Long Now: Avatar Afterlife


	Long Now: Avatar Afterlife

Ryan Rasmussen

10-17-2007 8:52 AM

214 views

tags:

second life, virtual telepresence, afterlife, long now

Ryan Rasmussen says:

Incredibly inspiring forecast of the potential to commune with digital ghosts. - persistent existence less consciousness

Jones - "Creating a copy of online behavior and programming an avatar to respond to stimuli in the way the user has been during their digital life is not suggesting consciousness, merely sophisticated replication. This scenario has some intriguing consequences. Amongst them are the possibilities an individual could leave money to their avatar rather than their children in order to support their avatar afterlife, or that future generations would have access to a representation of their ancestors – but would having access to the temporal wisdom of our forebears be of any use? A digital representation of life could continue unhindered in a virtual environment, after real-life has ended."

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://www.clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/28a18e1d-6c85-491e-8d00-4e99f81f6781/C5D74447-7248-4B5E-9FAB-0DCA72139BE6/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://blog.longnow.org/2007/10/12/avatar-afterlife/" href="http://blog.longnow.org/2007/10/12/avatar-afterlife/" style="font-size: 11px;">blog.longnow.org</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://blog.longnow.org/2007/10/12/avatar-afterlife/"><div align="center"><img src="http://content6.clipmarks.com/blog_cache/blog.longnow.org/img/B7601239-D74C-481B-9D10-4896A7C9B2F3" alt="" /></div></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://blog.longnow.org/2007/10/12/avatar-afterlife/"><H2><A title="Permanent Link: Avatar Afterlife" rel="bookmark" href="http://blog.longnow.org/2007/10/12/avatar-afterlife/">Avatar Afterlife</A></H2></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://blog.longnow.org/2007/10/12/avatar-afterlife/"><SMALL>October 12th, 02007 by Alexander Rose </SMALL></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://blog.longnow.org/2007/10/12/avatar-afterlife/"><FONT size="3" face="Times New Roman"> are on the verge of introducing systems  to monitor their users online activity in order to better direct advertising  toward them. It doesn’t seem long before this kind of marketing system  will also be applied to virtual worlds.  The process of distilling  an individual’s online behavior into a digital profile is currently  driven by the commercial needs of advertising but it is possible to  imagine it being used in more creative ways.  The software used  to track the online behavior of users, within in particular system (virtual  worlds or social networks) could be modified to track the entirety of  their online behavior, over a longer space of time – say thirty years.   At the end of this period the data could be used to program an avatar.   This avatar would inhabit a virtual world or worlds and be programmed  with all the users personal data, preferences and potential responses–  would this lead to an avatar afterlife?</FONT></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://blog.longnow.org/2007/10/12/avatar-afterlife/"><FONT size="3" face="Times New Roman">Roderick Jones</FONT></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/C5D74447-7248-4B5E-9FAB-0DCA72139BE6/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content7.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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