Embrace your Avatar

Oh, never star was lost here, but it rose afar! Look East, where whole new thousands are! In Vishnu-land what Avatar? ~ Robert Browning

Avatar is the incarnation of the Hindu deity, Vishnu, or an embodiment of a quality or concept, an archetype. Avatars are growing exponentially on the Internet. According to Gartner Group within the next three years, 80 per cent of all active Internet users will have avatars.

Gerri Sinclair is a true Renaissance woman with a PhD in Renaissance drama. Now she is executive director of a graduate program for a master's in digital media programming in Vancouver. She has already sold her first Internet company, NCompass to Microsoft and is developing several more with partners.

She sees societal attention to the virtual world as a water shed moment. People are split between two worlds, the real world and the virtual world of the BlackBerry and virtual connections. "We are moving more and more into a Web that is 3-D, where you can explore all around you and you need a figure, someone who represents yourself in order to interact."

There are about 50 million people now engaged several hours a week in such meta-verse worlds like Second Life. Within the next decade researchers predict there could be ten times that number.

Sinclair says that we always understood that the Internet is the next frontier for business but many didn't have a business plan. "Right now the next big wave is going to be wireless sensor networks called ubiquitous computing - where it is not only humans talking to humans over the Internet , but machines to machines, machines to humans and humans to machines. The whole world will be this communicative infrastructure and there will be a tremendous number of applications everywhere."

Interesting that the word avatar comes from a religious context, or something archetypal, embodying perfection, a longing. Can the virtual world be a source for the exploration of one's identity, a place to find completion, a path to meaning?

My previous blog post was about an avatar, Sharon at Betty Bunhead, has an avatar, I'm beginning to have avatar envy.

Photo Credit: