Remembering Diversity University

It is with some sadness that I note the passing a couple of years ago of an online environment that once held tremendous significance in my life. I got to thinking about it today as Mrs. Woody and I prepare to celebrate a dozen years of wedded bliss. I quickly found that the environment no longer seems to exist. A library association newsletter explains: Diversity University MOO was taken offline early in 2006 after a run of (depending on whose history you read) between 11 and 14 years. (I'd bumped into the librarian who wrote the article, by the way. A tremendous lady.) DU was the brain-child of Jeanne McWhorter who saw in it the tremendous potential for on-line education, with particular benefits for many with learning disabilities. What it became was a mighty social network that pre-dated Facebook or MySpace by a good many years, and boasted a sophistication that AOL's chat rooms could only dream of.

For the uninitiated, a MOO (MUD, Object Oriented) was an online TELNET technology based on an old text-based gaming platform. An over-simplification, to be sure, but there are numerous articles on Wikipedia and elsewhere that explain the concept more fully.

Diversity University was unique in that it had a definite purpose and theme. Its goal was to provide an online learning environment and was patterned after a typical college campus. You could visit numerous buildings (history, art, library, etc.) and socialize anywhere on campus. I became a programmer there and created some rooms in the US History section.

But for me, the most significant aspect of my experience at DU was bumping into the future Mrs. Woody after a mutual absence of more than a dozen years.

By sheer coincidence (or not, we've since decided) we were both evaluating DU as a technology for potential use in our respective industries (aerospace for me, and educational publishing for her). By the time we bumped into each other, I was well into actually programming my own rooms and controls. Mrs. Woody was just getting her feet wet, so to speak, and saw a character online one day who went by the name of "Woody" (it's always been a nickname of mine) and who claimed to be from a town where she used to live. The fact that this Woody had been a singer and an actor particularly intrigued her. So she asked him about it.

Imagine my shock and surprise to hear from this very pretty blond lady whom I hadn't seen since just after my mission.

The rest, as they say, is history. No mere coincidence can account for our meeting that day. I had by that time decided to separate from my first wife in advance of our inevitable divorce, and it is perhaps fortuitous that she lost her connection information to DU for a couple of weeks after our chance encounter (I hadn't even asked her for her phone number). By the time we met virtually again, I was on my way to bachelorhood. Our friendship was rekindled in due time and blossomed to the point where I knew that here was my eternal soulmate.

So Diversity University holds a very special place in my heart. It was there, for example, that she first called me "Bud." I'd never gone by that name in my life, but was thrilled when she tagged me with it. That was my grandfather's nickname, and I considered it a true honor to be called that by this wonderful woman. It was there also that we consumed many an hour playing virtual Scrabble® (in the days before company lawyers threatened anyone who dared create and play such a game online). We chatted endlessly about anything and everything that popped into our minds. And we continued to build worlds together there and on other MOOs that she joined with me. It became good practice for the worlds we would soon build together in real life.

The last time I was able to log on to DU (apparently more than a couple of years ago) I visited my old virtual office and found everything in order. Nice and neat; not anything at all like my real office. And Mrs. Woody's character sitting in the office with me. We were both asleep, according to the interface. We'd been asleep for many years by that time.

Now it's gone. I'd like to think that whoever retired it kept a copy of it on some archive somewhere. I hate to think that all that creativity just simply vanished into the ether. I had met some wonderful personalities over the months I was active there. One Scottish gent, fresh out of college and with no prospects for work there, came to America to be with a sweet lady he'd met at DU himself. Last I'd heard from them they were planning their life together in West Virginia, I think. There was a young kid from the Netherlands who loved to chat with Mrs. Woody and me over a wide range of topics. His desire to learn about American life was insatiable. There was the passionate young liberal meteorologist who loved to get into political discussions with the campus "token conservative." He tried to tweak me on all sorts of issues, and I generally tweaked him right back. Those were fun conversations. Mrs. Woody and I even had a chance to meet another DU couple who had flown out to Los Angeles to attend a conference, and specifically wanted to meet us. We'd become good friends in the virtual world, and meeting them was a wonderful experience. She had numerous health challenges, though, and I often wonder if she's still okay, or even still with us. If not, I hope she knows that we love her and wish her well.

