While Microsoft Office 97 featured several avatars, Clippy was the default, so it attracted the most attention and vitriol. Clippy was intended to offer advice on different tasks and help improve productivity — think Navi from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The concept behind Clippy was inspired by a Stanford University study that demonstrated humans generally react to computers the same way they do to other people; the parts of the brain that light up when engaging with other people and...
