the Western 
> political scene between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is 
> alive and well on MUDs.[8] 
>  
> -- from CULTURAL FORMATIONS IN TEXT-BASED VIRTUAL REALITIES -- 
>                      By ELIZABETH REID 
>                       emr@xxxxxxxxxxx 
>                       emr@xxxxxxxxxxx 
>                         emr@xxxxxxx 
> 
>