THE NET: SERIES 2

PROGRAMME 2: TX 22.5.95

00'01"	OPENING TITLES: ANIMATED GLOBES WITH GRAPHICS	MUSIC
00'17"	INSET OF SHOTS FROM ITEMS	NARRATOR: In THE NET tonight, Wavey Davey puts on his anorak and looks into the future. Has the Internet's utopia moment already passed? Interactive images from Japanese artist, Toshio Iwai. In our weekly Hotlist American author, Kevin Kelly shows us to his favourite sites on the World Wide Web and choosing an alternative identity in cyberspace
00'29"	S/I For live information access Ceefax page 777	Benjamin Woolley checks out the weird and wonderful world of Multi User Dungeons.
	NET GRAPHIC WIPE	ENDMUSIC
00'46"	COMPILATIONS OF SCREEN SHOTS, PROJECTORS	The information infrastructure MUSIC ... multi channel television ... all of human life is here .... .... are reading these messages ... ... wherever your .. .... so .... it means nothing to anybody ...
20'10"		MUSIC
	BENJAMIN WOOLLEY
20'12"	W/A DARK ROOM	It must be one of the most sociable, lively, challenging activities you can do on your own
20'20"	BEN AT COMPUTER	in a darkened room. It's a sort of dial-up computer game, a digital equivalent of the telephone chatline. You log on with your computer, usually over the Internet, and find
20'30"	O/S SCREEN	yourself in a fantasy world, a world where you can meet people, chat, fight, make love, live
20'36"	W/A WOODS, S/I Standing around you are only trees, though you sense a presence lurking in the gloom beyond.	and die. They call it a multi-user dungeon or MUD. For those who play it this is much more than a game, it's a whole new way of life.
20'44"	MCU BENJAMIN	So there it is, it's on the screen, there are no
	S/I BENJAMIN WOOLLEY	pictures, no sounds, you don't need a virtual reality headset or a holographic display. All you need is a 3-D true-colour, high-resolution imagination because this virtual world only exists as text like a novel. But in a MUD you can decide who you are and where you want to go.
21'07"	SCREEN SHOT TYPES Go north
21'10"	GV WOODS, S/I The undergrowth becomes thicker, the sense of foreboding becomes stronger.	A MUD world is also like a novel full of characters but they aren't fictional. What they say or do is determined by real people who, like me, sit at a computer experiencing the same world but from their own point of view. They can also invent a new identity for
	S/I Sweetpea enters, wearing her magic boots.	themselves, a sort of virtual mask. In real life they may be a student from Sunderland or a banker from Bangkok but here they are whoever or whatever they want to be. I, for example, decided to be the Listener.
21'41"	S/I SWEETPEA: Howdi, Listener! r u lost?	WOMAN Howdy Listener, are you lost?
21'42"	S/I You say "I just got here, What's to see?'
21'45"	S/I SWEETPEA: The Italian gardens r over there. I'm going there, do u wanna come	The Italian Gardens over there, I'm going there, do you want to come?
21'48"	S/I You say I'm gonna explore a bit, Thanks anyway :-)
21'51"	S/I Sweetpea says OK then:-)	Okay then
21'54"	MS BENJAMIN	BENJAMIN Because the characters are real, MUD life has all the complexities and some of the dangers of real life, there are the same battles of the sexes, the same conflicts of interests, the same struggles to make friends.
22'06"	W/A NIGHT S/I Night falls
22'08"	Monroe is here, wearing a dress so tight all the men faint.	This world has the perils as well as the pleasure that you experience in real life or IRL as MUD players call it.
22'19"	S/I You say "Hello, Monroe ..."
22'21"	MONROE: Hi, Listener. Where r u from irl?	MONROE Hello Listener, where are you from IRL?
22'23"	You say 'er .. Guatemala:-) Legs enters
22'24"	LEGS: Hello, gorgeous!	LEGS Hello gorgeous!
22'25"	MONROE: lo Legs
22'25"	LEGS: Lovely, blonde hair.	Lovely blonde hair
22'26"	MONROE: Oh, it's even better in my armpits.	MONROE Oh, it's even better in my armpits
22'28"	LEGS: THAT'S DISGUSTING!	LEGS: Oh, that's disgusting
22'29"	MONROE: I was only joking stoopid	MONROE I was only joking stupid
22'32"	Legs reaches for Monroe, trying to caress her body. Monroe pushes Legs away
22'36"	MONROE: How dare you	MONROE How dare you!
22'37"	LEGS: What's up?	LEGS What's up?
22'38"	MONROE: I didn't ask to be groped. >:-(	MONROE I didn't ask to be groped.
22'40"	LEGS: I'm bored with this. I'm off.	LEGS I'm bored with this, I'm off.
22'42"	MONROE: Thanks very much:-(	MONROE Thanks very much! LEGS Yeah well if you'd been a bit nicer, I might have hung around.
22'49"	MCU BENJAMIN S/I Go North East	BENJAMIN You don't make up a Multi User Dungeon world as you go along.
