4.8.1 The biggest problem faced by industry in developing multiuser environments for avatars is the fact that people can assume many identities and are still quite difficult to track down. This is largely due to the lack of a universal standard allowing the avatars to move from one virtual world to another. There are a number of avatars currently on the Web--VRML, 2D, text, Voxel-drawn ones, and Virtual Humans (which refers to the group set up by VR News to exchange information about the development of autonomous agents that look like human beings).

4.8.2 Buying patterns, monetary exchange, security, and authentication must be maintained in the avatar in order for a market to be fully developed. Using standardised avatars can help in using Internet search engines for avatars and avatar properties. Finally, avatar companies have become common‹they can price their avatars at a lower cost, make them available to more people, and guarantee broader applicability.

4.8.3 In October 1996 at the Earth to Avatar Conference in San Francisco, architects of 3D graphical interfaces on the web met to discuss the lack of avatar standards. When former Apple Computer Chairman John Sculley gave his analysis of the future of cyberspace at the conference, he said that once the technology is shown to work and standards are agreed, the big league players will move into cyberspace. As avatars become members of self-organising groups, Sculley sees them as "a driving force shaping the economics of this industry." (Wilcox, S.,1997, http://www.netscapeworld.com/netscapeworld/nw-01-1997/nw-01-avatar.html).

4.8.4 The Universal Avatar Standards group stated that their core aim is to focus on the nature of avatars with regard to such issues as gender representation, ID authentication, personal expression versus social constraints, avatar versus world scale, and the communication of emotion. Maclen Marvit, teleologist of Worlds in San Francisco, provides this overview of UA's approach:

We are at a point in our industry where lots of companies are doing innovative things, both technically and artistically. The goal of UA is to allow users to move as freely as possible between the technologies and find the best experiences in each, while maintaining a consistent identity. So if Bernie moves from one "world" [developed using] one technology to another "world" in another technology, he can maintain his avatar's representation, his Internet phone number and his proof of identity." (Wilcox, S.,1997, http://www.netscapeworld.com/netscapeworld/nw-01-1997/nw-01-avatar.html).

4.8.5 The proposal provides an architecture for managing thousands of geographically distant users simultaneously, with interactive behaviours, voice, 3-D graphics, and localised audio. It uses a powerful concept known as "regions," which allows for multiple contiguous worlds, accelerated 3-D graphics, and efficient server/client communications. The avatar standards issue is crucial to the success of VRML as a commercially viable language. Until there is some common definition of an avatar and universality of movement between spaces on the Internet, it seems unlikely that any VRML company can hope to make serious money.

4.8.6 The proposal discusses creation of a link to a user profile, coded in HTML and containing data the user wishes to be known either about his fantasy identity or a true one, including proofs of identity, vendor-specific extensions, and user's history. A history could reference games, for example, wizard status in a Role Playing Game (RPG), or it could hold marketing information about purchases made by credit card.

4.8.7 The Internet as it exists today is s large market testing ground-a living laboratory of sorts. It is clear that most companies are moving in the direction of developing multi-user communities with standardised avatars. Because standardisation renders identity in fixed and accountable form, the connection between the users' physical self and bank accounts will not be confused. What will be confused by design, however, is the power status of the avatar-i.e., who is really the "user" and who the "used." In a paradox of power relations, the corporations practice their accustomed method of top-down hierarchy to lift lowly users into the avatar's "god sphere." Be as gods, the hidden god thus decrees; and it is technology and its invisible priests (those who control the servers) who are the real avatar of the god sphere. When the Internet2 "descends," and when avatars are standardised and cybercash perfected, we will be looking out upon a world that we cannot even imagine, because it has been imagined for us. (Vesna, 1997, pg 168-180) [top]