Yes, I was just remembering diamond age as I read this. The similarity is quite striking. In the book, the computer was able to generate an interactive script a

Yes, I was just remembering diamond age as I read this. The similarity is quite striking. In the book, the computer was able to generate an interactive script and render an avatar, but couldn't replace the nuances of human speech and body language, hence live voice actors in your video games if you could afford it. The poor had to make do with the more robotic computer generated performances. And to take this parallel to the book even further, a voice actor ends up as a sort of invisible surrogate mother for the main character and ends up seeking her out. So just as in the article's care avatars, the human connection, no matter how tenuous, survives. I guess we're already living in Neal's dystopia.