The relative lack of privacy one experienced in the Middle Ages is
similar to the lack of privacy one can experience in a MOO (a
MUD -- Multi-User Dimension -- Object-Oriented), i.e. a text-based virtual
reality or cyberspace. Such similarity can be seen in codes of behavior
that some MOOs suggest -- for instance, one MUSE (a Multi-User Simulated
Environment) asks you to not simply "teleport" into a
room unless you are invited, and to not interrupt another's conversation
unless invited. These rules of etiquette reveal what we value in the
sense of privacy that has emerged over the last five hundred years; they
show that we are trying to replicate the physical space of our IRL ("in
real life") lives in cyberspace. But cyberspace is more of a medieval
space in its fluid boundaries. Unlike the sense of privacy and secrecy that
the German word heimlich suggests ["At first, heimlich
meant that which pertains to the home, the hearth, and the intimate;
later, it took on the added meaning of something kept from the view of
strangers and finally also of all that is secret" (Bok 7)], one's home in a MOO is a space in which
you invite people, a space which opens up the self to the scrutiny of
strangers.
So the question that I ask concerns
what we can learn from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance about
electronic reading and writing.
