Sharing emotions in cyberspace is about to become a lot easier, and with this humans are taking one more step towards what Manuel Castells calls a world of real virtuality.

"Real virtuality is a system in which reality itself is entirely captured, fully immersed in virtual image setting, in the world of make believe, in which appearances are not just on the screen through which experience is communicated, but they become the experience."

The advance is covered by Steven Johnson in his new Discover article on the creation of There's emotion-supporting virtual chat environment. 

"As the psychologist Paul Ekman has shown, we are endowed with an extraordinarily nuanced set of facial expressions that convey our inner emotional states, along with even more nuanced perceptual skills for decoding those expressions."

"There.com's prototype version offers more than 100 different emotional states to choose from—everything from surprise to anger—and it plans to release 10 new emotions per quarter."

Insightfully, Johnson also warns of the downside of virtual emotions:

"We are exploring a comparable threshold point in our perceptual systems today—only this time, the illusion at stake is that of emotion."

As information technology continues to advance rapidly, it will be interesting to see the role that emerging neurotechnologies might play in the sharing of emotions within real virtuality.  Indeed, it looks like we are quickly moving towards DARPA's emotional future.