Use of ('Sweetie') Avatar by Dutch Activists (Terre des Hommes) to Track Alleged Child Abusers

Use of ‘Sweetie’ Avatar by Dutch activists to track alleged child abusers: Sweetie — a digital ‘girl’ by Terre des Hommes. This is a very cool and effective application of real virtuality (Castells) in digital society to achieve very significant progress is the fight against child abusers. Read more here from the NY daily News.

“A system in which reality itself (that is, people’s material/symbolic existence) is entirely captured, fully immersed in a virtual image setting in the world of make believe, in which appearances are not just on the screen through which the experience is communicated, but they become the experience.” Manuel Castells (1996)

See here for real virtuality: Warschauer, M. (1998). Review of The information age: Economy, society, and culture,by Manuel Castells. Computers & Composition, 15, 265-267.