Commercial on-line services also recognize avatars' appeal; CompuServe has a 2-D space called Worlds Away, and America Online just introduced Virtual Places, which 1 lets members chat as 2-D avatars, using any Web site as a backdrop. It will be available to nonmembers this month.

Avatars - from a Hindu word for a god appearing in bodily form on earth - are little cartoon pictures or photographs (sometimes just heads, sometimes whole bodies) that represent users in visual chat environments on line.

Many avatars have a repertoire of expressions and gestures (smiling, waving, frowning); conversation is displayed in balloons around the avatars' heads or in a separate window below. At least one company OnLive! Technologies (http://www.onlive.com), transmits users' voices, "allowing groups of people to talk - not type," says CEO Betsy Pace.

These virtual spaces known as "avatar worlds" or "avatar chat," are closely watched by The Contact Consortium (http://www.ccon.org) a 2 year-old nonprofit organization of which Damer is co-director.

An outgrowth of text-based on-line role-playing games for anthropology students, its mission is to learn about human culture and contact in digital space: "It really feels like you've been somewhere and done something," Damer says.

A rapidly growing number of computer users might agree. When the consortium conducted its first cyber census in October 1995, it counted just 600 avatars; in October 1996, the number had skyrocketed to 320,000 - a growth curve similar to that of the early Web.

"It's chat, but it's oh so much more," says Palace co-founder Mark Jeffrey. "You form a community on your site."

More than 1,000 Palace sites are now on the Web, and about 500,000 people have downloaded the free software necessary to participate as a guest, using a bare-bones smiley-face avatar. (Paying a one-time fee of $25 plus $10 a year allows users to customize avatars and receive regular upgrades such as a Shockwave multimedia addition due this month.)

Only about a tenth of Palace chat sites are run by companies, Jeffrey notes; most are run by individuals. Personal server software to host 40 people costs about $50, he says.

Many avatar world pioneers have been inspired by science fiction, such as Black Sun, named for a virtual 3-D bar in Neal Stephenson's prescient 1992 novel Snow Crash. On its sites, users can chat publicly or privately, to find out about another user, they click on his avatar to view his CyberCard. "We are not primarily a 3-D company, we're a community company," says president Franz Buchenberger.

Damer describes some of these new visual worlds in his book, which he calls a "starter kit" for people interested in avatars; it comes with a CD-ROM containing materials from a dozen of the most popular spaces so people can try them without having to download software from the Web.

"It's a significantly richer environment" than old-fashioned chat rooms, Damer says, particularly the 3-D worlds, where different rules of etiquette are required because "you can actually have 'body contact' " with avatars (some of whose behavior inspires the nickname "avatarts" he adds).

Some people will always prefer text-based virtual environments where "a lot more was in the mind," but Damer believes the coming of avatars is a "tidal wave" that will change the Web forever.

"It's the revenge of the original Internet against what the Web has put on top of it," he says. "The community-building mechanism is asserting itself."

While he says virtual worlds are "certainly not a substitute for direct human contact, if they allow people to replace five hours of TV every day with some real interaction, it's probably an improvement."