22'50"	GV'S FANTASY INTERIOR S/I You enter a giant trifle, squeezing through the creamy topping into a room made of rasberry and lime flavoured jelly.	The descriptions of the locations are stored on a central computer called the server and they continue to exist there even when you log off. But it's the users who bring the world alive, it's their interests and quirks - their creative and sometimes destructive instincts
	S/I Sprout the Chinese Warrior and The Reverend Pudding are here.	that give the MUD its character.
23'11"	Sprout snarls menacingly and flaps his fish about in a threatening manner, fna, fnaaa!
23'16"	Pudding strikes out with his trusty weapon, "Excalibream".
23'20"	SPROUT: YAHHH!
23'21"	Sprout wallops Pudding very very hard indeed.
23'27"	Pudding wins an Oscar for his terrific death scene.	Death in this sort of world is not just a case of having to go back and start again. Reverend Pudding really is no more, and when the person who adopted the good Reverend's
23'39"	Sprout teleports to another dimension	persona to play another day he or she will be reborn as someone else, a stranger, a newcomer who must once again go through the process of getting to know people, making friends, acquiring powers.
23'53"	GV WOODS S/I You enter the Italian Gardens. There are many stone statues here. They contain the souls of explorers who have been bewitched by the gorgeous.
24'00"	TRACK INTO GROUP S/I Medusa, Big Ted, Grubby and Beardy, the Chest Wig are playing Twister.	Despite their playfulness Multi User Dungeons have a serious purpose, they're models for a whole new type of institution, a virtual space in which students can be taught, companies can do business, worshippers can worship. Some
24'14"	CLOSER SHOTS GROUP	are even trying to use them to create experimental communities, literally to build new worlds from scratch in which they can try out different codes of behaviour, systems of government and new environments.
24'23"	SCREEN SHOTS
24'27"	W/A BEN IN DARK ROOM	S/I The Palace of Masks, A large, hexagonal ballroom of Palladian splendour, Richly coloured oil paintings hang on the walls, and delicate marble statues stand in the corners. There are doors leading off in all directions, through which small, intimate rooms can be glimpsed.
24'44"	Z/O TO VERY W/A DARK ROOM WITH SHAFTS OF LIGHT PEOPLE EMERGE	This isn't just self indulgent escapism. MUDS are not a playpen for adolescent nerds too disfigured by acne to show their faces IRL, in real life. The aim is to create a space that will draw people in, enable them to discover new things about themselves and others. Don't come here to get a life, you come here to find out more about life. This in part is what
25'07"	S/I To the East of the Palace of Masks there is a small red room.	interested MUD pioneers like Richard Bartle.
25'11"	Richard Bartle, the creator of MUD1, is here PAN L TO MS RICHARD
25'16"	S/I You say 'What have MUDs got to do with life?'
25'19"		RICHARD MUDS are places where you can live, they're places of habitation, they're not games, they're not things that you just crank up on your computer, they are places where you live, there are places you can go there to visit friends, you can go there to visit enemies. Oh yes, you can die there.
25'33"	S/I Richard Bartle vanishes with a "POP"
25'34"	MCU SIMON MARSH
25'34"	Simon Marsh the creator of Foothills appears by magic.
25'37"	You say 'Tell us the extent of MUDs.'	SIMON MARSH MUDS mirror real life, they reflect every aspect of people's lives, the way they live, the way they talk with each other and the way they
25'47"	W/A DOORS TO ROOMS S/I Lizzy Parrot and Madame Foo Foo gossip about their favourite episode of Twin Peaks.	socialise. People go there to talk and interact with each other so things that are important to people in real life get talked about and are important to people on MUDS.
	2-S WALKING TO CAM	As with any society there are good people and there are bad people. People go in there to have a good time, to enjoy themselves, to meet other people and there are people who
26'15"	S/I Madame Foo Foo scuttles off down to the dungeons.	will go in there to try and mess it up for other people. It's like a shared dream, you're all together in
26'29"	MS SIMON	one place. Can be from hundreds, tens or
26'32"	GV INT GLASS HOUSE S/I Feather Lily flits about the glass house, sipping sweet nectar from her love-roses.	thousands of rooms with thousands of people on them. MUDS have a life of their own. Without the users there would be no MUDS so the users define how the MUD works, how it interacts and how it progresses.
26'43"	MS SIMON, PUTS UP MASK, PAN R TO ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE
27'01"	TRACK UP EXT STEPS TO HOUSE	BENJAMIN The result of all this can be a world which is, to say the least, bewildering. It can also be a bit
27'06"	INT MASKED BALL	frightening, especially for so-called newbies,
27'12"	POV ENTERING ROOM	newcomers, who are suddenly immersed in an alien world populated by strange creatures speaking in unfamiliar tongues.
27'22"	S/I Listener the Newbie enters the Palace of Masks
27'24"	MCU BEN	But then that could be a description of what it's like IRL.
27'28"	GRAPHICS	MUSIC