The virtual other: Aspects of social interaction with synthetic characters

By questioning the concept of "believability" frequently used as a measure for the success of embodied agents, the article lays out the reasons and implications for replacing it by a concept of "agency." It discusses the numerous expectations that are involved in the interaction between social actors, whether human or artificial. It is shown that research attempts to satisfy the requirements of communicative rationality which, however, presupposes implicitly a shared and unproblematic background. Cultural background as part of the "lifeworld" in the sociological sense, plays an important role in interactional behavior that serves to establish, maintain, and terminate any communicative activity. It is here that problems and breakdowns in communication occur most frequently and remain inaccessible to rational discourse of criticism and justification. Embodied agents inevitably bring with them the background of their designers, as there is no such thing as a neutral background. The article concludes with the unresolved problem of cross-cultural portability of embodied agents and their lifeworld.