The Emperor's Virtual Clothes

January 2, 1995
In this skeptical look at the Internet, Moore, who teaches English at Penn State, attempts to cut through the jargonish flackery surrounding the Net to determine its basic virtues and drawbacks. Inspired by Thoreau's Walden, Moore sets out to spend a year in the ``electronic woods.'' He visits the Usenet sector, a collection of ``newsgroups,'' or virtual bulletin boards, where people can post messages on subjects of common interest; observes various MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons), online role-playing games popular with college students; discusses political activism on the Net with a Washington bureaucrat and an Irish dissident; and bashfully dabbles in cyber-sex. Detached and decidedly unscientific, Moore illuminates the chasm between the high claims of the digerati and the misadventures of the novice Net user. His homespun approach and silly quips, however, make this a thin polemic.

August 1, 1995
Moore (English, Pennsylvania State Univ.) here provides a tour of the Internet for those folks who've somehow managed to avoid buying into the hype of online fulfillment. Although he doesn't launch into an anti-net diatribe a la Clifford Stoll (Silicon Snake Oil, LJ 3/1/95), Moore mischievously lays bare some revered 'net features such as MUSHs (multi-user shared hallucination, a type of role-playing game), digital relationships, and e-mail, and, in a hilarious encounter, he poses as a female and attempts to have cybersex. Still, Moore-whose given name is indeed Dinty-has some good things to say about virtual communities; it's just that-aside from anonymity, convenience, and the sheer number of people who make up these communities-they're not a whole lot different than what's outside our front doors. This well-written, humorous primer should find a comfortable home in most public libraries.-Mark Annichiarico, ""Library Journal"