Thursday, October 1, 2015

Age of Avatars

I am told by people who know Donald Trump that in real life he is quite different from what he appears to be in his quest for Republican nomination. In public he is quite bombastic, arrogant and over confidant. He says things that a segment of society would like to say but does not because it would be considered impolite or politically incorrect. In person, he is not quite like that I am told. So, he has assumed the persona, an “Avatar” to use a video game metaphor, just to please an untapped segment of population in order to win the Republican party nomination.

Similarly, Bobby Jindal, a brilliant Rhodes scholar, acts like a religious zealot who is anti-science and against any social progress. There is no doubt that it is his Avatar that is speaking in public, not real him. He just needs to get votes from the segments he has hitched his wagon to. Through a careful study of how large these segments are, and who they would vote for, he has become that type of person in the eyes of the public.

The ability and need to become an Avatar in public is not restricted just to our politicians. All of us who are active in the social media create our on-line alter egos that are not quite like who we really are. All the smiley photographs, bits of wisdom we share, and posts we like are all to some extent supporting the brand we have created for ourselves. Most people we are friends with on-line do not see us in person and assume that our Avatars are who we really are. Just like they do for Donald or Bobby.

What I wonder is where this will take us next. Are we going to reach a stage where every utterance and action, on-line or in media, will be choreographed? Will we be so infatuated with our Avatars that we will lose our authenticity all together? Will our society become like a giant video game, with each one of us optimizing our characters for the function we are supposed to perform or brand we are trying to create? 

In the future, genetics, artificial intelligence and robotics will advance to such an extent that we will all have the option to become what we want using these technologies. It will be hard to distinguish what is authentic “us” and what is not.


Is what we are experiencing the beginning of that transformation?