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Sean Farrell
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JUNE 22, 2005

The History of Avatars

1-Today I would like to write a piece about the history of avatars. Why not? How far back
could these computer-generated characters go? A decade?
2-Avatar a word in Hinduism, is a deity which comes down to earth in a human form or
an animal form. The word in English means "incarnation", but better "appearance" or
"manifestation". This is the sense in which we use the word 'avatar' in various media today.
3-But the "Bible of avatars for the geek community," is Neal Stephenson's 1992 classic,
Snow Crash, a story about hackers negotiating cyberspace. Stephenson uses and defines
the word "avatar" in his novel: "The people are pieces of software called avatars. They are
the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse.
He even goes on to describe avatar protocol: "Your avatar can look any way you want it to,
up to the limitations of your equipment. If you're ugly, you can make your avatar beautiful.
If you've just got out of bed, your avatar can still be wearing beautiful clothes and
makeup."
4-Avatars later appear in movies, games and on television. In films like The Matrix trilogy
we can enjoy storylines based on avatars which create a dramatic tension between virtual
reality and actual reality. The most famous movie is probably Avatar is a science fiction
film written and directed by James Cameron in 2009. The film is set in the
year 2154 on Pandora, a fictional Earth-like moon in a distant planetary system. The film's
title refers to the remotely controlled human-Na'vi bodies used by the human characters to
interact with the indigenous population.
5-It's hard to say when avatars made their debut on the net . But the appearance of one of
the most popular early avatars is easy to track: on April 19, 2000, Ananova made her debut
at a London press conference. The 28-year-old, green-haired, British, 3D avatar has a full
range of facial expressions and can speak multiple languages. She is attractive, trustworthy
and believable, based on the principle that face-to-face communication is one of the oldest
and most trusted forms interaction.
Find a title for each paragraph
Underline the key words in each paragraph
Teach your group!!!