Real and Virtual Worlds and the Proteus Effect

I covered virtual worlds extensively in this blog in the past.  In particular how they could be used to simulate real work interactions.  See previous posts on that.  We experimented in many such spaces, but that diminished in coverage.  Will wearables bring back the interest, with a different more realistic and immersive twist?  An interesting piece on the interaction of real and virtual worlds.

In virtual worlds we have what are called avatars, symbols of our presence, often in human form. The author of the article talks about how we interact with them:  " .... It seems that we conform to the expected behaviors and attitudes of our avatars, a phenomenon my colleagues and I have referred to as the “Proteus effect.” We tend to think that avatars are things we create and control, but the opposite is also true. Our avatars change how we think and behave.

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