Avatars

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Introduction

What are Avatars?

See also Second Life and Social media landscape

An avatar is a digital version of someone and is used on sites such as Second Life. The word avatar comes from the Sanskrit avatara which means "incarnation". The term is used in Hindu texts; the eighth avatar (incarnation) of Vishnu is Krishna. Digitally, avatars are used to represent yourself in chat, instant messaging (IM) or multiplayer gaming sessions. An avatar can be cartoon-like, a caricature or an unrealistic representation of its owner. It can be a simple image or a wild fantasy. Nintendo's Wii allows for the creation of avatars called "Miis" which take the form of stylized, cartoonish people as players in Wii Sports. In some games, the ability to use a Mii must be unlocked, such as in Mario Kart Wii. Microsoft's Xbox 360 Dashboard features avatars. In immersive and virtual games, an avatar is a digital persona used to present yourself to the digital world. On some children's gaming sites, you can be a unicorn, bluebird or other object (great for kids!).

Create and express your own persona

In many immersive environments, you can create and customize your own digital persona in 3D. Often, while registering at new sites, you are given opportunities to select from a range of free avatars. Thousands of unique clothing, hair and fashion accessories can be found in these digital worlds. You can even browse the Web for avatars; in Second Life you can shop at a secure shopping site called Xstreet SL.

Literary origins

The use of the word avatar to mean online virtual bodies was first seen in Neal Stephenson's 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash. There, the term is used to describe a virtual simulation of the human form in a metaverse, a fictional virtual-reality application on the Internet. Social status in the metaverse is based on the quality of a user's avatar, as a highly detailed avatar showed that the user was a skilled hacker and programmer while the less talented would buy off-the-shelf models in the same manner a beginner would today.

Stephenson says in the "acknowledgments" that:

"The idea of a 'virtual reality' such as the Metaverse is by now widespread in the computer-graphics community and is being used in a number of different ways. The particular vision of the Metaverse as expressed in this novel originated from idle discussion between me and Jaime (Captain Bandwidth)Taffe...The words 'avatar' (in the sense used here) and 'Metaverse' are my inventions, which I came up with when I decided that existing words (such as 'virtual reality') were simply too awkward to use...after the first publication of 'Snow Crash' I learned that the term 'avatar' has actually been in use for a number of years as part of a virtual reality system called 'Habitat'...in addition to avatars, Habitat includes many of the basic features of the Metaverse as described in this book."