From: David Carmein <2david@vsdevices.com>
Subject: Re: MISC: First use of "avatars", "virtual worlds"
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 12:59:38 -0600
Message-ID: <32FF701A.4C92@vsdevices.com>
Organization: Virtual Space Devices, Inc.


Liz Rothman wrote:
> 
> I recently learned that Neal S. had contacted one of the Habitat guys
> way back when he was writing Snowcrash...
> SNIP

My edition of _Snow_Crash_ has, as the last paragraph of
Acknowledgments:

"Finally, after the first publication of _Snow_Crash_ I learned that
the term "avatar" has actually been in use for a number of years by
part of a vitual reality system called Habitat, developed by
F. Randall Farmer and Chip Morningstar. The system runs on Commodore
64 computers, and though it has all but died out in the U.S., is still
popular in Japan. In addition to avatars, Habitat incudes many of the
basic features of the Metaverse as described in this book."

-- 
David Carmein		    			  2david@vsdevices.com
Virtual Space Devices, Inc. 			  V: 612.884.2455
Bloomington, Minnesota USA			  F: 612.881.3701
http://www.vsdevices.com