Julian Dibbell ( /dɪˈbɛl/ ; born February 23, 1963) is an American author and technology journalist with a focus on social systems within online communities. [1]
Dibbell was born in New York City. He grew up in Claremont, California and resides in Chicago, Illinois. His uncle is rock critic Robert Christgau, and Dibbell has also published music criticism. [2] He is a non-resident fellow of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society [3] and he previously served as George A. Miller Visiting Professor of Media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. [4] He is also a founder of the academic gaming research blog Terra Nova.
His 1993 article "A Rape in Cyberspace" [5] detailed attempts of LambdaMOO, an online community, to quantify and deal with lawbreaking in its midst. The article was later included in his first book, My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. Dibbell has also written about Chinese gold farmers for The New York Times Magazine [6] and about griefer culture for "Wired" Magazine. [7] He chronicled his attempt to make a living playing MMORPGs in his second book, Play Money: or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot. [8] [9]
Dibbell graduated from Yale University, summa cum laude, in 1986. He graduated from the University of Chicago Law School (where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review) [10] in 2014. Dibbell now practices law as an associate in the Business and Technology Sourcing practice of the global law firm Mayer Brown. [11]
LambdaMOO is an online community of the variety called a MOO. It is the oldest MOO today.
Champaign is a city in Champaign County, Illinois, United States. The population was 88,302 at the 2020 census. It is the tenth-most populous municipality in Illinois and the fourth most populous city in the state outside the Chicago metropolitan area. It is a principal city of the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, which had 236,000 residents in 2020.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is a public land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United States. Established in 1867, it is the flagship institution of the University of Illinois system. With over 59,000 students, the University of Illinois is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the United States.
The Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, also known as Champaign–Urbana and Urbana–Champaign as well as Chambana (colloquially), is a metropolitan area in east-central Illinois. As defined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the metropolitan area has a population of 235,608 as of the 2023 U.S. Census Bureau estimate, which ranks it as the 201st largest metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. The area is anchored by the principal cities of Champaign and Urbana, and is home to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system.
The Illini Media Company is a nonprofit, student media company based in Champaign, Illinois. The company owns several student-run media outlets associated with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: the general newspaper, the Daily Illini; the entertainment paper, Buzz Magazine; the engineering quarterly, Technograph; the U of I yearbook, the Illio; and the commercial radio station, WPGU.
A griefer or bad-faith player is a player in a multiplayer video game who deliberately and intentionally irritates, annoys or trolls other players within the game. Griefing is often accomplished by destroying things constructed by other players or stealing items. A griefer derives pleasure from the act of annoying other users, and as such, is a nuisance in online gaming communities.
Thomas M. Siebel is an American billionaire businessman, technologist, and author. He was the founder of enterprise software company Siebel Systems and is the founder, chairman, and CEO of C3.ai, an artificial intelligence software platform and applications company.
"A Rape in Cyberspace, or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society" is an article written by freelance journalist Julian Dibbell and first published in The Village Voice in 1993. The article was later included in Dibbell's book My Tiny Life on his LambdaMOO experiences.
The Beauty Shop was an Americana rock / alt country band, led by singer-songwriter-guitarist John Hoeffleur, based out of Champaign, Illinois. Formed in 1999, they released two EPs and two full length albums before disbanding in 2008. Hoeffleur described their music as "influenced by old-school punk and old-school country with a dash of singer/songwriter ".
Virtual crime, can be described as a criminal act conducted in a virtual world -- usually massively multiplayer online role-playing games, MMORPGs. To grasp the definition of virtual crime, the modern interpretation of the term "virtual" must be assessed to portray the implications of virtual crime. In this sense, virtual crime describes those online acts that “evoke the effects of real crime” but are not widely considered to be prosecutable acts.
Gold farming is the practice of playing a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) to acquire in-game currency, later selling it for real-world money.
Orange Krush is a branch of the registered student organization (RSO), Illini Pride, at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. In its current form, the Organization has two faces. First, the Orange Krush is the student cheering section for the University of Illinois men's basketball team. Second, the Orange Krush exists as a charitable organization known as the Orange Krush Foundation.
The School of Information Sciences, also The iSchool at Illinois, is an undergraduate and graduate school at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Its Master of Science in Library and Information Science is currently accredited in full good standing by the American Library Association. The school is a charter member of the iSchool initiative.
Richard H. Herman is a mathematician, currently Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, who had served as the Chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2005–2009. He previously served there as Provost and Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs since 1998. As provost he garnered support for, and administered, a “faculty excellence” program designed to bring established faculty to the institution. Throughout his administrative tenure, sponsored research at the university increased by more than 50%.
Herman C. Krannert (1887–1972) was a businessman and philanthropist in the Midwest of the United States who made millions in the corrugated fiber products industry and subsequently made generous contributions to education and the arts. Among other substantial contributions, eleven buildings bear the Krannert name, most of them at hospitals and universities in Illinois and Indiana, including the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University, and the Krannert Art Museum and Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Steven M. LaValle is an American computer scientist, and a professor in the Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the University of Oulu. He was also an early founder and head scientist of Oculus VR until it was acquired by Facebook in 2014. He is best known for his work on rapidly exploring random trees (RRTs), the Oculus Rift, and his book, Planning Algorithms, one of the most highly cited texts in the field.
Lisa Nakamura is an American professor of media and cinema studies, Asian American studies, and gender and women’s studies. She teaches at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she is also the Coordinator of Digital Studies and the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor in the Department of American Cultures.
Govindjee is an Indian-American scientist and educator. He is Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Plant Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he taught from 1961 until 1999. As Professor Emeritus since 1999, Govindjee has continued to be active in the field of photosynthesis through teaching and publishing. He is recognized internationally as a leading expert on photosynthesis.
The University Library at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign comprises a network of physical and digital libraries. It provides resources and services to the university's students, faculty, staff, and the broader academic community.
The Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards are awards given to early-career researchers in chemistry by The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc. "to support the research and teaching careers of talented young faculty in the chemical sciences." The Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar program began in 1970. In 1994, the program was divided into two parallel awards: The Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards Program, aimed at research universities, and the Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards Program, directed at primarily undergraduate institutions. This list compiles all the pre-1994 Teacher-Scholars, and the subsequent Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholars.