Avatars Become Fused With Your Physical Self

[Still Waters]

Just how real is virtual reality? A recent study on avatars in a virtual environment shows the extent that our physical selves can be fused with customized versions.

When gamers create personalized representations of themselves, the challenges and joy that their avatars encounter can have real physical and emotional effects. To find out just how important that customization factor is, communications researchers did a study with 121 college-aged participants.

http://news.discover...self-130601.htm

[Lilly]

Uh Oh...that means I'm a bitc...er...'female dog' then?

Oh well...at least collies are pretty animals.

[lightly]

this is what i really look like

[Gary Meadows]

This is true. There are certain actors I now hate based on the terrible personalities of the people using their faces online. One in particular.

[White Unicorn]

Uh Oh...that means I'm a bitc...er...'female dog' then?

Oh well...at least collies are pretty animals.

I'm worse than that my UM avatar is magnetized water on atomic level! (living waters of life more or less appearance is much like a the star of David which I found to be fascinating)

I think it pertains more to our avatars in of video games. You do connect with the avatar that is representing you in the game, just like your consciousness projects into the physical body. I have to admit I "feel it" in a small physical way when my avatar is killed for some reason.

[Frank Merton]

When I went in search of an avatar (at first I used nothing but that by itself seemed pretentious -- a sort of "I'm above that sort of thing"), I decided I wanted something pleasant to look at without being complicated and not symbolizing anything. A blue fish was the best I could do, and I'm happy with it, although of course its kinda boring and not something I can project myself into.

[Arbenol]

Mmmmmmmm. I'm going to have to ponder on this a bit longer.

[skytwister]

I think the possible implications are really interesting, especially in biomechanics. There's an interesting TED talk by Miguel Nicolelis which you can see right here -

In it he discusses a study in which a monkey learsn to control an avatar and touches and possible future developments. The way I see it, something like this could have really positive and strong effects in the realm of medicine, prosthetic devices, physiotherapy, etc. Perhaps even sending avatar-robots to clear out fields with bomb threats or nuclear danger, etc. But one has to wonder what the dark side of all this is, at least I do. What happens if this expands onto military levels? And even on a basic philosophical ground, how much of a human is human when you're controlling an avatar? Of course, there's steps before we get there but if it's being done in primates, we're not that far off.