Avatars and Nanodetectors

This blog is a bit of a mind spill and offers mostly questions and very little in the way of answers.  It will touch on topics such as avatars, voice recognition, nanodetectors, health and how mankind may develop a one point interaction with the Internet.

Avatars have interested me for a while. When I talk about an avatar I'm not referring to those cartoon avatars you can create for free online or James Cameron's Avatar.  I'm interested in 3D photo realistic avatars that exhibit your behaviors, your current "status", learn as you learn and respond to your voice.  By "status"  I mean detailed health status, mood, location etc.  A 100% online representation of yourself.  Our current QWERTY interaction with the Internet is cold and in personal. In the future when you need to search online, book flights, contact a family member, read the news or whatever else you do online you may leave that up to someone else, your avatar.  Avatars will interact online in the same way humans interact in real life.  They will learn from each other, negotiate with each other and even have relationships with each other.

Currently when you feel the need to tell your friends about your mood, health, location your first reaction is to update your online status in twitter, facebook, blog etc.  Maybe in the future your avatar will communicate all of this information not just because you have told your avatar how you are feeling but because your avatar will be feeling the same??  When you have the flu will you need to tell your avatar about the phlegm or will your avatar have a greater insight into how your feeling than you do?  Your avatar may have advanced knowledge of what is happening inside your body through nanodetection and will be able to advise you on the best course of action.  An interesting aside is that as genome mapping becomes faster and may become available to Joe Bloggs, your avatar may have access to your genetic code and can look for changes in your genome.  Your avatar will be your own PA, health care physician and digital being.  So in essence your avatar could be your one point interaction to the Internet.  Will Avatars ever be able to go to work for us?

Does the technology already exist to make this a reality?  Yeah I think the majority of it does.  The problem is how we can combine existing technology, deal with storage of vast amounts of information in the cloud so that it can be accessed in real time, security of this information through genetic encryption of data and there are surely lots of ethical issues to address.

Thanks for reading.
Tom