Envisioning Cyberspace: The Design of On-Line Communities

The development of the World Wide Web into an active, visual social environment poses unique opportunities for the design professions. Multi-user Domains, social meeting places in cyberspace, are mostly text-based virtual realities which use spatial references to set the stage for social interaction. Over the past year design students at the New Jersey Institute of Technology School of Architecture have investigated several text-based domains. In the course of their work, they envisioned and graphically portrayed these environments as immersive virtual realities through the use of computer animation. Their studies addressed issues ranging from the nature of symbolic motion to social/political structures of these domains.