Hello Avatar: Rise of the Networked Generation

December 14, 2011
Beth Coleman | MIT

There has been a cultural shift from analog to digital: creating an “x-reality” that crosses between the virtual and the real. Encompassing a multiplicity of network combinations, it is the role of the avatar to help us express our new agency–our new power to customize our networked life. The gestalt of images, text, and multimedia that make up our online identities–in virtual worlds like Second Life and in the form of email, video chat, and other digital artifacts. What has come out of this shift is real-time collaboration and co-presence. The star of this drama of expanded horizons is the networked subject–all of us who represent aspects of ourselves and our work across the mediascape.

Speaker Details

Dr. Beth Coleman is a professor of writing and new media at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She does experimental work at the intersection of art, technology, and cultural impact, publishing in a diverse set of academic, art, and culture journals.