Dina Mehta on the word AVATAR
Via Seb's blog I wandered to Conversations with Dina where she shares the origins of the word Avatar.
"The word avatar has its etymological origins in Sanskrit (Sanskrit avatra, descent (of a deity from heaven), avatar : ava, down tarati, he crosses - source here), and finds its place in most Indian languages. We hear the word used so often here in our day-to-day lives and in common parlance - for instance, a person of great virtue is often called 'bhagwan ka avataar' (incarnation of God)."
I presume it was never the intent, but it is kinda weird that somehow we might think of our web-alter identities as dieties. YIKES! I'm not sure I ever feel that powerful. ;-)
posted by Nancy White at 1:10 PM
5 Comments:
Oh, boy another blog to follow. (And sneaky that blogger wants me to login - boo to limiting my identity!) Anyway, some complimentary history on this subject.
The use of "avatar" for the embodiment of a virtual shell is often credited to Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer in their 1988 paper, The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat. Neal Stephenson used it as the name for the virtual bodies inhabiting his Metaverse in Snow Crash and in the afterword states he used it independently, but that Chip and Randy seemed to have coined that usage first.
Graphical Virtual Worlds have been using it pretty consistently since the early 90's, but the use of the word has spread to images on message board posts and now to blogs themseleves.
-Scott Moore, former-VW dude gone nonprofit.
Thanks Scott (and yeah, that is a bit of an obnoxious thing about the comment tool with blogger. My mother doesn't like that. This is signficiant. More on my mother and blogs later. I need to get her permission to tell the story!)
I appreciate the history. Words are still central in this online world in ways that are far more powerful and mysterious than F2F in my experience. Thanks again.
Actually, you followed a link by my current blogger-in-residence, Richard MacManus. Thanks to the magic of syndication, I post Richard's excellent links and commentary to my weblog's sidebar. (I do the same for my music playlist, BTW.)
Hi Nancy - just following a link to my post from Technorati and discovered you've just started blogging. Thought i'd drop in and say hi - and look forward to more blog conversations ! And YIKES - whats with Blogger and the commenting system ?
Wow, that came back full circle very fast -- Sebastian helped my memory and Dina, you found back to me. Pretty damn cool. Thanks!
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