Whereis Mineral: Selected Adventures in MOO

In the early 1990s, MOO, an acronym for M(ulti-User Dungeon) Object-Oriented, enabled many people to connect online—where they’d engage with each other, build digital structures and functioning robots, entirely out of text. LambdaMOO’s logon screen reads: “LambdaMOO is a new kind of society, where thousands of people voluntarily come together from all over the world. What these people say or do may not always be to your liking; as when visiting any international city, it is wise to be careful who you associate with and what you say. The operators of LambdaMOO have provided the materials for the buildings of this community, but are not responsible for what is said or done in them”. Whereis Mineral documents the author’s traversing of various online MOOs, most accurately classified as text-based virtual realities, prior to the advent of the WWW. Among other attributes, these logs reflect tests of patience and focus; substantial lags, computer foibles, as well as all sorts of imaginative construction.