Computers seem to be everywhere and to be able to do almost anything. Automobiles have global positioning systems to give advice about travel routes and destinations. Virtual classrooms supplement and sometimes replace face-to-face classroom experiences with webbased systems (such as Blackboard) that allow postings, virtual discussion sections with virtual whiteboards, as well as continuous access to course documents, outlines, and the like. Various forms of “bots” search for information about intestinal diseases, plan airline reservations to Tucson, and inform us of the release of new movies that might fit our cinematic preferences. Instead of talking to the agent at AAA, the professor, the librarian, the travel agent, or the cinemaphile two doors down, we are interacting with electronic social agents. Some entrepreneurs are even trying to create toys that are sufficiently responsive to engender emotional attachments between the toy and its owner.

These trends are seen by some as the leading edge of a broader phenomenon – not just interactive computer agents but emotionally responsive computers and emotionally responsive virtual agents. Nicholas Negroponte (1996) answers the obvious question: “Absurd? Not really. Without the ability to recognize a person's emotional state, computers will remain at the most trivial levels of endeavor. … What you remember most about an influential teacher is her compassion and enthusiasm, not the rigors of grammar or science” (p. 184).