Virtual Body Language Virtual Body Language

Why does the tail wag the brain? What is virtual autism? Why can't our avatars walk hand-in-hand? Will a nonverbal Babel fish save the world? Jeffrey Ventrella a seasoned virtual worlds programmer and visual language expert reviews the history of avatars smileys and other expressive forms and considers a future of spectacular creativity. This book combines thoughtful scholarship with amusing anecdotes from the trenches of Silicon Valley. Virtual Body Language presents a thorough analysis of the neurological linguistic aesthetic and technical aspects of how nonverbal communication can be distributed over the internet. Based on nearly a decade of avatar development Ventrella has the practical foundation on which to justify even the most outrageous claims regarding what avatar might mean in the future.