Avatars98 hailed as world's first cyberspace conference

NEWS A Californian organisation is to host what it claims is "the first major international conference held in cyberspace". The Avatars98 conference, which goes live on 21 November, will offer visitors the chance to move their cyber body-double around a variety of exhibits, art shows and award presentations. The conference is being hosted by the San Francisco-based Contact Consortium, a non-profit body which calls itself "the first global organisation focused on inhabited virtual spaces on the Internet". The consortium's members include the likes of "anthropologists, space scientists, world builders, computer scientists... and just normal folks." Avatars98 can be accessed via www.ccon.org.