There were only a couple of personalities that I tried to avoid over that span of time, and in each case they tended to burn out and leave before I got too distracted myself. Otherwise, I have nothing but fond memories of my time spent at DU. I got married to the best part of that experience, and we've lived happily ever after.

Long live Diversity University.

No Privacy Zone

The fight over exactly how to regulate an out of control technology is only going to get uglier, if this report I found on Drudge is any indication.

The tragedy, of course, is that this sort of thing was so very preventable. A young 13 year old girl makes a virtual "friend" and develops an emotional relationship. A month later she is told that this virtual friend wants nothing to do with her, and is accused of being (among other things) fat, a slut, and finally a bad person that the world would be better off without. This last message has not been retrieved by police.

Worse yet, "Josh" was created by a woman who lived down the street and was typed by the woman, her daughter, and "another person." The woman wanted to "gain Megan's confidence" to see what, exactly, Megan was saying about her own child.

Thus the internet becomes less a social networking device, and more a legalized form of psychological warfare that, in this case, utterly destroyed the targeted family. The girl is now dead, and her parents have separated. Legal actions are threatened and the community is moving to institute child endangerment and harrassment protection for internet related problems.

As a long-time user of the internet and its wealth of knowledge and information, I have seen both sides of the "social networking" aspects of this extremely public arena. Mrs. Woody and I found each other online after separating from my first wife, but that's not the whole story. Mrs. Woody and I had known each other as teenagers (waaaaay before the internet was even a twinkle in Al Gore's eye). We had gone our separate ways since graduation, and it certainly wasn't the internet that convinced me that Mrs. Woody was the only woman for me. I knew who she was as a teenager, and she had always been someone I would have considered for eternal companionship even in my addled teenage years. No, in this case the internet merely expedited something that might have happened anyway.

But the internet definitely helped dissolve my first marriage. My ex and I discovered the addictive nature of "social networking" and the problems it can cause. Granted it was only one aspect of our divorce, but a significant one. The dark side of the internet.

Since Mrs. Woody and I have both had online experience and seen the seamier effects of this technology in the lives of others, we have declared the internet a "No Privacy Zone" in our home. In other words, for as long as the girls are living in this house, and young enough to be considered under our "control," (a term any parent knows to be ephemeral at best) they will not have the luxury of having entirely private relationships on the internet. Even the ones they do develop will be subject to the same rules of safety and etiquette that we would expect from any relationships they may form in the physical world. In other words, if any friendship — real or virtual — leads to any clandestine behaviors, there will be consequences.

Being homeschoolers, we have a couple of advantages. Firstly, we know what our kids are up to at school. There is no guess-work involved; the girls have wonderful friends through Church and our homeschool group, and we know the families of these friends. When they get together with these friends, we have confidence that they are reasonably safe. We give them more leeway as they prove their trustworthiness, and reel them back in whenever trust becomes an issue.

The second advantage is our ability to detect changes in personality. When Jelly started becoming just a bit moodier, we were able to determine that she's beginning to feel the effects of those wonderful hormones that all kids will experience. Since her life is an open book to us, we were able to see that change and determine how best to deal with it. (Mostly I sit on my bed in a fetal position and whimper a lot. Mrs. Woody handles it better.)

The hardest part of Megan's story is that her Mom and Dad were actually aware of this virtual friend. They had even counselled her on some of the meaner things that were said. Megan, however, appears to have had some emotional issues, and a depressed person can easily make the jump from reasonable to extreme with only minor provocations. Her access to the virtual world needed more controls, although it is easy to second-guess someone else's decisions.

I am not one to try to find a legal solution for every problem. Especially when, as a parent, I have the ability to shape and mold my children. This is not the responsibility of the world or even my local community. That responsibility is solely my own and Mrs. Woody's. We cannot and do not abdicate that responsibility to anyone else. Not the church. Not a public school. They can assist me, but it is not their responsibility. I don't let my girls do things just because "everyone else is doing it." If millions of kids are into social networking without parental control, that becomes the poorest of reasons to let my children do it.

Criminal, one might say.