In resemblance, we find likeness and unlikeness, identity, otherness and difference.

Of which fabric will we be made? Science fiction, medicine, biology and genetics are designing a human being with unsuspected capacities which seem to redefine and sometimes threaten each man, woman, and child as we know them. What role My Virtual Model™ does play in this enthralling, exciting, suspense story?

Who are we in all these networks? My Virtual Model outlines virtual identity proposals.

Personal Identity

My Virtual Model is a product offered on an affiliate network. It allows users to create their on-line 3D silhouette so they can see themselves and try on some clothing, mix and match items, find their style and size, send e-mail messages to their on-line friends and relatives, and buy more confidently on the Web. The performances of My Virtual Model are impressive for sales and CRM services.

My Virtual Model is mobile and can go from one Web site to another. It makes it possible to create a unique and evolutive user profile. My Virtual Model finds its first application in fashion, which formerly spoke by diktats that women, particularly, were to follow to the letter. Fashion was one of the strongest and most effective factors of social differentiation. It would take money to afford a dressmaker who designed his customer's style to his own inspiration. Nowadays, fashion is more inviting to users and more intimate. It relies more on ideas and concepts than pure aesthetics. It is a world filled with emotions, interactions, relationships, originality, authenticity and individuality. When speaking of ideas, I mean interchange, discussion, and communication. My Virtual Model can easily take part in debates, forums, and represent users in a virtual and entertaining way. By mixing creativity with interaction, each user learns how to create her own physical model rather than to follow that of someone else. She discovers and learns how to know herself. Fashion magazines will be increasingly about you. Thereafter, user will be able to take part in the design of personalized clothing, using My Virtual Model.

My Virtual Model is a personal communication agent. It shares the usage permissions of the user's personal information with merchants, civil servants, etc. The user owns her data and shares it with whom she wants. It is completely user-centric. My Virtual Model can easily become an information and security agent, a private, integrated software agent. It can filter personal information at various levels, from intimacy to sociality. The relation that settles between My Virtual Model and the user is key. User can have her double evolve by working on self-resemblance on her own terms.

My Virtual Model can also help us to socialize in dating clubs, forums, chat rooms, and instant messengers. My Virtual Model is much more than a talking head, it is each person self-representation of her body, look, and personality. It can soon find its way on smart cards, scanners, cell phones, and PDAs. It is a virtual identity. It can also inform us about the location of an object or a required service. It can help us to know where we are in the real world.

A famous critic of technology said that our salvation would come from writing and language. Writing and language set into motion masks, layers, and their revealing. My virtual double can guide me in this world of intelligent mirrors interfaced with multimedia databases, and help me to find and complete myself. We do not wish any more to be dissolved and lost in the mass created by traditional medias.

Identity Networks

My Virtual Model can also help us to realize that self-accomplishment, although forming an integral part of modern identity, is in itself insufficient. It also needs: reason, creative imagination, freedom, dignity, rights, goodwill and universal justice.

Can my double help me to identify with the political community, with public freedom? Can it play a significant role in electronic democracy? We expect that public institutions support the confidentiality and respect of personal information. A conscious citizen must also protect democracy. My Virtual Model, as a representative of the person, can facilitate the exercise of democracy.

From now on, it is necessary for us to also act on this scale. To add our personal values to those of our organizations and our governments will be part of the citizenship of tomorrow. We become responsible for our identity. It is no more defined by one or several brands, be it those of an interest group, a company, a country, or a family. Stemming from our inner self, we carry it on all these levels. Our double assists us to cope with this increased -- and hopefully enriched -- reality.

Interest and spiritual communities supporting continuous and sophisticated discussions require virtual and real meetings, where ideas and statements are submitted to the criticism of e-pinions. The anonymity of current networks fosters natural authorities superseding the Establishments. However, reality is often lagging behind. Most parents are unaware or fearful of what is happening to their child prodigies. To harmonize reality and the virtual world is the true challenge. Improvement of oneself by virtual means is possible but it must also be carried out on real, fragile, space-time bound human beings. Human real time should be able to spread in all dimensions of a person's history, keeping every piece of the human puzzle together. This is the virtual double's mission. It will be increasingly useful in the coming debate over genetic cloning.

Louise Guay
CEO and Founder My Virtual Model Inc.