The Guardian has made an interesting future prediction -- that in the future, the number of avatars living in virtual worlds will eventually outnumber humans living in the real one. The projection, in an article by Victor Keegan, is based in Gartner research that says that over 80% of internet users will have avatars in about four years' time -- and most people have more than one virtual self.

Keegan says that despite the rough days Second Life's been having of late, the race is on to see which virtual world space (or spaces) will emerge the biggest; the article points to Entropia's new deal with the Beijing municipality to allow it to handle 7 million users simultaneously, as an example. As for Keegan, he's betting on Google Earth, which as he says, "recently added photographs of streets to its zoom-in model of the planet. It already has 250 million users who add content and interact with each other. It doesn't take a big leap of the imagination to envisage your avatar talking to friends and strangers in your own street in a few years' time."

[Via The Guardian]