May 15, 2003

avatar

n. Syn.

[in Hindu mythology, the incarnation of a god]

1. Among people working on virtual reality and cyberspace interfaces, an avatar is an icon or representation of a user in a shared virtual reality. The term is sometimes used on MUDs.

2. [CMU, Tektronix] root, superuser. There are quite a few Unix machines on which the name of the superuser account is ‘avatar’ rather than ‘root’. This quirk was originated by a CMU hacker who found the terms root and superuser unimaginative, and thought ‘avatar’ might better impress people with the responsibility they were accepting.

Posted by Jargon File at May 15, 2003 10:58 AM

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