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The second factor to keep in mind when we talk about mediation and perception is
that we not only respond in a social manner to media appliances, we also treat images
that appear on a screen as real. As Reeves and Nass write, “The studies show that social
responses are not just applied to the appliances that deliver media; they also apply to
suggest that we perceive the real world and simulated ones the same way. In people's
engagement of pervasive media (and mediation), I see this phenomenon born out in the
movement toward a societal recognition of the actual.
We are equal opportunity agency attributors—we see personality in almost
everything, which helps to explain the power of avatars as representatives of self. I am
suggesting that the critical distinction we draw every day is not between the real and the
simulated but, rather, between the actual (which includes trusted modes and tropes of
mediation) and the inauthentic (which describes the kind of failed signaling produced
by chatbots or other low-level AI).
In addition to a long history of making machines anthropomorphic and endowing
media images with personality, today we have media that tethers us to other people in
real-time rich media connections. Our brains are now juggling a new combination of
factors: an unreal image that we take to be real with an actual person managing its mo-
tions. This happens everyday in multiplayer online games as it happens, in different
formats, on VoIP, IM, and SMS. If we had been previously mistaken about the human
capacity of our machines and their synthesis of simulation, we now step toward a me-
dia engagement that actually does channel the presence of another person.
The age of computation changed the speed of transmission but not the terms of hu-
man perception. In effect, our ancient brains are not equipped to discern real violence
from simulated violence, or any other form of simulated signal. But this does not mean
we have not changed in rather profound ways in relation to the adoption of accelerated
networked media. One can see the impact most clearly in the dynamic forms of engage-
ment we find within network culture. Avatars play a critical role in the next levels of
simulation and networks, as they are our messengers, the front line of interaction.
If avatars are perceived as real, as Reeves and Nass suggest, then we take them at
face value to a certain extent. Yet, intellectually, we understand that each avatar, or the
sum of images, action, and texts that make up one's network avatar, is a collection of
