David Toews wrote : "puppets interact with other puppets - i'm imagining a puppet show :). however, they do so strictly as vehicles of the puppeteers' intentions, or as vehicles of the puppeteers and/or audience's symbolic interpretations of those (on stage) interactions." Thanks, Dr. Toews! Very interesting points all around. I think I was mixing together ideas on hypertexts in the fictional sense (e.g. Mark Amerika's machines,etc.) and the SL avatars. It's just that avatars and markup machines are becoming very pervasive (advertising, etc.) as you also note, and there are lots of new angles to be considered (as you also note). They are still texts (and I suppose in at least two senses of text) but I can now see the researching difficulties you talk about. Maybe one of the main points, for me at least, is the *potential* interaction of any two (or more) objects in relatively close proximity. Thanks to all! Best regards, Will William Bain PhD Student Comparative Literature Department of Spanish Philology Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage.