Volume 1, Number 1

Writing as Social Construction.

<1> In "Seeing through the Interface: Computers and the Future of Composition," Nancy Kaplan and Stuart Moulthrop suggest that emerging forms of writing redefine notions of text and reality. Indeed, the collaborative nature of the new forms may create a reality that is socially constructed. One emerging form of composition that shows this social world building through language takes place in Multiple User Domains, or MUDs. MUDs are text-based virtual realities. In MUDs words make up worlds; one can create spaces and objects within them through verbal description.

<2> In composition circles, the notion that writing is an activity of social construction has been put forth for some time. The emergence of MUDs gives this idea and Moulthrop and Kaplan's stronger claims that new forms of writing are collaborative and world shaping acitvities even more currency. For more information on MUDs and the social construction of reality, see Anderson on MUDs, Bruckman on gender in MUDs, and Bruckman on MUD programming.

Return to Moulthrop and Kaplan's advice or to Not Maimed but Malted.
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