MUD Institute Launches

All the initial primary front-end modules and most of the back-end functionality was completed over the weekend. We're proud and happy to see all of the hard work everyone has put in having paid off and now we're able to start doing the really important work.

I really envisioned a comprehensive place for the preservation, advancement, and study of MUDs decades ago. While there were some very commendable attempts over the years in various areas (from USENET to FTP, even to other websites) to fill some of these roles, there was nothing that is as comprehensive as this is intended to be.

There's also been a sense of urgency with the passing years to preserve, because so much has been lost. So much code, so many stories, so many mobiles, scripts, items, and places. So many worlds. Every year we lose more that can never be recovered, more of this wonderful unseen history.

Yet it is not only the preservation of history, and our heritage of the past that concerns me, but the future as well.

There is so much more for us to explore as players, as coders, world builders, and members of an ever-increasingly digitally-oriented society. Kevin Flynn's character expressed this idea very well...

"In there is a new world! In there is our future! In there is our destiny!" -- Kevin Flynn, Tron Legacy

That sentiment is not wrong. We already have half-a-foot in digital space, and each generation is immersing itself more than the last. Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, both the software and hardware advances every year. Their usage too, increasing.

The study of virtual worlds, on the psychological impact of individuals in these worlds, and on the sociological impact thereof in the societies of the real, and the digital, are only going to become more crucial as we march toward the inevitable.

Some might mistakenly think that virtual worlds are simply about escapism. I don't believe they are. What they truly are, is about giving human beings what they've always truly desired. The capacity to craft their own worlds, the power to manifest destiny.