Reviews of My Tiny Life

Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
"It is a world that inhabitants dub 'tiny,' but its role in their lives is large. In the online community of LambdaMOO, Netizens occupy virtual living rooms and hot tubs, form close friendships and make mortal enemies, trade witticisms and discuss their lives for as many as 70 hours per week. Dibbell's account of this group is similarly large and ambitious. He eschews cliché and, in rich and active prose, frames a world that raises new questions by blurring the line not only between cyberspace and real space but between speech and action, intimacy and distance. ... Dibbell has written a sprawling, dazzling book, accessible to the least initiated and full of insights for the most wizened. ... Dibbell's insight, intelligence, and emotional depth make his interpretation one to behold and savor."

Anthony Brandt, Men's Journal
"A brilliantly original collection of cyber-stories. ... Dibbell followed up on a rape that didn't 'really' happen because it took place in an MUD, a computerized multi-user dimension meant to simulate and alternate society. This particular MUD, LambdaMOO, had for its users all the force of reality, and the virtual crime threw their visible but imaginary world into emotional chaos. The book is well worth seeking out: It's a fascinating read, wonderfully compelling and rather scary."

Hillary Rosner, The Village Voice
"Dibbell ... spins a fascinating tale about love and hate, collusion and disenfranchisement, democracy and morality out of relationships rendered in words and bytes."

Andrew Ross
Author of Strange Weather: Culture, Science, and Technology in the Age of Limits
"This is a classic travelogue of virtual life, written with a blue-sky honesty that guides neophytes and old hands through the treacherous geography of cyberspace. In that Fifth Element between words and deeds, Dibbell explores a realm where the rules of intercourse and governance can never be taken for granted, and where the ghostly characters that inhabit MOO rooms are fleshed out with the difficult passion of online chat."

Lawrence Lessig
Harvard Law School
"Dibbell's story is why I teach cyberlaw."

Kit Reed
Author of Weird Women, Wired Women
"Brilliant, exciting, and funny ... the inside story of a sprawling online community and the remarkable things people do when they think nobody can see them. Dibbell is an elegant writer -- our hot link to the intricacies of cyberlife."

Sherry Turkle
Author of The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit and Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
"Dibbell takes the evocative nature of online life as a provocation to reflect on the many psychological, philosophical, and political issues that are raised ... we owe our appreciation to Dibbell for sharing his honest and intelligent reflections with us. A must-read."

Stacy Horn
Author of Cyberville: Clicks, Culture, and the Creation of an Online Town
"My Tiny Life is the first book I've read that truly conveys the reality and heart of a virtual society. Dibbell takes one period in time in the evolution of online society, looks at it hard, then brings it to striking, illuminating life."

Mark Dery
Author of Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century
"With easy eloquence and self-deprecating wit ... My Tiny Life establishes Julian Dibbell as the matchless master of that emerging genre, the cyberspace memoir."