> -----Original Message-----
>
> Hey in MUDs people mistake bots for people and visa versa all the time!
[Bullard, Claude L (Len)]
How do they discover the mistake? What factors affect that?
> Life on the Screen : Identity in the Age of the Internet
> <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0684833484/miningco971522aA/> by
> Sherry Turkle talks about these
> kinds of things.
>
[Bullard, Claude L (Len)]
Right. "Tootsie".
> This of course melds right in with other identity alterations like of
> course, my own often mistaken sex.
>
[Bullard, Claude L (Len)]
And because of some situations, we asked. The situation with Shel
Kimen comes to mind. Her
choice of nickname and the style of her email made a lot of us think
she was a he. That usually
doesn't matter as long as the subject matter of the discussion never
veers toward any sexually
political issue. As soon as it does by indirection (humor) or
direction (the debate about
women in VRML or whatever that was), it becomes an issue. You have
two separable issues:
gender and preference.
> Seems to me a story revolving around identity changes would be most cool
> :-)
[Bullard, Claude L (Len)]
Even Shakespeare did that.
> Even more interesting would be a VRML Dream type of story where the actors
> may or may not be "real" and the sex mutates depending on context of the
> puppetters desires.
>
[Bullard, Claude L (Len)] Do they instrument that or make decisions
in advance?
len
