Email is different from face to face communication largely because of the time delay. Some people are more comfortable with that bit of delay because it allows them to collect their thoughts before responding. Big Stage avatars look pretty good and are getting better each day. Spellchecking is a solved problem. Grammar checking is improving, language translation is on the way, text to speech is surprisingly good, speech to animation is showing promise. I read recently about a problem with text bots posing as damsels in distress on the internet, text chatting with lonely guys with big credit cards. Computers are getting pretty smart, or should I say that computers are getting better and better at appearing to be smart. When we finally plug all these pieces together we will end up with a digital entity that I can mold to look, act, sound and talk just like me. I can speak through him as a kind of Cyrano de Bergerac, though I suspect that eventually the roles switch with him becoming the more clever entity speaking on my behalf.

Credit: New York Times

It is a fun thought, crafting a personality (probably several of them) for my digital buddy and turning him loose in cyberspace on my behalf.