I vividly remember the first time I flew out to Seattle for our internal technical conference – Envision in 2002. I’d only been at Microsoft 3 months and I was overwhelmed with the flood of technology, and feeling like a total imposter. The closing keynote was done by Ray Kurzweil. With pads and sensors attached to his arms and legs, he pulled up an avatar on screen and danced. And the avatar danced in real time too. initially the avatar was a gorgeous Lara Croft type woman, but he made us all howl with laughter when he changed his avatar to a fat old bloke with a beer belly who looked like he was your dad dancing at a wedding. he was describing how avatars like these would be with us “in the future”. he also told us how he was consulting on a film being made about an avatar who was so realistic that someone fell in love with her (of course I’ve forgotten the name of the movie now – even though I’ve seen it!)
So I smiled to see this article this week showing that real time avatars were actually turning into a reality. I’d have fun playing with these hand gestures 
So do you want your own avatar to work with you in real time? It would certainly be fun for a while eh?…
