What is Avatarism

The internet, social networks, emerging virtual/augmented/mixed reality technology platforms and portals are beginning to utilize and display interactive, spatially relative, three-dimensional versions of objects, persons, and environments. The human need to document and archive one's form, behavior, beliefs, experiences, and wishes is an inherent need and desire of our species to preserve and tell their unique life stories. An ability to track and/or capture human movement, expression, environment, and experience with technology designed to acquire hand gestures, body and facial tracking inputs, as well as speech will play an important role in the life documentation process. The eventual goal will be for humankind to interact with, and be remembered as, autonomous virtual agents beyond the scope of physical life, providing “virtual immortality” to any and all that adopt the capability as it evolves in our culture, and with the machines and applications that we utilize. This chapter explores the age of avatarism.